Re: [Gnu3dkit-discuss] 3DeLight

[Philippe C . D . Robert]

On Thursday, January 16, 2003, at 04:38  Uhr, Brent Gulanowski wrote:
> 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!

I hope so, if not, why should we spend time on the 3DKit then?...:-)

> 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.

Well, NSCoding should/will be supported, of course. But the scene 
archiving will not be available anymore, apart from that I really like 
the idea of using RIB as the native format. We'll see how 'easy' this 
can be achieved though.

> 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.

I currently follow the idea of using a RenderMan subset (similar as 
QRM) as the 3DKit's native graphics API. This API would then be 
implemented by concrete renderers (ie. using OpenGL), so creating a RIB 
stream would be somehow possible natively.

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

I am terribly sorry for the recent silence from my side. I was just too 
busy to be able to work on the 3DKit...sigh But I am happy to announce 
that from now on will be able to spend at least 1 day a week working on 
my research work, which includes the 3DKit - so faster progress should 
be realistic. Moreover I made real progress wrt the new API, I hope to 
be able to publish this within the next few days so that we can discuss 
my proposal in details.

-Phil
--
Philippe C.D. Robert
http://www.nice.ch/~phip