Java 3D Programming

By Daniel Selman

Book Overview

Covering Java 3D programming, this text provides a comprehensive set of programming examples to illustrate the techniques, features, workarounds and bug fixes contained in the main text. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1930110359
• ISBN13: 9781930110359
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: Manning Publications
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.4" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Good Book in a Small Field

This is perhaps the most recent book on the Java 3D API published in the last four years. I started reading this one in 2004 and finished in 2006. Despite the number of years that have passed since it was published in 2002, I found it to continue to be relevant today, including my work with Xith, an Open Source API based on the public source Java 3D API. "Killer Game Programming in Java", 2005, does cover some of the Java 3D API but there were a few gaps in it. This is understandable as it is written to cover all of Java game programming, not just Java 3D. I look forward to the release of "Foundations of 3D Graphics Programming: Using JOGL and Java3D", scheduled to be released June 30th, 2006. ~ David Wallace Croft, author of "Advanced Java Game Programming"

Great for learning the system

The book covers a great detail for scenegraph construction and using the necessary features like materials, lighting, behaviours and animation. Especially the chapter for behaviours is very helpful in creating interactivity with Java3D. There is only one weakness - geometry creation. Whether you create it inside Java3D or load it from industrial 3D packages, I think the official Java3D tutorial does a better job.

Not completely neccessary

Sun's Java 3D Tutorial taught me much more than this book did. It was a nice companion book with some good insights, handy to have but honestly I could have made it just fine without.

Fascinating complement to Sun's 3D tutorial

After playing with this book, and the excellent Java 3D tutorial that Sun offers for free, I've been able to make very simple 3D applets. Most of the information to create the applet came from this book; the Sun tutorial is very good, but sparse in some details which this book covers nicely.Most useful was the description and detailing of the scenegraph, which made it easy to do certain things in my applets. The book also covers more advanced geometric concepts, so advanced programmers should be able to glean much more from the book than I have for now.All in all, a fascinating complement to the Sun tutorial. If you plan to program with Java 3D components, this book will be very useful.

Required Reading for 3D Graphics Developers

The Java 3D API from Sun provides an object oriented abstraction around OpenGL and DirectX functions. Sun provides a fairly good introduction to Java 3D in their documentation. However, it can be difficult to find more advanced information on Java 3D as some of the best information can only be found in newsgroups. This book provides the information that anyone working with Java 3D absolutely needs. The author has covered all the bugs, workarounds, pitfalls, design problems etc. that aren't found in the Sun documentation. Starting with the basics of 3D graphics programming, the book moves quickly on to the heart of the Java 3D API, the Scenegraph. The author does a good job of explaining this key class and how to use it to create 3D scenes. The book then moves on to explain creating geometric shapes, defining light sources, creating textures, attaching behavior to objects, interacting with objects, and much more. Each chapter contains code samples highlighting the topics of that chapter. As a novice to Java 3D, I was overwhelmed for a little while but the code samples and the author's excellent explanations of the code kept me from becoming lost. This is definitely a book that should be read in front of the computer while working on the examples. Any experienced Java developer (even if you have no experience in graphics programming) who is interested in developing 3D games or scientific or architectural 3D applications should get this book.