Step 1: Initializing Scene Geometry

One of the requirements of using lights is that each surface has a normal. To do this, the Lights sample project uses a different custom vertex type. The new custom vertex format has a 3-D position and a surface normal. The surface normal is used internally by Microsoft® Direct3D® for lighting calculations.

struct CUSTOMVERTEX
{
    D3DXVECTOR3 position; // The 3-D position for the vertex.
    D3DXVECTOR3 normal;   // The surface normal for the vertex.
};

// Custom FVF.
#define D3DFVF_CUSTOMVERTEX (D3DFVF_XYZ|D3DFVF_NORMAL)

Now that the correct vector format is defined, the Lights sample project calls InitGeometry, an application-defined function that creates a cylinder. The first step is to create a vertex buffer that stores the points of the cylinder as shown in the following sample code.

// Create the vertex buffer.
if( FAILED( g_pd3dDevice->CreateVertexBuffer( 50*2*sizeof(CUSTOMVERTEX),
                                              0 /* Usage */, D3DFVF_CUSTOMVERTEX,
                                              D3DPOOL_DEFAULT, &g_pVB ) ) )
    return E_FAIL;

The next step is to fill the vertex buffer with the points of the cylinder. Note that in the following sample code, each point is defined by a position and a normal.

for( DWORD i=0; i<50; i++ )
{
    FLOAT theta = (2*D3DX_PI*i)/(50-1);
    pVertices[2*i+0].position = D3DXVECTOR3( sinf(theta),-1.0f, cosf(theta) );
    pVertices[2*i+0].normal   = D3DXVECTOR3( sinf(theta), 0.0f, cosf(theta) );
    pVertices[2*i+1].position = D3DXVECTOR3( sinf(theta), 1.0f, cosf(theta) );
    pVertices[2*i+1].normal   = D3DXVECTOR3( sinf(theta), 0.0f, cosf(theta) );
}

After the preceding sample code fills the vertex buffer with the vertices for a cylinder, the vertex buffer is ready for rendering. But first, the material and light for this scene must be set up before rendering the cylinder. This is described in Step 2: Setting up Material and Light.