This is a subject that is not as simple as it may seem. There are
defintely hacks such as the one that you suggested. What you have to
do and how hard you have to work to get it just depends on how general
and "nice" you want to make in-scene tooltips.
(Time for shameless a plug.) In my upcoming book on 3D user interfaces
I'll provide examples of how to implement "nice" in-scene tooltips
(and other object-based UI decorations) in Java 3D. "Nice" involves
properties such as constant size, display overlay, and multi-state
mouse over feedback. Unfortunately, the how and why of each one of
these UI techniques could be a rather involved discussion unto itself.
If it is any help, over the past few months I've posted info about how
to do geometry-based display overlay and maintaining constant object
size. I and others have posted info about how to do picking (and from
there mouse over -- after all, you need to detect which object the
mouse is over and when the mouse is "paused"). Others have suggested
raster-based alternatives to geometry-based display overlay.
--jon
> Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 15:00:06 -0700
> From: Shih-Jen Hsu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Tooltip functionality for Canvas3D
>
> Hi All!
>
> My project is currently investigating Java3D, and one of the functionalities
> we would need is tooltips for Canvas3D. Since Tooltips only exist in
> JComponent, which Canvas3D does not derive from, I'm not sure how to get a
> nice tooltip for an arbitrary position inside the Canvas3D. I've tried some
> workarounds - the best of which was a JPopupMenu, which is not good enough.
>
> What we would like to do is given some event inside the 3D world (like a
> mouseover an object), we can put some tooltip information on that object,
> and remove it when the cursor is off the object.
>
> Any ideas/pointers/suggestions would be very welcome. I'm a Java3D newbie
> :P
>
> Thanks!
>
> Jen Hsu
--
____________________ Peculiar Technologies ____________________
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