/* This file is part of Magnum. Copyright © 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 Vladimír Vondruš Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. */ namespace Magnum { namespace SceneGraph { /** @page scenegraph Using scene graph @brief Overview of scene management capabilities. @tableofcontents %Scene graph provides way to hiearchically manage your objects, their transformation, physics interaction, animation and rendering. There are naturally many possible combinations (2D vs. 3D, different transformation representations, animated vs. static, object can have collision shape, participate in physics events, have forward vs. deferred rendering...). To make everything possible without combinatiorial explosion and allow the users to provide their own features, scene graph in %Magnum is composed of three main components: - objects, providing parent/children hierarchy - transformations, implementing particular transformation type - features, providing rendering capabilities, collision detection, physics etc. @section scenegraph-transformation Transformations Transformation handles object position, rotation etc. and its basic property is dimension count (2D or 3D) and underlying floating-point type (by default @ref Float type is used everywhere, but you can use @ref Double too). @note All classes in SceneGraph have Float as default underlying floating-point type, which means that you can omit that template parameter and write just %AbstractObject<2> or %MatrixTransformation3D<> instead of %AbstractObject<2, Float> and %MatrixTransformation3D<Float>. %Scene graph has implementation of transformations in both 2D and 3D, using either matrices or combination of position and rotation. Each implementation has its own advantages and disadvantages -- for example when using matrices you can have nearly arbitrary transformations, but composing transformations and computing their inverse is costly operation. On the other hand quaternions won't allow you to scale or shear objects, but are more memory efficient than matrices. It's also possible to implement your own transformation class for specific needs, see @ref AbstractTransformation-subclassing "AbstractTransformation documentation" for more information. @section scenegraph-hierarchy Scene hierarchy %Scene hierarchy is skeleton part of scene graph. In the root there is Scene and its children are Object instances. The hierarchy has some transformation type, identical for all objects (because for example having part of the tree in 2D and part in 3D just wouldn't make sense). Common usage is to typedef %Scene and %Object with desired transformation type to save unnecessary typing later: @code typedef SceneGraph::Scene> Scene3D; typedef SceneGraph::Object> Object3D; @endcode Then you can start building the hierarchy by *parenting* one object to another. Parent object can be either passed in constructor or using Object::setParent(). %Scene is always root object, so it naturally cannot have parent object. @code Scene3D scene; Object3D* first = new Object3D(&scene); Object3D* second = new Object3D(&first); @endcode Object3D children can be accessed using Object::firstChild() and Object::lastChild(), then you can traverse siblings (objects with the same parent) with Object::previousSibling() and Object::nextSibling(). For example all children of an object can be traversed the following way: @code Object3D* o; for(Object3D* child = o->firstChild(); child; child = child->nextSibling()) { // ... } @endcode The hierarchy takes care of memory management - when an object is destroyed, all its children are destroyed too. See detailed explanation of @ref scenegraph-object-construction-order "construction and destruction order" for information about possible issues. The object is derived from the transformation you specified earlier in the `typedef`, so you can directly transform the objects using methods of given transformation implementation. %Scene, as a root object, cannot have any transformation. For convenience you can use method chaining: @code Object3D* next = new Object3D; next->setParent(another) ->translate(Vector3::yAxis(3.0f)) ->rotateY(35.0_degf); @endcode @section scenegraph-features Object features The object itself handles only parent/child relationship and transformation. To make the object renderable, animatable, add collision shape to it etc., you have to add a *feature* to it. Each feature takes pointer to holder object in constructor, so adding a feature to an object might look like this: @code Object3D* o; MyFeature* feature = new MyFeature(o); @endcode Features of an object can be accessed using Object::firstFeature() and Object::lastFeature(), then you can traverse the features using AbstractFeature::previousFeature() and AbstractFeature::nextFeature(), similarly to traversing object children: @code Object3D* o; for(Object3D::FeatureType feature = o->firstFeature(); feature; feature = feature->nextFeature()) { // ... } @endcode Some features are passive, some active. Passive features can be just added to an object like above, without any additional work (for example collision shape). Active features require the user to implement some virtual function (for example to draw the object on screen or perform animation step). To make things convenient, features can be added directly to object itself using multiple inheritance, so you can conveniently add all the active features you want and implement needed functions in your own Object subclass without having to subclass each feature individually (and making the code overly verbose). Simplified example: @code class Bomb: public Object3D, Drawable, Animatable { public: inline Bomb(Object3D* parent): Object3D(parent), Drawable(this), Animatable(this) {} protected: void draw() { // drawing implementation for Drawable feature } void animationStep() { // animation step for Animatable feature } }; @endcode From the outside there is no difference between features added as member and features added using multiple inheritance, they can be both accessed from feature list. Similarly to object hierarchy, when destroying object, all its features (both member and inherited) are destroyed. See detailed explanation of @ref scenegraph-feature-construction-order "construction and destruction order" for information about possible issues. @section scenegraph-caching Transformation caching Some features need to operate with absolute transformations and their inversions - for example camera needs its inverse transformation to render the scene, collision detection needs to know about positions of surrounding objects etc. To avoid computing the transformations from scratch every time, the feature can cache them. The cached data stay until the object is marked as dirty - that is by changing transformation, changing parent or explicitly calling Object::setDirty(). If the object is marked as dirty, all its children are marked as dirty too and AbstractFeature::markDirty() is called on every feature. Calling Object::setClean() cleans the dirty object and all its dirty parents. The function goes through all object features and calls AbstractFeature::clean() or AbstractFeature::cleanInverted() depending on which caching is enabled on given feature. If the object is already clean, Object::setClean() does nothing. Most probably you will need caching in Object itself -- which doesn't support it on its own -- however you can take advantage of multiple inheritance and implement it using AbstractFeature. In order to have caching, you must enable it first, because by default the caching is disabled. You can enable it using AbstractFeature::setCachedTransformations() and then implement corresponding cleaning function(s): @code class CachingObject: public Object3D, Object3D::FeatureType { public: CachingObject(Object3D* parent): Object3D::FeatureType(this) { setCachedTransformations(CachedTransformation::Absolute); } protected: void clean(const Matrix4& absoluteTransformation) override { absolutePosition = absoluteTransformation.translation(); } private: Vector3 absolutePosition; }; @endcode When you need to use the cached value, you can explicitly request the cleanup by calling Object::setClean(). Camera, for example, calls it automatically before it starts rendering, as it needs its own inverse transformation to properly draw the objects. See @ref AbstractFeature-subclassing-caching for more information. @section scenegraph-construction-order Construction and destruction order There aren't any limitations and usage trade-offs of what you can and can't do when working with objects and features, but there are two issues which you should be aware of: @subsection scenegraph-object-construction-order Object hierarchy When objects are created on the heap (the preferred way, using `new`), they can be constructed in any order and they will be destroyed when their parent is destroyed. When creating them on the stack, however, they will be destroyed when they go out of scope. Normally, the natural order of creation is not a problem: @code { Scene3D scene; Object3D object(&scene); } @endcode The object is created last, so it will be destroyed first, removing itself from `scene`'s children list, causing no problems when destroying `scene` object later. However, if their order is swapped, it will cause problems: @code { Object3D object; Scene3D scene; object.setParent(&scene); } // crash! @endcode The scene will be destroyed first, deleting all its children, which is wrong, because `object` is created on stack. If this doesn't already crash, the `object` destructor is called (again), making things even worse. @subsection scenegraph-feature-construction-order Member and inherited features When destroying the object, all its features are destroyed. For features added as member it's no issue, features added using multiple inheritance must be inherited after the %Object class: @code class MyObject: public Object3D, MyFeature { public: inline MyObject(Object3D* parent): Object3D(parent), MyFeature(this) {} }; @endcode When constructing MyObject, Object3D constructor is called first and then MyFeature constructor adds itself to Object3D's list of features. When destroying MyObject, its destructor is called and then the destructors of ancestor classes -- first MyFeature destructor, which will remove itself from Object3D's list, then Object3D destructor. However, if we would inherit MyFeature first, it will cause problems: @code class MyObject: MyFeature, public Object3D { public: inline MyObject(Object3D* parent): MyFeature(this), Object3D(parent) {} // crash! }; @endcode MyFeature tries to add itself to feature list in not-yet-constructed Object3D, causing undefined behavior. Then, if this doesn't already crash, Object3D is created, creating empty feature list, making the feature invisible. If we would construct them in swapped order (if it is even possible), it wouldn't help either: @code class MyObject: MyFeature, public Object3D { public: inline MyObject(Object3D* parent): Object3D(parent), MyFeature(this) {} // crash on destruction! }; @endcode On destruction, Object3D destructor is called first, deleting MyFeature, which is wrong, because MyFeature is in the same object. After that (if the program didn't already crash) destructor of MyFeature is called (again). */ }}