How do I create a vector of different objects that inherit from the same class?

Question

I have different objects such as Triangle, Plane, Sphere etc. that all inherit from the OBJECTS class. I want to create a vector of these different objects then loop through each of the elements and perform operations on them. I'm trying to make a raytracer and I want to create put a lot of different objects onto the scene but I have no idea how. OBJECTS is an abstract class so I can't make a vector because I can create instances of it. Should I create a completely new class and have all the shape classes inherit from it? Or should I remake the objects class so that it's not abstract anymore? Help appreciated. My next best guess is object pointers.

Answer 1

as the comment suggested you could do something like this.

class Object{
public:
    virtual ~Object()= default;
    virtual void foo() = 0;
};

class Pane: public Object{
public:
    ~Pane() = default;
    void foo() override{
        std::cout << "Hello Pane" << std::endl;
    }
};

class Triangle: public Object{
public:
    ~Triangle() = default;
    void foo() override{
        std::cout << "Hello Triangle" << std::endl;
    }
};

int main(){

    std::vector<std::unique_ptr<Object>> objects;
    objects.emplace_back(std::make_unique<Triangle>());
    objects.emplace_back(std::make_unique<Pane>());

    for(auto &object: objects){
        object->foo();
    }

    return 0;
}

Just create a vector of Objects-Pointers. Note that you dont have to use unique_pointers but I would highly suggest it, because you dont need to delete the objects at the end.

The output of this simple program is:

Hello Triangle
Hello Pane