Would it be viable for me, then, to frequently add and detach large numbers of objects in a game situation, say, rapid fire projectiles that need to be moved along their trajectory? I was wondering what would be the established way of doing this...

I really don't know about the inner workings of Java3D, but detaching does sound like it could be expensive, especially if Java is attempting to optimise the render using the tree...  but then again, wouldn't hiding the objects out of sight by drastically changing their position, force a recomputation of bounds and etc as well?
but in line with the object hiding idea, is there is a cheap way to toggle a visibility for a branch?

Nonetheless, I'll try out both in code (hiding and detaching) and post the results in case anyone's interested...

Thanks so much for all the kind responses and suggestions!
really appreciate all that effort ^^

Thanks for the advice! I shall use that right away.
Just one other question though... if I clone a subtree per entity, is it apropriate for me to detach them from the universe in order to remove an entity, or is this an expensive operation?

Hi!

I'm rather new to Java3D, and I was wondering what the apropriate way to include multiple objects in a scene is.

Right now, I'm loading Shape3Ds for each of my entities and attaching them to a SimpleUniverse directly by means of BranchGroups (no hierachy). The entities are all represented by the same mesh, but each one loads a copy of the same mesh data, which isn't exactly a great thing. When I need them out of the scene, I detach their BranchGroup linkages.

While reading through the forum, I realise these practices are definitely not right.
I was wondering if i could store the geometry just once, then reference the mesh data each time I draw a copy of the mesh on screen?

thanks in advance for the help!

hi!

i'm pretty new to java 3d and i'm trying to figure out how to calculate the on-screen (2d coordinates) position of a 3d point... is there any way i can do this?

thanks very much!