What this book covers

Chapter 1, Setting Up Panda3D and Configuring Development Tools: Get set for working with Panda3D. Install and configure the engine as well as the development tools used throughout the book.

Chapter 2, Creating and Building Scenes: Learn about the scene management of Panda3D. This chapter will show you how to load models, animations, and terrain, and how to place them in a 3D world. You will learn how to work with virtual cameras and how to make them follow an object.

Chapter 3, Controlling the Renderer: This chapter shows, how to set attributes for controlling how a single model or an entire scene should be displayed on the screen. Work with color channels and alpha masks. Create a splitscreen mode and learn how to render on multiple displays.

Chapter 4, Scene Effects and Shaders: Lights, shadows, and particles are some of this chapter's topics. Apply shader effects to models. Take control of the advanced shader generator system of Panda3D and learn how to implement your own custom shader generator.

Chapter 5, Post-Processing and Screen Space Effects: Learn how to add polish and professional looks to your games using post-processing techniques like color grading or depth of field. This chapter also provides an implementation of a deferred rendering pipeline.

Chapter 6, 2D Elements and User Interfaces: Panda3D can also be used for 2D rendering. This chapter focuses on loading and displaying images and on how to use the GUI libraries of Panda3D.

Chapter 7, Application Control: Gain insight on Panda3D’s messaging and task systems. Learn how to use messages for inter-object communication. Elegantly handle code that is run on every frame using tasks.

Chapter 8, Collision Detection and Physics: Physics and proper collision handling are important parts of a game. Panda3D gives you powerful programming libraries for controlling physics and collisions like PhysX or ODE that will be presented in this chapter.

Chapter 9, Networking: This chapter is dedicated to sending and receiving data over networks with Panda3D. Learn how to download data, synchronize game objects, and how to post high scores to a remote server.

Chapter 10, Debugging and Performance: Find performance issues and bugs in your Panda3D based games. Use the tools provided by Panda3D and the included Python runtime for fixing these problems.

Chapter 11, Input Handling: Game controllers, a keyboard, and a mouse or even the network—many input measures can be used for providing interactive experiences with Panda3D. This chapter will show you how to transparently handle input from various devices in an elegant, easy, and reusable way.

Chapter 12, Packaging and Distribution: Learn how to package your game code and assets and make them ready for redistribution. Find out how to use set-up and use the browser plugin for a seamless and nearly installation-free end-user experience.

Chapter 13, Connecting Panda3D with Content Creation Tools: Export model files from Blender and preview them with the tools provided by the engine. Learn how to write a data converter for Panda3D's model format and how to compress model data to more space-saving formats.