Mesh Craft — Documentation

ℹ️

Status

MeshCraft is under active development. All core features (primitives, extrusion, CSG, materials, textures, lights, cameras, definitions, keyframe animation) are implemented and working. The project builds cleanly and passes its automated test suite.

What is Mesh Craft?

Mesh Craft is a C++23 desktop 3D scene editor for creating and editing models in the MC3 format — a custom XML-based scene description format used by the OpenEggbert project family.

Instead of working with raw triangle meshes, Mesh Craft lets you build scenes from constructive objects: primitive shapes, extrusions, CSG booleans, reusable definitions, hierarchical groups, lights, cameras, and keyframe animations. These are stored in human-readable .mc3.xml files and can be exported to glTF 2.0 / GLB for use in game engines and real-time applications.

The project is inspired by Ray Dream Studio and Google SketchUp.

Main Features

📦

Primitive Shapes

Box, Sphere, Cylinder, Cone, Plane — all editable in the properties panel with per-axis sizing.

🔩

Extrude

Sweep 2D cross-sections (rect, circle, polygon, custom) along 5 path types: line, arc, helix, polyline, Bézier.

⚗️

CSG Booleans

Union, Difference, Intersection — evaluated using the Manifold v3 library for real boolean mesh geometry.

🎨

PBR Materials

Full PBR material editor: base color, metallic, roughness, emissive, normal scale, alpha modes, and 5 texture slots.

🎞️

Keyframe Animation

Timeline editor with Step, Linear, and Cubic Bézier interpolation. Exports position/rotation/scale to glTF animations.

📤

glTF/GLB Export

Standalone mc3togltf converter outputs glTF 2.0 JSON or self-contained GLB, including animation tracks.

🌐

Web/WASM Build

Emscripten build produces a browser-ready MeshCraft.html with IDBFS persistent storage.

🔁

Undo/Redo

20-step deep-copy snapshot stack covering all edit operations: add, delete, transform, duplicate, paste, group, ungroup.

Supported Platforms

Platform	Backend	Status
Linux	EasyGL (OpenGL ES 3.2)	Working
macOS	EasyGL or SDL_RENDERER	Planned
Windows	EasyGL / BGFX / Vulkan	Planned
Android	SDL_RENDERER	Planned
Browser (WASM)	Emscripten + WebGL 2	Working

Key Dependencies

Dependency	Role	Source
CNA	XNA-like C++ runtime: windowing, input, audio, graphics abstraction (SDL3 + OpenGL ES 3.2)	Sibling repo `../cna`
sharp-runtime	C++ System layer (math: Matrix, Vector3, …) used by CNA	Sibling repo `../sharp-runtime`
Nova3D	3D engine on top of CNA; used for viewport rendering	Sibling repo `../nova-3d`
Dear ImGui v1.91.6	Immediate-mode UI for all editor panels	FetchContent from GitHub
Manifold v3	CSG boolean mesh evaluation	FetchContent from GitHub
tinyobjloader v2	OBJ mesh loading for viewport preview	FetchContent from GitHub
tinyxml2	XML parsing (bundled via sharp-runtime)	Bundled

Repository Structure at a Glance

mesh-craft/
├── src/MeshCraft/          Main editor application (C++)
├── include/MeshCraft/      Public headers
├── mc3/                    Pure-C++ MC3 format library (sublibrary)
├── mc3togltf/              Standalone CLI converter: MC3 → glTF/GLB
├── Mc3Format/              Format specification markdown docs
├── test/                   Test scenes (.mc3.xml) and smoke test
├── cmake/                  Platform-specific CMake helpers
└── CMakeLists.txt          Top-level build script

Quick Start

# Prerequisites: CMake 3.21+, GCC 13+ or Clang 16+, sibling repos cna / sharp-runtime / nova-3d

# Configure (first time)
cmake -S . -B cmake-build-debug \
      -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug \
      -DMESH_CRAFT_GRAPHICS_BACKEND=EASYGL

# Build
cmake --build cmake-build-debug --target MeshCraft -- -j$(nproc)

# Run with a test scene
./cmake-build-debug/MeshCraft test/house.mc3.xml

For full setup instructions, see Getting Started and Build & Run.

Getting Started