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3D graphics programming in Java: Part 2, Advanced Java 3D

Learn more about Java 3D performance, 3D content loaders, and the Java 3D VRML97 browser

By Bill Day, JavaWorld.com, 01/01/99

Page 4 of 6

This is the simplest possible case, however, and won't handle some of the details we would normally want to deal with (things like crease angles, which help the runtime determine how to render a scene). For a more robust OBJ loader application, we can turn to Sun's Java 3D demo app, ObjLoad. ObjLoad deals with crease angles and all the other details, sets a default background color, and provides a more mature interface to load and examine OBJ content. This demo is a good example of how Java 3D applications can take advantage of Sun's support for loaders.

Loading more complicated scenes than cube.obj is then a simple matter of specifying the particular filename in your code or command-line parameters. Because of their ease of use coupled with their flexibility in design and implementation, loaders greatly increase the usefulness of Java 3D by increasing interoperability with other applications and runtimes.

VRML97 meets Java 3D

For Web-based 3D graphics, the standard to interoperate with is VRML. There has been a lot of discussion (which will likely continue) of how and where Java 3D competes with VRML. How do the two compare?

Java 3D will not replace VRML. In fact, the two are largely complementary. VRML is predominantly a file format for 3D data for the Web, while Java 3D is predominantly a 3D graphics runtime system. In fact, just like OBJ, DXF, and other loaders mentioned above, VRML loaders already exist to load a VRML scene from a file into a Java 3D runtime.

Java 3D is a runtime programming API, first and foremost. For a realistic and complicated 3D world, however, you probably want to build your geometry and models (or have someone else build them) using modeling programs. For this purpose, VRML is a decent choice.

Authoring programs from companies like Platinum Technologies help you create VRML content with thousands of nodes, then you can load that content into the Java 3D runtime using one of the various loaders available for free on the Web (listed in the Loaders Archive).

As noted previously, VRML is certainly not the only choice for content. But it is a good one: it is now an ISO standard (see the VRML97 standard listing in Resources) and it was designed with the Web in mind, so it's fairly compact and browser-friendly. If you deploy Java 3D apps that load VRML content, you can readily repurpose your content for Web sites.

In addition, the Java 3D and VRML working group (see Resources for a link) is building a VRML97-compliant browser in Java using the Java 3D API. The browser is a free, open-source browser, meant, in part, to illustrate how to build large and interesting applications using Java 3D. Sun's Java 3D team is heavily involved in the project: One of the cochairs of the working group is Henry Sowizral, Sun's lead for Java 3D API and implementation engineering.

If you would like take the Java 3D VRML97 browser out for a spin, you'll need one of the following (in addition to setting up your system for Java 3D as we discussed last month):