Cristina,
Java3D is very capable, but there are no tools for it, you have to be ready
to do some hard core programming.
I have done quite a bit of volumetric work in J3D. It helps to think of your
volumetric space as a 3D image, a 3D array of pixels[][][] or "voxels" where
the pixels contain the values for temperature, density, or other useful
attribute data. This is the method used for MRI and CAT-scan imaging.
Remember a pixel CAN contain more than just RGBA, you can have as many
variables as you like, it's just another object.
You can then section your array and create image slices. If you like I can
send you a color-cube program which demonstrates this approach in a
simplistic way.
I have also written a "marching cube" program to generate surfaces at a
threshold value from a 3D image.
My marching cube implementation is not going to be easy to follow, since I
wrote it for my own use, but if you're up to it I'll be happy to share it.
These are "Hard Coded" programs, not a set of tools. And since they were for
my own use there is little or no user interface, and no documentation.
Cleaning them up is on my "list of things to do : )
If you know C programming you may want to look at VTK
[http://www.kitware.com/vtk.html] which is a visualization tool kit, but I
had a really hard time understanding it, the scene structure seemed wrong to
me, (but then I am used to Java3D, a much more elegant language).
Let me know if I can help
Don
-----Original Message-----
From: Fred Klingener [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2001 11:06 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [JAVA3D] The right tool?
Cristina,
Right now, Java 3D is very much a surface-oriented thing. You, I'm betting,
need volumetric tools, first to do the constructive geometries that you
describe, then to analyze and display them. I'm no expert on volumetric
modeling programs, but there are many of them out there. Some have
inexpensive student versions, and some (they say) generate model data sets
that are transportable to Java 3D, so once you've built models, you may be
able to deploy them that way.
Cheers,
Fred Klingener
Brock Engineering
----- Original Message -----
From: "Cristina S. Luis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2001 7:10 PM
Subject: [JAVA3D] The right tool?
> Hello,
>
> I am working on my senior project in the geology department of my
university, an investigation of fracture networks in rocks. I'm trying to
write a Java3D program to help visualize these fracture networks and (more
importantly) give a quantitative analysis of the shapes produced (such as
surface area to volume ratio). I'm new to Java and to working with 3d, but
even so I feel that I may be using the wrong tool to tackle this problem.
I'm hoping members of this list can tell whether what I want to do is
possible with Java3d, and if it's the best (or close to best) tool for the
task. And if so, where I should look to get started. I think it is likely
that there is perhaps some mathematical package out there which could handle
this stuff just as well, but Java3D has obvious distribution advantages.
>
> So, for instance, given two planes (flat, 2-dimensional, defined by 4
points), I would like to find the intersection, defined as a line (2
points?) between those two. Then, by collecting a series of intersections
between planes, use those points to form a new, trimmed shape3d. I guess
it's kind of culling a shape? Getting rid of the excess pieces of my planes,
for viewing purposes. I don't really care how I do this, as long as it's
done.
>
> More importantly, I would just like to be able to find these values so
that I can determine the shape. If I can define these shapes without using
any of the visual aspects of Java3D, the least I'd like to be able to do is
show the end result. In other words, it would be neat for the user to be
able to move around the planes, adjusting their actual positions, and then
specifying which planes to use for making the new 3d object, but that's not
necessary.
>
> Also, my first stumbling block was actually trying to get the "new"
geometry (location information, I guess is what I want) from a Shape3D once
it has been added to a scene graph and moved around (I did get that far, at
least).
>
> Any insight or advice would be very, very much appreciated!
>
> Please reply to [EMAIL PROTECTED], else you might be lost.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Cristina
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>
>
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