Re: Streamlining the OpenGL visualisation work...

On Fri, 24 Oct 2003, Leopold Palomo Avellaneda wrote:

[...]
> Coin3d is a great library, using wht OpenInventor API. You can use OpenGL 
> inside it, but is a lot of easy use  the OpenInventor API to create scenes.
> 
> There's some kind of discussions about to use OpenInventor (Coin, TGS, SGI) 
> libraries or OpenGL to rendes scenes that need a lot of perfomance for 
> dynamicals simulations, etc. There are people that say that you have to go to 
> OpenGL if you need a lot of performance and there are people that say that 
> this is a myth and you can do it with OI. 

My feeling is that the robotics community doesn't need performance in
the first place, but some "easy" 3D tool(kit) to do (portable!)
developments in. OpenInventor seems to be "old" technology, not easy
to extend with users needs. E.g., I would like to have an interface to
_build_ 3D models, and to connect them to real or simulated robots, in
order to have a nice visualisation environment. 

[...]
> I think that OpenCascade do a lot of thins: too many things. ... 
I tend to agree with you. But maybe somebody on the list has been able
to use it for a robotics application?

[...]
> About Blender I don't have any idea. But it looks like very well.
> 
I have some students taking a closer look at it right now. It has
the interesting possibilities I mentioned above, but they are not
fully implemented yet. The advantage of using a 3D tool that targets
game developers is that we have many robotics interests in common:
generation of "robots", kinematics, trajectory generation tools, etc.
The disadvantage is that the game people are less interested in
_correct_ models, but rather in _naturally looking_ models. But this
disadvantage could maybe be turned into an advantage, in the sense
that both groups of interests are complementary, and do have a lot in
common.

Herman
-- 
  K.U.Leuven, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics Research Group
<http://people.mech.kuleuven.ac.be/~bruyninc> Tel: +32 16 322480