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Israa
4th March 2007, 04:50
Anyone one know of a software that's easy to use in rendering a 3D pool table?

Brandybuck
4th March 2007, 09:23
Is there something wrong with OpenGL?

fullmetalcoder
4th March 2007, 09:55
Is there something wrong with OpenGL?
Well, as Israa wants an "easy" solution I think there's definitely something wrong with raw OpenGL ... :p

You should take a look at a 3d engine. Among the leading open source ones there are :

Irrlicht (http://irrlicht.sf.net)
Ogre (http://www.ogre3d.org/)
Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org/)
G3D (http://g3d-cpp.sourceforge.net/)All these have a C++ API (and sometimes wrapper in other languages such as Java, Python, ...)

Israa
4th March 2007, 13:38
There's nothing wrong with OpenGL, infact thats what I'm using for my project. I just wanted to know if there was some software out there like MilkShape or Blender that I can use to create the pool table and then import it into my program. I haven't used Milkshape but I had a hard time getting used to Blender so I wanted something easier to learn.

fullmetalcoder
4th March 2007, 14:04
There's nothing wrong with OpenGL, infact thats what I'm using for my project. I just wanted to know if there was some software out there like MilkShape or Blender that I can use to create the pool table and then import it into my program. I haven't used Milkshape but I had a hard time getting used to Blender so I wanted something easier to learn.
Raw OpenGL is not able to load any kind of 3d models. For this you need a 3d engine or a dedicated OpenGL loading library... Blender has the big advantages of being complete, open source and to have a big community but I agree that it's quite complicated... If you don't want to spend time learning how to use it you can take a look at these (not necessarily easier ;) ):

3DS Max (http://www.autodesk.fr/3dsmax) : Considered by many as THE must-have for 3d modelling.
Lighwave (http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/) : another leading commercial product
Maya (http://www.autodesk.fr/maya) : Yet another commercial tool
Milkshape 3d (http://chumbalum.swissquake.ch/) : A (commerical) outsider
Sketchup (http://sketchup.google.com/) : The Google offer (who said Google is invading our desktops just like M$ ??? :rolleyes:)
Anim8or (http://www.anim8or.com/main/index.html) : A free (but not open-source) modeler for windows (in the resources you will find a (very basic) SDK to use created files in raw OpenGL programs.
Wings 3d (http://www.wings3d.com/) : An open source modeler that can import and export 3DS and Wavefront filesP.S. : this list is not exhaustive... Googling around can lead you to other software I've never heard of but the one listed above (plus Blender) make up more than 90% of the 3d modeling world...

wysota
4th March 2007, 15:06
You can also use OpenInventor API, for instance Coin3D (http://www.coin3d.org/).

As for Blender and OpenGL - in Blender you can save an object in a format (sorry, don't remember its name) which you can then easily handle from a raw OpenGL application as the format is textual and contains information about vertex positions of items. There is also a class to read in 3ds files available in the net.