Windows Phone 7 Game Development

Chapter 8. Further 3D Features and Techniques

In this chapter, you will extend your knowledge of XNA and take the features and capabilities of your code up to the next level. When you finish working through this chapter, you will be able to import 3D models from an external modeling application and use a number of additional XNA features to add life to your games.

Importing Geometry

In Chapter 7, we used two different methods for defining 3D objects in our XNA programs. The first required us to manually define a big array of vertex coordinates. This might be workable for simple objects such as cubes (though it is fairly tedious even for that!), but when we move on to more complex objects such as treasure chests or spaceships, it quickly becomes ...