Technical Q&A

QD3D 83 - QD3D Windows Pixel Format Support (11-July-97)

Q I get the kQ3ErrorUnimplemented result code after a call to the Q3PixmapTexture_New function under Windows 95. I have tried two pixels formats for Windows: kQ3PixelTypeRGB16_565 and kQ3PixelTypeRGB24. Are these not supported under QuickDraw 3D 1.5?

A QD3D only supports texture maps and mipmaps in 5-5-5 16-bit formats (kQ3PixelTypeARGB16 and kQ3PixelTypeRGB16) and 32-bit formats (kQ3PixelTypeARGB32 and kQ3PixelTypeRGB32). This true for both the Mac OS and Windows versions. Texture maps must be cross-platform to be supported by 3DMF. So the same types have to be supported on all platforms.

The kQ3PixelTypeRGB16_565 and kQ3PixelTypeRGB24 pixel types are only valid for Pixmap Draw Contexts on Windows and are not supported for Pixmap Draw Contexts on Mac OS.

Additionally, dynamically created pixmaps for Draw Context, Textures, Markers or Mipmaps must be created with the byte-endianness appropriate for the current platform (kQ3EndianLittle for Windows and kQ3EndianBig for Mac OS). The byte-endianness of Pixmaps, Mipmaps, and Markers in 3DMF files gets translated automatically by the library when loading a 3DMF created on a different endian platform.

-- Scott Kuechle
Worldwide Developer Technical Support

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