   Implementing a GUI within 3D
  When I started working on DirectDraw a couple years ago, I learned that for fullscreen apps there was no sure-fire way to reuse the windowing user interface from Windows in my application.  There was a means of doing this with some video cards, but it was a capability that you had to check for.Thus, I decided to go off and implement a bare-bones GUI.  I didn''t get very far but had some raw functionality:  panels, buttons, labels, images.  Now it''s a couple years later and I''ve moved on to Direct3D.  I believe the situation is unchanged, correct?  If i want to design a user interface in my fullscreen D3D app, I will have to roll my own GUI components and billboard them to the screen or put them on a quad that exactly fills my viewport, correct?  What''s the best way to do this?Also, I assume that existing tools out there support this already.  Does SDL?Thanks,Jeff 
  24 views and not a one response....damn... ;  You are correct.  You need to create quads with a Ortho viewport (meaning its not a pyrmid frustum, its a box.) And render the quads/lines/dots etc on the screen.If I remember right, Longhorn the next Microsoft OS is going to build its GUI ontop of Direct3D.  I''m guessing when that OS comes out, any DirectX app can take advantage of the Windows GUI inside their 3d application.  But at this time, you have to do it yourself.;  transformed vertices (xyzrhw)See that button to the right of the faq and left of the login, with the little magnifying glass over the world? Click on it!!!  ;  What about Steam (the new Valve content delivery/online gaming tool)?  It looks like it uses Windows GUI controls in Direct3D.  If you run, say, Counter Strike and then hit escape you can go back to the server selection window with the game running in the background.  It uses what look like standard GUI controls (lists boxes, buttons, text fields, ..).  Have they gone and coded these themselves?sam;  Most 3d libraries I''ve looked at have GUI implementations - nebula, irrlicht, Torque, etc.  If you don''t feel like using those, but still want a pre-made DX GUI, check out Crazy Eddie''s GUI (http://crayzedsgui.sourceforge.net). How''''s my programming?  Call 1-800-DEV-NULL ;  See this thread for a recent discussion, including links to a GUI library for directx. ;  Thanks for the Crazy Eddie links, they look very promising.  Any idea if he's releasing the source under GPL?[Edit:  I just checked some of the source and apparently it is...sweet!]   [edited by - rypyr on February 13, 2004 12:07:00 PM]