FDF (Fil de Fer)

A 3D wireframe mesh viewer that renders height maps using isometric, perspective, and top-down projections. Built with MLX42, a modern cross-platform graphics library.

Supported Platforms

Platform	Status
macOS (Intel)	✅ Supported
macOS (Apple Silicon M1-M5)	✅ Supported
Linux (X11)	✅ Supported
Windows (WSL)	✅ Supported

Prerequisites

You only need CMake and a C compiler. All other dependencies are downloaded automatically.

macOS

# Install Xcode Command Line Tools
xcode-select --install

# Install Homebrew (if not installed)
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

# Install CMake
brew install cmake

Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake git

Linux (Fedora)

sudo dnf install gcc make cmake git

Linux (Arch)

sudo pacman -S base-devel cmake git

Quick Start

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/adshz/fdf.git
cd fdf

# Build (automatically downloads all dependencies)
make

# Run
./fdf maps/42.fdf

Build Commands

Command	Description
make	Build the project
make run	Build and run with default map
make clean	Remove object files
make fclean	Remove all build artifacts
make re	Rebuild from scratch
make mrproper	Full clean including dependencies
make info	Show build configuration

Controls

Key	Action
ESC	Exit
W A S D	Move camera
↑ ↓ ← →	Rotate view
Page Up/Down	Zoom in/out
= / -	Line thickness
I	Isometric view
P	Perspective view
T	Top-down view
Space	Toggle colors
R	Reset view

Map Format

Maps are text files with height values. Optional hex colors can be added.

0  0  0  0  0
0  5  5  5  0
0  5 10  5  0
0  5  5  5  0
0  0  0  0  0

With colors:

0,0xFF0000  0,0x00FF00  0,0x0000FF

Sample maps are in the maps/ directory.

Project Structure

fdf/
├── src/
│   ├── main.c
│   └── modules/
│       ├── ft_colour/      # Color gradients
│       ├── ft_init/        # Initialization
│       ├── ft_interact/    # Input handling
│       ├── ft_parse/       # Map parsing
│       ├── ft_render/      # Bresenham line drawing
│       ├── ft_transform/   # 3D projections
│       └── ft_utils/       # Utilities
├── inc/                    # Headers
├── maps/                   # Sample maps
├── MLX42/                  # Graphics lib (auto-downloaded)
├── glfw/                   # Window lib (auto-downloaded)
├── libft/                  # C library (auto-downloaded)
└── Makefile

Troubleshooting

CMake not found

# macOS
brew install cmake

# Linux
sudo apt-get install cmake

Build fails / Dependencies issues

make mrproper
make

OpenGL errors (Linux)

sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-dev

License

MIT License - see LICENSE

Author

szhong @ 42 London