This is the code repository for C++ Game Animation Programming, published by Packt.
Learn modern animation techniques from theory to implementation using C++, OpenGL, and Vulkan
If you‘re fascinated by the complexities of animating video game characters and are curious about the transformation of model files into 3D avatars and NPCs that can explore virtual worlds, then this book is for you.
This book covers the following exciting features:
- Create simple OpenGL and Vulkan applications and work with shaders
- Explore the glTF file format, including its design and data structures
- Design an animation system with poses, clips, and skinned meshes
- Find out how vectors, matrices, quaternions, and splines are used in game development
- Discover and implement ways to seamlessly blend character animations
- Implement inverse kinematics for your characters using CCD and FABRIK solvers
- Understand how to render large, animated crowds efficiently
- Identify and resolve performance issues
If you feel this book is for you, get your copy today!
All of the code is organized into folders.
Following is what you need for this book: This book is for curious C++ developers, game programmers, game designers, and character animators, either pursuing this as a hobby or profession, who have always wanted to look behind the curtain and see how character animation in games works. The book assumes basic C++ and math knowledge, and you should be able to read code and math formulas to get the most out of this book.
With the following software and hardware list you can run all code files present in the book (Chapter 1-15).
| Chapter | Software required | OS required |
|---|---|---|
| 1-15 | Visual Studio 2022 or Eclipse 2023-06 (or newer) | Windows 10 (or newer), or Linux (i.e. Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12, or newer) |
Michael Dunsky is an educated electronics technician, game developer, and console porting programmer with more than 20 years of programming experience. He started at the age of 14 with BASIC, adding on his way Assembly language, C, C++, Java, Python, VHDL, OpenGL, GLSL, and Vulkan to his portfolio. During his career, he also gained extensive knowledge in virtual machines, server operation, infrastructure automation, and other DevOps topics. Michael holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from the FernUniversität in Hagen, focused on computer graphics, parallel programming and software systems.
Gabor Szauer has been making games since 2010. He graduated from Full Sail University in 2010 with a bachelor's degree in game development. Gabor maintains an active Twitter presence, and maintains a programming-oriented game development blog. Gabor's previously published books are Game Physics Programming Cookbook and Lua Quick Start Guide, both published by Packt.
The following section contains updates within the text of the book.
In section Installing a C++ compiler on your Windows PC on page 8 a command line to install gcc, glfw and the development tools is shown:
pacman –S mingw-x64-x86_64-gcc mingw-w64-x86_64-glfw base-devel
The line contains a minor error: The file name of the gcc package starts with mingw-w64- instead of mingw-x64- ('w' instead of 'x'):
pacman –S mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc mingw-w64-x86_64-glfw base-devel
When using MSYS2 + Eclipse, the Windows version of CMake might fail to find the GLFW3 library installed in the MINGW64 environment. In this case, uninstall the Windows version of CMake and install CMake inside the MINGW64 environment:
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake
You must restart Eclipse to learn about the Windows path changes after CMake was removed, plus you need to delete the _build folder of the project(s) to remove the CMake cache. On the next Build Project in Eclipse, GLFW3 should be found.
If your Visual Studion 2022 build fails with strange warnings about _VCRUNTIME_DISABLED_WARNINGS or similar, check the error output for lines containing includes from MSYS2:
C:\msys64\mingw64\...\include\_mingw.h...
If such lines appear in the output, Visual Studio detects headers and/or binaries from MSYS2.
A safe way to keep Visual Studio away from MSYS2 is to remove the PATH settings related to MSYS2 and restart Visual Studio when compiling the examples.
You should write down (or otherwise store) the PATH settings to restore the previous state later.
This warning when compiling projects can be ignored:
warning LNK4098: defaultlib 'MSVCRT' conflicts with use of other libs; use /NODEFAULTLIB:library
The warning is caused by building a debug application while using the relase GLFW library.
If you want to disable the warning, both switching the application to RelWithDebInfo or manually building a debug version of GLFW could be done.
CMake needs two additional custom targets to copy the shaders and textures to the correct path, relative to the executable file.
Add the following lines to the file CMakeLists.txt in the root folder of the opengl_renderer project, right after the find_package lines:
# copy shader files
file(GLOB GLSL_SOURCE_FILES
shader/*.frag
shader/*.vert
)
add_custom_target(
Shaders
DEPENDS ${GLSL_SOURCE_FILES}
)
add_dependencies(Main Shaders)
add_custom_command(TARGET Shaders POST_BUILD
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E copy_directory
"$<TARGET_PROPERTY:Main,SOURCE_DIR>/shader"
"$<TARGET_PROPERTY:Main,BINARY_DIR>/$<CONFIGURATION>/shader"
)
# copy textures
file(GLOB TEX_SOURCE_FILES
textures/*
)
add_custom_target(
Textures
DEPENDS ${TEX_SOURCE_FILES}
)
add_dependencies(Main Textures)
add_custom_command(TARGET Textures POST_BUILD
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E copy_directory
"$<TARGET_PROPERTY:Main,SOURCE_DIR>/textures"
"$<TARGET_PROPERTY:Main,BINARY_DIR>/$<CONFIGURATION>/textures"
)
Another update is needed for the Model file, see page 71 of the book.
