Re: 3D Graphics Programming - Mesa3D and X-motif (long)

[Prabhu Ramachandran <prabhu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

hi,

On Fri, 18 Feb 2000, Deivanayak T Balakrishnan wrote:

> **URGENT**
> I hope you remember my last post requesting for help on 3D graphics
> programming. Based on the advice a few of the members in the LI list i have
> made my decisions to use Mesa3D (similar to OpenGL) for the 3D graphics and

	Pl. Note: Mesa3d is an (as yet uncertified but very good) 
implmentation of the OpenGL (OGL) specification (OGL is an API/spec).  So
in what follows I use Mesa and OGL interchangeably. 

> lesstif (similar to X-motif) for the GUI. I have been reading a lot of
> documentation in this direction. Has anyone tried this combination before
> and got it working.

	 Please dont use lesstiff/motif.  Motif is generally supposed to be
very painful to code with (it is like coding with Xlib).  Instead, you can
embed 3d OGL (OpenGL) calls inside Fltk (www.fltk.org) widgets (this is
c++), GTK+/GTK-- (search for gtkglarea, or gtkglareamm) widgets, or even
with Qt based apps.  Besides if you want to do highlevel 3d graphics take
a look at VTK (www.kitware.com/vtk.html). 

	Fltk (fast light toolkit) is really nice and simple, the version
that ships with debian is not compiled for OGL but you can grab the latest
sources (1.0.7) from their site and recompile.  Fltk also ships with a
nice GUI builder called fluid.  It also has good documentation with tons
of examples (some with OGL).  It apparently can also handle glut code
(with minimum modifications). 

	There is a GTK widget that supports embedding OGL calls into it
called gtkglarea (it ships with debian 2.1).  I used it a bit loong back. 
Search for newer versions on the web -- you might have to use a newer
version of GTK.  This is what bugs me with gtk apps, gtk used to develop
too fast for my liking.  I dont know how it is now. 

	Qt also supports embedding widgets.  But I have never used it.

	VTK is a 3d toolkit that provides a large amount of classes that
do high level things and is really useful for quick application building.
The problem with it is that there isnt much free documentation.  VTK
itself is free but requires buying a book to understand _completely_. Some
docs and examples are available on the web. Go to their home site and see
(all sites are mentioned earlier).  One can embed vtk calls from
Qt/fltk/gtk.  VTK can also be used from python/tcl/java code. 

	Also take a look at the FOX toolkit, cant remember the url...

	My suggestion is that you know c++ take a look at fltk else gtk + 
gtkglarea.

prabhu

---
Send e-mail to 'ilugc-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx' with 'unsubscribe' 
in either the subject or the body to unsubscribe from this list.