[ September 11th, 2003 ]
____Created new webpage for the project. Removed some legacy versions of the project to save space. I have version 1.95, but it's been a while since I tested it. I don't remember what changes I last made, so when I have a chance to look over it again and make sure it isn't something that's gonna blowup in peoples faces, I'll upload it.

[ July 7th, 2003 ]
____I've had to put this project on hold for a while while I go off and work on the AI for my other big project, a web-based fantasy sports game. I'll have a link on my portfolio when I have on to give out. I don't expect to get back to working on any 3D stuff until sometime this fall at least.

[ March 27th, 2003 ]
____Haven't had much time to work on the code much lately, but I've managed to make a little demo animation. That's the logo of my current employer. I must confess that I did have to do all the animation and object-shading by hand, since I haven't added shading/texturing to the program yet (and animation just isn't possible until it's ported to another platform).

[ March 14th, 2003 ]
____Not many updates here on the page lately, but I'm still plugging away at this thing. This version sports a (IMHO) much improved user interface, and some low level improvements that I doubt anyone following this project will really even notice in this version. This is more of an intermediate version update, since I already have version 1.9 (which is likely to end up being a full version 2.0) well underway with lots of added features in the user interface, and much more noticable improvments to the renderer (for example, the camera interface should be much more useful and intuitive in the next version). Anyway, enough talk. Below is the zipped access database for version 1.8. Enjoy and please let me know what you think if you try messing around with it. I guess I'll give a partial, new-feature list too:

New Features

1. Nicer-looking user-interface
2. Status display now giving status messages as the program runs.
3. Other miscellaneous changes I'm sure I'm just not remembering right now.

Known Bugs

1. The Main Display window must be closed before each rendering attempt (this is already fixed in version 1.9)
2. If the "Render" button is clicked before the render is finished, an error will occur. (a fix for this is planned for version 1.9)

Version 1.8(removed) | Version 1.8 Screenshot

[ February 1st, 2003 ]
____I refined the ellipsoid drawing algorithims a bit to give them a more standard look. Now if I can just figure out the core math behind texturing the faces...
Screenshot 13

[ January 29th, 2003 ]
____Ok, maybe I'm not as finished as I thought. I added a modification to allow rendering of ellipsoids in the engine. Shots 11 - 13 show the effects of changing the "resolution" variable within the object definition.
Screenshot 10 | Screenshot 11 | Screenshot 12

[ January 26th, 2003 ]
____A much-improved (though still far from perfect) version is now available for download. I think this is probably the final version I'm going to bother to do. I think I'll next be taking what I've learned and putting it in C/C++. I never got the camera pitch/yaw/roll to work correctly, so I might still try to fix that. If anyone wants to actually use this thing, they'll need documentation too. If you want it I'd be happy to write some up for you. Just write to me at mhayes8@austin.rr.com and let me know. I don't plan to write any unless someone actually asks for it. Anyway, here's the new version:
MSAccess3D.1.0.zip(removed) | Screenshot of updated interface

[ January 24th, 2003 ]
____One more shot today. I've been fixing little random things in the code.
Screenshot 8

[ January 23th, 2003 ]
____Added some more screens showing scaling and rotation of objects. The scene shown is rendering a pyramid object and an object representing the coordinate axes. I've also uploaded the current Access2000 file (zipped), if you'd like to try it out. BE AWARE!!: I only posted the zip file as proof that I'm not just drawing these screenshots in MSPaint. It's still very much a work in progress. Some buttons or options may not do what you would expect, and certain inputs WILL crash the program. Use this program at your own risk.
Screenshot 4 | Screenshot 5 | Screenshot 6 | Screenshot 7 | MSAccess3D.zip(removed)

[ January 16th, 2003 ]
____Here are a few shots showing what the first version of my engine can do. Here you can see the engine rendering a cube, and rendering multiple instances of the cube using the same object model data. Hopefully I'll have something more interesting than a cube to show soon.
Screenshot 1 | Screenshot 2 | Screenshot 3

[ Q&A ]

Q: Why would anyone want to make a 3D Engine in Microsoft Access's limited VBA evelopment environment?!?

A: MSAccess3D is a project I've been working on during my lunch breaks at my current job. The objective is, basically, to teach myself to write 3D graphics engines. Since the only programming tool I have to work with in this job is VBA in Office97, my choice of platforms was limited if I wanted to be able to code at the office. Hence WHY this is written in Access97.

Q: Why is the frame rate so low?

A: Saying the frame rate is "low" is a bit of an understatement, actually. The only place Access allows VBA to do any drawing is during a Print Preview of a Report. This limits the engine to doing only single-frames. No animation is possible. But since this is more of a learning project, it's not really needed. At least, not until I rewrite the engine in C++ or Delphi.