Robert Smallshire wrote:
I seem to remeber reading an article in the C/C++ Users Journal (CUJ)
about three years ago about rendering 3D contour plots using OpenGL. The
trick was to use a 1-dimensional, 1-bit texture map oriented
perpendicular to the map plane. The texture consisted of zero bits
between the contours for transparent sections and 1-bits to render the
contours themselves. The techinque stuck me as an elegant and
high-performance solution to rendering contours without needing any
compuational geometry. I have no idea if it is possible to implement
this using Java3D - somebody more experienced with Java3D texturing and
transparency should be able to help...
This is the most common way of doing it, yes (and things like colour
gradients etc). In fact, there has been a demo of this tactic in the
OpenGL red book for years.
Java3D does not directly support 1D textures, but it's fairly trivial to
fake it with a 2D texture that has a height of 1, and an appropriate
width, and careful attention to your texture coordinates.
--
Justin Couch http://www.vlc.com.au/~justin/
Java Architect & Bit Twiddler http://www.yumetech.com/
Author, Java 3D FAQ Maintainer http://www.j3d.org/
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"Humanism is dead. Animals think, feel; so do machines now.
Neither man nor woman is the measure of all things. Every organism
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- Greg Bear, Slant
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