This book is your introduction to the world of BRender. It provides a step-by-step guide to the main features of the API and, we hope, the building blocks you will need to construct a conceptual model of BRender. Note that this is not a definitive guide to BRender and does not demonstrate the full range and power of BRender's features. It is intended to be read in conjunction with the technical reference manual.
The goal of this book is to help you produce your own 3D applications as quickly, and with as little fuss, as possible. To this end, sample programs are listed and dissected. We start with basic skeleton programs illustrating the structure of a BRender program and build these programs into more complex sequences. The source code for these programs can be found on the Tutorial Programs disk accompanying this guide. It is strongly recommended that you compile, edit and run these programs as you work through the tutorials. By experimenting with the supplied sample programs, you will quickly become familiar with BRender's vocabulary and learn how to implement its function calls.
Whilst you will need to be a proficient C programmer in order to make use of BRender, we do not assume an in-depth knowledge of 3D graphics principles. This is not a 3D graphics textbook however, only graphics principles relevant to BRender are described.
If you are new to writing 3D graphics applications, it is strongly recommended that you get your hands on a good 3D graphics textbook, for example Computer Graphics - Principles and Practice, Second Edition, by James D. Foley et al., published by Addison Wesley Publishing Co., 1990. In addition, a general purpose maths primer covering vectors and matrices will prove invaluable.