Apple Dev Library: no Scene Kit guide?

Question

I just looked through the Apple Developer Library and could not find a Scene Kit programming guide. There seem to be programming guides for most other kits. Google finds one hit, but it's an old and apparently no-longer-linked-to doc.

Anybody know where else I might find such a thing?

Anybody have recommendations for a third party alternative?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Dave Ronnqvist wrote a very thorough book on Scene Kit: This is Dave: https://stackoverflow.com/users/608157/david-rönnqvist

This is the book's homepage:

http://scenekitbook.com

In many ways this book is better than an Apple Programming Guide... though it would need to be, it costs money.

I get a strong feeling from the documentation, WWDC videos and the English in the headers that are available that it's being developed by French people, in a bit of isolation from the rest of Apple.

This is probably a good thing, except for documentation. But that's also probably an indication that Scene Kit isn't actually yet finished. Careful consideration of its features tend to give the impression that it's a work in progress.

Oddly, I'd have said the same thing about Sprite Kit this time last year, but it's now a much more thoroughly complete framework for 2D games than it was through its first couple of iterations.

I bring this up because there's two serious overlaps between Scene Kit and the rest of Apple's frameworks, and 2 and half other points to consider with regards the progress, potential and promise of Scene Kit and Apple graphics and animation frameworks:

1. Sprite Kit's game loop and the introduction guide that details it is almost a 1:1 match to Scene Kit's game loop: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/GraphicsAnimation/Conceptual/SpriteKit_PG/Introduction/Introduction.html

2. Core Animation's animation processes are what's used for much of animating objects and values in Scene Kit, so the guides to Core Animation animation are ideal for all that.

3. Scene Kit is making a few radical increases in performance, functionality and features in iOS 9, which is still very much in beta.

3.a) iOS 9 also brings a lot of changes to rendering technologies and capabilities within Scene Kit and complimentary frameworks like Core Image, Core Graphics, Core Animation and Sprite Kit. All still in beta.

4. iOS 9/Mac OS X 10.11 also sees the addition of an entirely new and complimentary framework for 3D, Model I/O. This is also in beta

Given points 3, 3.a) and 4, I don't think we'll see a programming guide until they're more finished and polished and can actually guide a programmer through the entire pipeline of Scene Kit. Things like ambient occlusion baking, a significant feature of Scene Kit, aren't yet working in Xcode 7, so they clearly have a lot of work on their hands.

Overall, I think the future for Scene Kit is bright, because it's part and parcel of a very deep effort to make all drawing and animation APIs and frameworks compatible and collaborative. The future of this for 3D modelling, content creation, data visualisation, even UI features, is very promising. So to your comment, I don't think there's any fear that it will be deprecated, just a question of when it all comes together.

Answer 2

Whoops. Sorry, I misread your question. I don't know that there is a "Scene Kit programming guide" but there is a short introduction.

As with many things, Ray Wenderlich has a good introduction. http://www.raywenderlich.com/83748/beginning-scene-kit-tutorial

Here is a link to the Scene Kit information.

https://developer.apple.com/scenekit/

I don't think it's being deprecated, in the new Xcode 7 there is still the scene kit editor and scene kit modeler.