Re: 3DeLight

On Thursday, January 16, 2003, at 05:21  AM, Gerard Iglesias wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Maybe we have a good reason to make a usefull application based on 
> 3DKit. This application would be able to read a rib file then render 
> it with the 3Dkit engine, then allow some kind of modification and 
> allow also to render it with 3Delight, it is free of charge for non 
> commercial use, it is very good, don't you think ?

I think there are lots of good reasons to make applications based on 
3DKit!

Reading a RIB file will require an import facility, to convert it to 
the native 3DKit representation. The design of 3DKit should be able to 
handle that easily enough, but someone will have to write the import 
plug-in. My understanding is that we will initially use text and binary 
serializations of the internal data types for our file formats, similar 
to what was in v0.3. Plug-ins for import form/export to other file 
formats would also be good.

In order to render using 3Delight, we would need to use RenderMan API 
internally, correct? I haven't seen any indication (from Phil) that the 
G3DRenderAction (and complementary OpenGL Renderer bundle) included in 
RenderKit will use the actual RenderMan API, which means this 
application would need to provide a custom render Action to do so. 
Again, the design anticipates this, but I doubt it will be present when 
the RenderKit is put back into CVS. I think, however, that it would do 
great things for 3DKit's reception if a realistic proposal is made to 
do what you are suggesting.

Hopefully Phil can enlighten us some more on his intentions. (nudge, 
nudge, wink, wink :-)

Brent Gulanowski
--
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