Chapter 13. Rendering a Realistic Tank

At the end of the last chapter, you got to render a tank. It spun around as you were waiting for the user to pick its color, but was it realistic? Could you move the gun turret around, raise or lower the barrel, or move the tank? Did you even see any options on the mesh class that implies this is possible?

The normal mesh class doesn't allow any of these things. It can do two main things, load a mesh and render it. However, many meshes have a “hierarchy” of data that you can use to manipulate certain parts of the final visual model.

In this chapter, you'll learn

  • All about mesh hierarchy

  • How to load a mesh with a hierarchy

  • How to render the mesh hierarchy

  • Why you create a camera class

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