The line mVertexData.vertices.resize(6) must be added to the file model/Model.cpp, right after the start of the init() method:
void Model::init() {
mVertexData.vertices.resize(6);
mVertexData.vertices[0].position = glm::vec3(-0.5f,
-0.5f, 0.5f);
...
}
A similar change as for Chapter 2 is needed for Chapter three. For Vulkan, we also need to compile the shaders before storing the SPIR-V code next to the executable file.
Add the following lines to the file CMakeLists.txt in the root folder of the vulkan_renderer project, right after the find_package lines:
# compile shaders
file(GLOB GLSL_SOURCE_FILES
shader/*.frag
shader/*.vert
)
if(Vulkan_GLSLC_EXECUTABLE)
message("Using glslc to compile shaders")
foreach(GLSL ${GLSL_SOURCE_FILES})
get_filename_component(FILE_NAME ${GLSL} NAME)
set(SPIRV "${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/shader/${FILE_NAME}.spv")
add_custom_command(
OUTPUT ${SPIRV}
COMMAND ${Vulkan_GLSLC_EXECUTABLE} -o ${SPIRV} ${GLSL}
DEPENDS ${GLSL})
list(APPEND SPIRV_BINARY_FILES ${SPIRV})
endforeach(GLSL)
elseif (Vulkan_GLSLANG_VALIDATOR_EXECUTABLE)
message("Using glslangValidator to compile shaders")
foreach(GLSL ${GLSL_SOURCE_FILES})
get_filename_component(FILE_NAME ${GLSL} NAME)
set(SPIRV "${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/shader/${FILE_NAME}.spv")
add_custom_command(
OUTPUT ${SPIRV}
COMMAND ${Vulkan_GLSLANG_VALIDATOR_EXECUTABLE} -V -o ${SPIRV} ${GLSL}
DEPENDS ${GLSL})
list(APPEND SPIRV_BINARY_FILES ${SPIRV})
endforeach(GLSL)
endif()
add_custom_target(
Shaders
DEPENDS ${SPIRV_BINARY_FILES}
)
add_dependencies(Main Shaders)
add_custom_command(TARGET Shaders POST_BUILD
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E copy_directory
"$<TARGET_PROPERTY:Main,SOURCE_DIR>/shader"
"$<TARGET_PROPERTY:Main,BINARY_DIR>/$<CONFIGURATION>/shader"
)
# copy changed textures
file(GLOB TEX_SOURCE_FILES
textures/*
)
add_custom_target(
Textures
DEPENDS ${TEX_SOURCE_FILES}
)
add_dependencies(Main Textures)
add_custom_command(TARGET Textures POST_BUILD
COMMAND ${CMAKE_COMMAND} -E copy_directory
"$<TARGET_PROPERTY:Main,SOURCE_DIR>/textures"
"$<TARGET_PROPERTY:Main,BINARY_DIR>/$<CONFIGURATION>/textures"
)
During the initialization of the renderer in the Window class in Chapter 4, the GLFW window handle needs to be handed over to the renderer to be able to use the glfwGetKey() call. We also need to store width and height of the window
Add a declaration of the constructor in the file opengl/OGLRenderer.h to have a GLFWwindow as the only parameter, and add three new private member variables named mWindow, mWidth, and mHeight:
public:
OGLRenderer(GLFWwindow *window);
...
private:
GLFWwindow* mWindow = nullptr;
int mWidth = 0;
int mHeight = 0;
....
In the file opengl/OGLRenderer.cpp, add the constructor definition and store the window value in the mWindow variable:
OGLRenderer::OGLRenderer(GLFWwindow *window) {
mWindow = window;
}
At the beginning of the init() call, store the width and height in the new variables mWidth and mHeight:
bool OGLRenderer::init(unsigned int width, unsigned int height) {
mWidth = width;
mHeight = height;
...
As last step, add the mWindow variable in the file window/Window.cpp as parameter to the creation of the renderer:
mRenderer = std::make_unique<OGLRenderer>(mWindow);
There's also a correction to the text on page 123:
In the third paragraph, two functions are named, init() and resize(). The correct name of the second function is setSize().
Autocorrection did some unwanted changes to the two enum class names ETargetPath and EInterpolationType: the second letter is written in lowercase instead of uppercase.
For ETargetPath, the following pages are affected: 284 (code snippet), 286 (two code snippets), 287 (code snippet).
For EInterpolationType, the follwing pages are affected: 283 (text), 286 (code snippet), 289 (three code snippets).