3D graphics for a noob?

Over the last few months, ive been working on an artificial life simulator in C#. Everything is working fine, but the graphics leave a bit to be desired. All the program really shows is a bunch of red and blue arrows moving on a grid in time steps, eating poorly drawn plants or eachother. Is there any simple way I can implement 3D graphics so that I can spice things up a bit? It doesnt have to be anything really fancy. Just some flying cones or cubes would be enough. Would this be too complicated to achieve by the end of xmas break?

I would take a look at ogre. It's an open-source graphics library that takes care of the heavy lifting of 3d graphics and lets you get right to results. I'm currently using it in my engine with good results.

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simple way I can implement 3D graphics

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Simple 3D graphics? Good luck with that one.

If you are looking for a quick 'fix' to do 3D graphics then take my advice and don't. All you will do is confuse yourself beyond measure. If you want to do 3D, you have to learn 3D...period. Taking some other shortcut is not going to work.

Now once you learn 3D I'd say you would be more than capable of finding which engine you wish to use or deciding whether or not you want to roll your own.

would openGL be too complicated you think?

Certainly not too complicated, just dive in and see how well it goes along.

It will be complicated if you don't know your 3D like what Bubba has said. That means you'll have to know about vector, matrix, transformation, projection, quaternion, lighting, etc.

Why not go 2D? You said so yourself you didn't want anything fancy.

lol i dont want anything fancy in terms of 3d graphics. But id prefer 3d as opposed to 2d just because it would look much more impressive i think

Might look more impressive, but the extra coding is TONS!

As somebody said, start out with 2D and get the hang of the design behind the scene. Then move on to 3D. The problem many times isnt the rendering per say. The problem (at least for me) is the general design of the application. You will have the same problem with design if you use 2D but with 1 dimension less to think about your more likely to succeed.