Different appearances on polygons & transpare

[Preston]

Hi, two questions please:

a) A very basic one: if you want to have different appearances for the n polygons of one 3d model, do you need to create new Shape3Ds for any polygon which wants to have a different appearance?
(For example one side of a cube shall be transparent, the others not, or have different material colours, and so on.)

b) I've enabled the transparency of a large 3d modell's appearance for a test (~45k polys). I think Xith3d then starts to sort these many polygons because otherwise it would look wrong.
Well, the first time it worked for a few seconds but then the VM crashed with an "exception outside the VM error". So did any further start.
Probably this is due to my used beta version 2003-11-13_cvs/  or maybe Jogl?

[kevglass]

a) A very basic one: if you want to have different appearances for the n polygons of one 3d model, do you need to create new Shape3Ds for any polygon which wants to have a different appearance?
(For example one side of a cube shall be transparent, the others not, or have different material colours, and so on.)

Yes.

b) I've enabled the transparency of a large 3d modell's appearance for a test (~45k polys). I think Xith3d then starts to sort these many polygons because otherwise it would look wrong.
Well, the first time it worked for a few seconds (with 1 FPS or so ;-) but then the VM crashed with an "exception outside the VM error". So did any further start.
Probably this is due to my used beta version 2003-11-13_cvs/  or maybe Jogl?

Is it reproducable? What model format was it in? Could you post the output.

Kev

[Yuri Vl. Gushchin]

Is it reproducable? What model format was it in? Could you post the output.

Asking for the same, and even more - can you please file an issue to Issuezilla and attach a test case?

Yuri

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Preston]

Yes. :)

Thanks. I thought it the same way but wasn't sure so I asked. :)

Is it reproducable? What model format was it in? Could you post the output.

Yesterday it's been reproducible.
The model format is Lightwave.
First I'll have to encircle it and if it's really reproducible I'm going to post the stack-trace.

Are the transparent polygons (inside the model) and models being sorted automatically or do I have to enable this (via transparency.setSortEnabled or such) ? It looks right so I guess it's being sorted but doesn't know (newbie).


Addendum: Of course, like always, when I try to reproduce it right now, it works. :-(  Well, it's good for Xith3d, but it also means my PC fools me. I'm going to post the result of whatever.

[Preston]

Asking for the same, and even more - can you please file an issue to Issuezilla and attach a test case?

I'll try to encircle it and if it looks like a bug then gladly I'm going to fill an Issuezilla.

[Yuri Vl. Gushchin]

Are the transparent polygons (inside the model) and models being sorted automatically or do I have to enable this (via transparency.setSortEnabled or such) ? It looks right so I guess it's being sorted but doesn't know (newbie).

Sort for transparent objects is enabled by default. You can disable it if needed with setSortEnabled(false).

Yuri

[Preston]

Sort for transparent objects is enabled by default. You can disable it if needed with setSortEnabled(false).

Thanks Yuri. I thought it was enabled because the output looked right, but didn't dare to look at the Javadoc because so many times it's just empty. No critism of course, just an observation.

com.xith3d.scenegraph.TransparencyAttributes.setSortEnabled(boolean sortEnabled)

(..) By default, sorting is enabled.

Next time I'll look at your Javadoc first. :)

[Jens]

Thanks Yuri. I thought it was enabled because the output looked right, but didn't dare to look at the Javadoc because so many times it's just empty.

I made this experience very often. In some cases it helps to look at the Java3D Javadoc. In the last weeks Javadoc has improved, although it's still not really usable.

Hm, I just noticed that the package xith3d.gui seems to be pretty useless (one reason is that xith3d.gui requires LWJGL and does not use the abstraction layer).

[Preston]

I made this experience very often. In some cases it helps to look at the Java3D Javadoc. In the last weeks Javadoc has improved, although it's still not really usable.

Hi Jens. It's good that Xith3d's Javadoc improves. I also have opened the Java3d Javadoc next to my Xith3d Javadoc. Several times it's useful because of the similarities of the two.

Hm, I just noticed that the package xith3d.gui seems to be pretty useless (one reason is that xith3d.gui requires LWJGL and does not use the abstraction layer).

Oh... Does this mean we can't use the GUI right now without LWJGL? Because I don't have got LWJGL installed and won't do.


PS: The VM crash which I reported in my previous articles: I can't reproduce it currently. :-(  But it was there. No idea what caused it and why it's different now. I'll keep my eyes open. :-)

[endolf]

Oh... Does this mean we can't use the GUI right now without LWJGL? Because I don't have got LWJGL installed and won't do.

You can use it, i have no idea what the gui package is, but the one you are after is userinterface UIManager and UIWindow are the important ones, I have moved my whole connection dialog from a seperate swing JFrame in to the Xith window , There are a couple of issues with it still though, like some transparent hud components become non transparent when you update them, and you can only seem to update at the moment if you use setRoot() on the UIWindow, which resets the transparency. If you are using components with no transparency or are not updating your transparent components it seems to work just fine, but it doesn fill the fps, my connectino dialog takes my FPS form ~800 to ~150, but it is almost 1/2 the area of my window , when that is closed and just my FPS counter and test component are showing i'm back up to ~450

HTH

Endolf

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Jens]

Oh... Does this mean we can't use the GUI right now without LWJGL? Because I don't have got LWJGL installed and won't do.

Sorry for causing confusion. Endolf already explained that xith3d.gui is not needed. I wonder if anyone uses it. If not it can be dropped to avoid more confusion.

[cfmdobbie]

Sorry for causing confusion. Endolf already explained that xith3d.gui is not needed. I wonder if anyone uses it. If not it can be dropped to avoid more confusion.

It's used by the SimpleRenderEngine and the LWJGL test programs, but it's all hideously out of date anyway.  If you want to maintain current functionality, keep BaseWindow (move it into test) and trash the rest.