Beginner JOGL user

[kdub259]

Hi, i am currently undertaking my final year at university and my main project requires me to create a 3D model viewer using JOGL. I have never used JOGL or OpenGL. I have the JOGL demos running in NetBeans and have began reading the Red Book (so ive made a better start than a lot of new JOGL users!). It would be great if i could get a few things cleared up:

1. Should i use JOGL 2 or the latest 1.x version which i currently have (i dont think theres a jogl 2 plugin pack for NetBeans)
2. Are there any basic 3d model viewer examples using JOGL? (I would like to see the structure of the classes and code as i am struggling a bit with this)
3. I have tried some basic tutorials but i am not sure how i would import 3D objects (.obj format) into my program

I understand there is a wide range of information i am asking for, but any information (or links) would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

[andys]

Hi,

as i am myself currently trying to get into JOGL2 i can offer you some useful links - took me some time to filter out these from the "not so good" links  :

https://sites.google.com/site/justinscsstuff/jogl-tutorials ... how to setup JOGL 2 and basics - actually this is the only Tutorial i found which is based on JOGL 2 - sad. To be honest i don't even know the exact difference between JOGL 1.x and JOGL 2.x yet  - i just thought its better to jump into it using the latest and greatest... 

http://nehe.gamedev.net/data/articles/article.asp?article=13 .... explains matching Mouse Location with World location - but there are tons of other OpenGL examples on the NEHE site.

http://beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/Computer_graphics_--_2008-2009_--_info.uvt.ro/Laboratory_2 ... explains JOGL in very much detail via 14 Chapters - lots of example code.

http://www.java-tips.org/other-api-tips/jogl/ .... plenty of Tipps and Tricks related to JOGL

Regarding your .obj loader question:
If you download the JOGL Demos source code (http://github.com/sgothel/jogl-demos) you will find there "src\demos\util\ObjReader.java"  which i guess can be used to load .obj files. (haven't tested this yet).

regards
    Andy

[cylab]

1. Should i use JOGL 2 or the latest 1.x version which i currently have (i dont think theres a jogl 2 plugin pack for NetBeans)

I would stay with the working JOGL 1.x version for this project. If you feel the need you could step to 2.x with your next version. The ObjReader is also contained in the OpenGL-Pack - just browse the project templates. I think at least the volumetric shadow demo uses a .obj model.

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[gouessej]

I would stay with the working JOGL 1.x version for this project. If you feel the need you could step to 2.x with your next version. The ObjReader is also contained in the OpenGL-Pack - just browse the project templates. I think at least the volumetric shadow demo uses a .obj model.

cylab is right. Switch to JOGL 2 only if you have a problem with a bug of JOGL 1.1.1a. However, I hope that we will advise everyone to switch to JOGL 2 in a few months when the whole API will be reliable enough (which is almost the case as Sven has recently fixed the most impacting bugs).

[kdub259]

Thank you for the replies, they have been extremely helpful!