I'm finally getting around to using bounds.  I checked the archives
and found a few pointers on how i might go about having Java 3D
compute a bounding box for me.  The suggestion from Doug G. was to
recursively combine the bounding boxes from the shapes comprising an
object since Shape3D returns a BoundingBox instead of a
BoundingSphere.  This seems to work sort of but unfortunately any
transforms higher up in the object hierarchy do not get factored into
the bounding box computation making the result of limited use.
Combining BoundingBox with the bound shape returned by a Group node
seems to account for such transforms but, of course, the bounding
shape that gets combined is a sphere, which again is not the expected
result of "getting the bounding box".

Am I missing something or is there truly no way to get from here to
there with having Java 3D conveniently compute what convention would
indicate to be an object's bounding box?  (I can think of approaches
where I walk the object hierarchy and apply the necessary transforms
to the bounds but then why bother having Java3D do ANY auto bounds
computation.)

My two cents (especially if it's not too late for 1.2 comments)...

Again, I'm just starting off with Bounds so I may have overlooked
something.  In any case, it seems to me that there needs to be a
cleaner distinction between auto bounds and manual bounds.  In fact,
the two might best be kept completely separate in the API.  Seems that
if I manually set a bounds then that is the bounds I'd expect to get
when I call getBounds().  If instead I want Java 3D to compute the
bounds then perhaps I should call a getAutoBounds() method, which
returns a bounds of a type that I specify and which has nothing to do
with any manual bounds that I may have set.  The result of course
should factor in any object hierarchy and transforms.

--jon
____________________ Peculiar Technologies ____________________
Jon Barrilleaux       3800 Lake Shore Ave.         Purveyors of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]        Oakland, CA 94610      Alternate Reality
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