You'll want to look into implementing OpenGL into your program. Even though Apple provides many ways of doing this, and OpenGL is quite intuitive, expect to pull out a lot of hair.
Math wise, you'll need to understand matices and matrix operations, vectors, and some other stuff. You'll want to have some grasp of aspect ratios and perspective projection.
Beyond that, you'll need a means by which to create 3D objects as well as textures for them, and load them into your OpenGL UI... (unless, that is, you feel like defining many thousands of polygons with code).
this is a pretty helpful start. He provides a MacOS/Xcode compatable version of the popular NeHe OpenGL Tutorials, as well as a method for loading *.obj files.
http://dhost.info/joetheprogrammer/wordpress/
Note that his method avoids the use of a nib file for creating your OpenGL window, so don't expect to have the convenience of Interface Builder at your side... well, at least not for the main OpenGL window, and I'm assuming that'll be your only window.
I'm all for shooting high, so I say give it a stab (I mean, as a beginner programmer, you've had some experience before, right?) and if it gets to be too much, setting your sights lower wouldn't be a bad idea. It'll take a little more time, but programming is a tedious thing anyway. Just don't give up.
This is a sample code Apple has made available as a template for developers seeking to create an event based OpenGL application. It includes a full OpenGL implementation, featuring full system capapbility checking, as well as a ready-to-go event handling system. In order to make any use of it as a template, you'll need to understand how OpenGL works, as well as how the Carbon event manager works.
http://developer.apple.com/samplecod...dow/index.html
Best of luck!
Top
