You do not have to be an expert in writing DirectX HLSL or OpenGL shader code to create high-performance 3D graphics applications. The component-based development of Delphi and C++ Builder hides the underlying complexity of 3D coding and you can create highly interactive, visually rich 3D apps with very little to no coding at all!įireMonkey provides a 3D material system that is based on GPU shader programs. Writing 3D apps is considered a domain for professional developers because it involves understanding low-level 3D mathematics and interacting with the Graphical Processor Unit (GPU). This is a similar architecture to FireMonkey 2D rendering, where the abstract TCanvas class has different implementations on all supported operating systems. The key abstraction in FireMonkey 3D graphics is the abstract TContext3Dclass that declares virtual drawing methods that are implemented differently on different targets. This figure shows the FMX 3D Graphics Architecture: All these APIs have different interfaces and abstractions, but the FireMonkey library provides one common denominator for writing cross-platform 3D apps using just one codebase. On desktop targets, FireMonkey supports DirectX on Windows and full OpenGL on Mac.

Standard APIs for rendering 3D graphics on mobile targets is a subset version of the OpenGL library called OpenGL ES. There are different 3D APIs available on different operating systems supported by the FireMonkey library. In FireMonkey it is very easy to create sophisticated, GPU-powered 3D user interfaces using reusable visual components that let you focus on your business application logic instead of spending time on writing low-level 3D API code. The FireMonkey framework comes with pre-built, reusable 3D components that make it easy to write complex 3D applications. The foundation of the FireMonkey graphics architecture is abstracting away the underlying 3D API from the developer.

This post shows FireMonkey 3D programming and building of interactive cross-platform 3D GUIs using Embarcadero’s RAD Studio (C++ Builder or Delphi). With FireMonkey (FMX), you can create fully cross-platform GPU-powered graphical user interfaces using different 3D APIs on different platforms.

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