understanding branchgroup and transformgroup

Engines, Libraries and Tools Xith3D Forums
#1

I’ve been playing with Xith3D off and on for several months now and I’m trying to get my mind around how the BranchGroup and TransformGroup are best used.

So as I understand it you make a universe and add a locale and a scene (branchgroup), one of each right? Now if I have several Shape3d’s to add at different translations and rotations, do I need to create two new TransformGroup’s (one for translation one for rotation) for every shape? Or am I supposed to just keep using the original objTranslate and objRotate and “reset” them after drawing each shape?

Hopefully I am making some sense here, its possible I’m just entirely confused and no one will understand me.

#2

[quote]Now if I have several Shape3d’s to add at different translations and rotations, do I need to create two new TransformGroup’s (one for translation one for rotation) for every shape?
[/quote]
yep, that’s the usual way to go

since xith3d’s api is nearly fully compatible with java3d, i’ll recommend the following with covers all the important concepts:
Java 3D API Tutorial http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/3D/collateral/index.html#tutorial

hope that helps…

holger

#3

Wow, very helpful. thanks!

#4

A couple more questions:

  1. On that Java3D site they talk about Text2D… is there a similar feature for Xith3D?

  2. Is there a geometry feature to draw a cylinder?

thanks!

#5

have a look at the toolkit package:

https://xith-tk.dev.java.net/servlets/ProjectDocumentList

there should be a text2d class as well as a geometry package

#6

The geometry package is now bundled with Xith3D builds, and one was released today.

Download here:
http://xith.org/download/builds/latest/

When you decompress it, you will see a jar xith-tk.jar in the libs folder – this contains the geometry classes.

Javadocs for the cylinder class are here:
http://xith.org/javadoc/org/xith3d/geometry/Cylinder.html

Cheers,

Will.