[Nite_Hawk]

Hi Guys,

I've recently started working on a project in Java3D. So far I really like it in some ways, and it bugs me in others. The basic idea behind the architecture is really nice, but I find it is lacking a lot of documentation, and some things don't seem to be very java like. Still, I was able to put something pretty impressive together in about a week, and I'm really looking forward to how fast I should be able to continue development.

Have any of you guys used it much? Care to share your thoughts?

Nite_Hawk

[Tim Murray]

Since I can't find decent info on it... What plattforms does Java3D support? e.g., just your Windows/Linux/Mac machines, or does it (in theory) scale down to embedded devices as well?

[Nite_Hawk]

Originally Posted by The Baron

Since I can't find decent info on it... What plattforms does Java3D support? e.g., just your Windows/Linux/Mac machines, or does it (in theory) scale down to embedded devices as well?

That's a good question. On windows you have a couple of dlls that need to be in the path and on linux there are shared libs. Supposedly though they are just for the direct3D and OpenGL backends. Hopefully bringing the software to an embedded system would only require getting one of those libraries ported and using whatever 3D library is present.

Nite_Hawk

[Saem]

For cell phones and so on you'd be using J2ME IIRC, in which case, is there even garbage collection, also the libraries themselves differ.

[Nite_Hawk]

I'm finding myself a bit more annoyed with it as time goes on. There seems to be a bug in their quaternion class that is resulting in my program hard locking when using them versus 4 dimensional matrices. Also, I'm having a lot of trouble with their sorting of transparent blended polygon arrays. They don't use BSPs, but instead using a bounding box and the "average" position of objects to figure out sorting, and they don't do anything like automatic spliting when half of a polygon is behind something else. I really don't want to implement that myself.

Still, it's going reasonable well. I've got a "world of warcraft" like mouse input scheme, a basic 3D world, an overhead minimap, and some other stuff implemented in about a week (and I'm not terribly experienced as far as 3D graphics programming goes).

Nite_Hawk

[Nite_Hawk]

Not that anyone really probably cares about this much, but I got a response back from the Java3D devs about the transparency problem. It sounds like they are adding in methods in Java3D 1.4 that lets you take two transparent polygons and manually specify an order that they should be rendered in. They also have some kind of comparator method to tell you which one has the closest surface to the viewingplatform. It's maybe not the greatest fix in the world (I still haven't found out why it's wrong in the first place!), but I guess it'll probably be good enough.

I'm still fairly happy with how quickly progress is moving along. I may end up using Java3D for some personal projects as well.

Nite_Hawk

[Saem]

What application are you using it for right now?

[Nite_Hawk]

Originally Posted by Saem

What application are you using it for right now?

It's kind of like a cross between a RTS and google earth in a network-centric setting.

Sorry, it's kind of a vague description.

Nite_Hawk

[Kristof]

Originally Posted by Nite_Hawk

That's a good question. On windows you have a couple of dlls that need to be in the path and on linux there are shared libs. Supposedly though they are just for the direct3D and OpenGL backends. Hopefully bringing the software to an embedded system would only require getting one of those libraries ported and using whatever 3D library is present.

Nite_Hawk

For mobile devices you have JSR-184 and JSR-239 both layer on top of OGL-ES for possible 3D Acceleration or are implemented in software if the phone has no hardware acceleration.

[BrainC]

hi,
im working on java3d tool for mapping the j2ee results on the 3d earth. i would like to see your codes, screenshots and share ideas.
thnx

[Fox5]

Originally Posted by Nite_Hawk

Hi Guys,

I've recently started working on a project in Java3D. So far I really like it in some ways, and it bugs me in others. The basic idea behind the architecture is really nice, but I find it is lacking a lot of documentation, and some things don't seem to be very java like. Still, I was able to put something pretty impressive together in about a week, and I'm really looking forward to how fast I should be able to continue development.

Have any of you guys used it much? Care to share your thoughts?

Nite_Hawk

I used this a couple years ago, and basically got the same idea you did about it.
I didn't like it, I used it for my final project for my AP Comp Sci class and felt like I was learning a new programming language.