Wherer to get Java3d Documentation

Engines, Libraries and Tools Java 3D
#1

Hello,

after making a small Pong clone with Java to get comfortable with the language I felt the desire to find out about Java’s 3d capabilities. But I stumbled about the following problem: where’s the damn (oops…) documentation for the 3D API? I got the documentation from java.sun.com as well as a large Java introduction/tutorial thing, but I couldnt find anything about rendering 3D graphics with Java. Am I wrong believing there is such a thing as a Java3d Api?
After browsing through the board I found some threads about using OpenGl or DirectX with Java… could anyone be so kind to point me to some kind of overview about the different possibilities for 3D rendering with Java? I havent found much decent information on the web nor by searching this board, yet.

[edit]/me says hello to everyone :)[/edit]

#2

http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/3D/forDevelopers/J3D_1_2_API/j3dapi/

http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/3D/download.html

#3

The fundamental differences between Java3D and OGL are:

Java3D:

A JCP standard. It runs on either OGL or D3D (in win32. Everywhere
else its just OGL) It is primarliy a scene graph API and does a bunch of rocket sciecne uder the hood based on taht to get scalable performance. It does nto however support the latest greatest hardware tricks.

gl4Java:

An open source APi. (Some might say a defacto standard… its a poitnt hat cna be argued either way.) It provides immediate mode supprot through efficient low level bindings to the native OGL platform libraries. It does not provide any higher level functionality so you are on your own for building scene graphs, doing view frrsturm culling, state sorting, and in genreal all those tricks to get scalable performance. (If you are up for it though you may be able to get even better performance then java3D by coding culling techniques and such that are specific to your game. J3D has to stay genreal in its performance tricks so any app can use them.)