Timothy Lochner

There is a period of time when developing a new renderer and you decide to make the move from 2D to 3D. You submit your 3D draws. Nothing. Black screen. Make a change. See a flicker. Keep changing things. Eventually you shake it enough to start seeing something.

This is, in many ways, the dark night of the soul for a graphics engineer. The screen is dark. Your spirits are dark. Your morale is a beaten down. Yet through debug colors, simplifications, hard-coded values, and a shortcut here or there, you see the dawn.

Part of what can make this dark night easier to venture through are the right tools. I've done this a few times now and here are a few things I use to help me get to the dawn. These are in no particular order.

1. Draw reference stuff first. I like axis lines. They reach up to effectively infinity in every direction, give you a frame of reference for where you expect future draws to be on screen, and give you a sense of place. A floor grid goes the next step.

2. Give yourself camera controls. WASD and mouse-look. Don't bother with acceleration or anything. make it absurdly stupid. Being able to look around is incredibly helpful in finding the draws in the void.