Re: Looking for a 3D library

[Peter Hatch <RemoveMep-hatch@uiuc.edu>]

Xavier Lesage wrote:
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> I am a PhD student in artificial life.
> 
> I would like to animate cubes and spheres in a 3D environment with colours,
> textures and shadows. I do not want to re-develop common functions that are
> likely to exist somewhere. Has anyone an idea of where I could find such a
> library (in freeware or with moderate license costs).
> 
> I would like to access this library from my programms (written in
> Smalltalk, Java or ADA) running in Linux, therefore the library must be
> compatible with at least one of this environment.
> 
> Thank you for giving me a name or an URL where I could find information.
> 
> Xavier Lesage
> Universit� Pierre et Marie Curie


You should probably use OpenGL.  It's fast, and it's available for linux
as the Mesa libraries.  I know that it works with VW Smalltalk
(currently only under Win95/NT, but Terry Fleury just completed a
partial port of the Jun display system over to Mesa/Glut so it will soon
work under Unix).  If you have access to a WinTel box, you can evaluate
the Jun system to see if it meets your needs (I expect that it will). 
You can get the non-commercial version of VW Smalltalk from (for linux
and WinTel):

http://www.objectshare.com/vwnc

Jun is available from:

http://www.sra.co.jp/people/aoki/htmls/FreeSoftwareForSmalltalk.html

I will work over the next month (big vacation month, not much free time)
on getting Terry's Mesa port ready for general use.  Unless you want to
be programming graphics code all day long, you should really try out
Jun.

-pete

-- 
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      \	 /Peter W. Hatch \  / 
       >< Zen Smalltalker ><  
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