Rendering 3D objects

Each item of the Qt 3D scene is represented by the Entity type. However, not all entities are visible 3D objects. In order for an entity to be visible, it has to have a mesh component and a material component.

Mesh, material, and transform

The mesh defines the geometrical shape of the entity. It contains information about vertices, edges, and faces required to render the object. The base type of all mesh components is GeometryRenderer. However, you'll usually use one of its descendants:

• Mesh imports geometry data from a file
• ConeMesh, CuboidMesh, CylinderMesh, PlaneMesh, SphereMesh, and TorusMesh provide access to primitive geometric shapes
• ExtrudedTextMesh defines the entity's shape based on a specified text and font

While the mesh defines where the object's surface will be drawn, the material defines how exactly it will be drawn. The most obvious property of a surface is its color, but depending on the reflection model, there can be all sorts of properties, such as coefficients...