Recap Recall that in Part 1 we discussed the differences between OpenGL and Vulkan when it comes to the fixed function parts of the graphics pipeline. We looked at how OpenGL's use of a left-handed set of coordinate axes for clip-space meant that projection matrices for OpenGL also incorporate a z-axis flip to switch from […]

Another day, another small addition to KDToolBox, KDAB's collection of miscellaneous useful C++ classes and stuff. In this post, we're going to talk about KDFunctionalSortFilterProxyModel, which is a convenience subclass of QSortFilterProxyModel. What's a proxy model to begin with, and what's QSortFilterProxyModel? Well, that explanation requires a bigger space than what I have in this […]

So, you've just poured your heart and soul into some real-time 3D rendering code and hit render. Wringing your hands in anticipation you wait for the screen to show your marvellous creation. Still... waiting. It says it's done but, nothing. Well, maybe not nothing but simply darkness. You stare into the deep dark […]

I will be talking about text in this post, specifically about cases where you have to handle a lot of it. We are not talking about a general solution, but a specific case that we encountered during a customer project. The Problem The project involved showing a chat room for internal communication. We developed a […]

As an Easter treat here is a quick taster of some of the animation goodies coming to Qt 3D along with Qt 5.9. In this post we will briefly outline the steps needed to create a simple Qt 3D application and the assets it uses to produce this little animation: The basic steps are: Create […]

In our earlier blog, The Smarter Way to Rust, we discuss why a blend of C++ and Rust is sometimes the best solution to building robust applications. But when you’re merging these two languages, it’s critical to keep in mind that the transition from C++ to Rust isn’t about syntax, it’s about philosophy. Adapting to […]

Abstract: Modern OpenGL abandons the old fixed-function pipeline in exchange for a programmable pipeline using shaders and buffer objects. This offers much more flexibility to developers and opens the door to a huge range of effects and techniques whilst at the same time making available huge performance improvements. This presentation will teach you about the […]

A very common implementation pattern for QObject subclasses is to declare its child QObjects as data members of type "pointer to child." Raise your hand No, keep your hand on your computer input device :-) Nod if you have ever seen code like this (and maybe even written code like this yourself): A fairly common […]

We just released CXX-Qt version 0.5! CXX-Qt is a set of Rust crates for creating bidirectional Rust ⇄ C++ bindings with Qt. It can be used to integrate Rust into C++ applications using CMake or build Rust applications with Cargo. CXX-Qt provides tools for implementing QObject subclasses in Rust that can be used from C++, […]

In the last blog post we saw an essential, C++ oriented, Visual Studio Code setup. That was enough to get going right away, but we can still definitely do more and better. Here I'll show you how to get a complete setup for your qmake and CMake projects, all this while also wearing a Qt […]

We're pleased to announce we've added a new library, KDGpu, to the arsenal of tools we invent to make our lives easier - and then share with you on KDAB's GitHub. Who is this for? If you want to become more productive with Vulkan or learn the concepts of modern explicit graphics APIs, then KDGpu […]

For SIGGRAPH, KDAB has been working on a new Qt 3D based demo. We decided that instead of using C++, it would be interesting to try out PySide2 and harness Python to drive the application. The idea behind this demo is to do with data acquisition of a vehicle's surrounding environment. Once the data is […]

Continuing our blog post series about the rewrite of Qt3D. One of the biggest driving factors behind the design of Qt3D 2.0 is the ability to configure the renderer in order to accommodate custom rendering techniques. In this blog post I will explain how to render a scene in Qt3D with shadows. The complete working […]

Porting from Qt 4 to Qt 5 is intentionally easy. There has been a conscious effort throughout the development of Qt 5 so far to maintain source compatibility compared to Qt 4. Unlike the port from Qt 3 to Qt 4, central classes have not experienced large API cleanups, and there are few new frameworks […]

The Need for Simple & Modular QR Generation in QML Recently, our designer Nuno Pinheiro needed to generate QR codes for an Android app in QML and started asking around about a simple way to do this. The best existing QML solution was QZXing, a Qt/QML wrapper for the 1D/2D barcode image processing library ZXing. […]

An Example of Rendering with Qt3D In the previous article we learned about the requirements and high-level architecture of Qt3D 2.0. In order to put some of this into context and to give you a concrete example of how it looks to draw something in Qt3D using the QML API, we will now briefly show […]

Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems have been around since the 1950's, far longer than most other types of computer applications. Their rock-solid performance has been responsible for the streamlining of any industry that needs precise and consistent controls: building automation, energy management, part machining, printing and packaging, robotic assembly, ship building, water treatment, […]