SceneKit Basics – View Scene & Nodes

SceneKit is a Framework to display objects in 3D Space. There are 2(3) parts to a basic Scenekit scene: You can create a visual scene with just a View & a scene, but everything will move together with no interaction. That’s were Nodes come in handy.

1.SceneView: A subclass of UIView : 

ⓘ Adding Camera Control and Default Lighting.
if let view = sceneView{
    view.allowsCameraConrol = true
    view.autoenableDefaultLighting = true
}

The variable can have any name and this is the basic force optional method. In the project main.storyboard the is one Element named Game View Controller. This has a custom class of GameViewController a subclass of UIViewController.()

Also note this it is the initial View Controller.()
Inside Game View Controller there is a view of type SCNView. The last bit of code is sceneView.scene = scene. A variable to be created next.

2.SCNScene: You can load scene’s from files or make theme from scratch without any parameters.

SCNScene is comprised of SCNNodes: primitive objects like a box, scene objects, cameras, and lights. The SCNScene is comprised of a node called the rootnode that all nodes are added to, scene.rootNode.addChild(lightNode). At this point you can have a scene displayed on the screen, but that is one object or chunk of objects. Thats why you add Nodes to have some separation of objects.

3.Nodes: SCNScene is a collection of nodes that follow a parent child heirarchy. Each Node has a parent the SCNScene being the main parent were nodes are added. Nodes are defined by SCNNode(). Add nodes to Scene, self.rootNode.addChild(…)

Everything is built on top of this basic structure.