Qt3D and QT4

mcallegari79 · wrote on 10 Jan 2013, 23:58

Hello Qt guys. First of all, you're doing a wonderful job with QT5 !

I am contributing to a quite big Qt project for lighting control, already deployed on Linux 32/64, OSX and Windows.
The Qt requirement at the moment is >= 4.6.x, mostly for Linux, since in Windows libs are all bundled with the application.

I am now starting to evaluate the best way to add some 3D support to this software. I will need 3D models support (at least 3DS and OBJ)
I understand the best way would be to switch to QT5, but I would like to wait a bit for that.

So I did a few research on the net and understood Qt3D is what I need, but there are a few missing links.
Is Qt3D still supported on QT4 ?

I read this: http://blog.qt.digia.com/blog/2012/04/11/qt-3d-and-qt5-qt4-news-and-releases/
but most of the links are broken, especially the Windows binary version that I wanted to test first.

I read this: http://doc-snapshot.qt-project.org/qt3d-1.0/qt3d-building.html
But I think it is mostly outdated for QT4 building.

Finally after some GIT "redirections" I was able to clone this: http://qt.gitorious.org/qt/qt3d. Is that the correct repository ?

I understand it won't be possible to compile it on Qt 4.6.x, so Ubuntu 10.04 LTS users will be cut out from the game. :'(

In general I would appreciate any suggestion for what I am going to do. You're the experts !

Thanks in advance !

P.S. Why Qt5 doesn't have a MinGW version anymore ? Is it still possible to use MinGW to compile a Qt application against a prebuilt Qt5 version ?
If I had to decide which Windows environment to drop, I would have chosen VS for sure ! (we're talking about open source, right ? :) )

sierdzio · wrote on 11 Jan 2013, 08:02

[quote author="mcallegari79" date="1357862280"]P.S. Why Qt5 doesn't have a MinGW version anymore ? Is it still possible to use MinGW to compile a Qt application against a prebuilt Qt5 version ?
If I had to decide which Windows environment to drop, I would have chosen VS for sure ! (we're talking about open source, right ? :) )[/quote]

Because MinGW is causing problems. Yes, you can still use MinGW, and it will be included in future releases, once the errors are resolved.

MSVC compiler is distributed free of charge.

mcallegari79 · wrote on 16 Jan 2013, 00:21

Anyone on this ?

I went further on my research and:

I've been able to compile Qt3D against Qt 4.8.4 tree
I've been able to compile Qt3D against prebuilt Ubuntu 12.04 Qt 4.8.2

Although, to be able to distribute a Qt3D application in Linux I don't want to statically link libQt3D, so the best thing is to create one .deb file for i386 and one for amd64.
Problem is that the debian package creation fails (with or without -rfakeroot)

Command line used is:
dpkg-buildpackage -I.git

Error is:
dh_install: libqt4-3d missing files (usr/lib/libQt3D.so.*), aborting

The way Qt3D compiles on Qt4 is somehow distorted. Include files are installed in the Qt path before starting to compile, which doesn't make much sense to me.
Qt3D on Qt4 should be treated like an external library built on the top of Qt, and not a core part like it is going to be on Qt5.

So basically I'm stuck again. Please help