Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
What You Need to Know
Scene Kit is a 3D-based API, so you should have a basic understanding of graphing con-
cepts such as coordinate systems and 3D geometry.
Points
: In this context, a point is a position in a three-dimensional space.
Vectors
: You will use vectors for mostly directions.
Cartesian coordinate system
: This comprises two axes: the x-axis that ex-
tends along the horizontal plane and the y-axis that extends perpendicular to
the x-axis.
Euclidean space
: This is simply the 3D coordinate system, with the addition
of the z-axis that represents the depth of view.
Transformations
: There are many operations that do transformations;
however, for now you will be dealing with operators that will be used for
points and rotations. Think of this as transforming a point to a different point
or applying a vector (direction) to the rotation of the object.
If you want to get more information on computer graphics programming, I suggest look-
ing at
Geometric Algebra for Computer Graphics
by John Vince (
www.apress.com/
9781846289965
)
. By default the camera, or user view angle, is along the z-axis (
Figure
