MC & OpenGL (update)

[David Bovill]

On Thu, 2003-08-07 at 13:05, jbv wrote:
> 
> But my main question regarding the implementation of
> openGL in MC was : how end users would like to access
> 3D properties and functions from within MetaTalk scripts...
> Anyone who has some experience with openGL coding
> in C/C++ or Java knows that using openGL is slightly more
> complex than setting a few QT properties for instance...
> 

I've very little experience of OpenGL/Java, but some with VRML
(Java/Script) and MC a few years back.

> What I mean by that in that IMHO using interactive 3D
> in projects should be an attractive feature to members
> of this very list... And that good advices and wise
> considerations regarding 3D implementation should come
> from this list...

My suggestions would include a good look at Director and the 3D Lingo
terminology and then to take the core of this and add something
"special".

It's a vague suggestion, and I'm not up fully on the technical side -
but the frustration I had then was the lack of ability to dynamically
create a world. So I'd like to ba able to have an interface which would
allow me to stream / add to / delete from / morph the OpenGL content -
not just move around and interact with precreated environments.

Bringing up the open source theme again - the most exciting thing by far
in the 3D realm from my point of view would be to take the Open Source
code from the largest online 3D community - Blender and be able to use
both the authoring tools and real-time engine to create and control 3D
objects within the MC environment.

It uses Python at the moment as a scripting language, and you could look
at how this is implemented. From my view at the time it would make a
more valuable product to use MC as a backend scripting language for a 3D
front end than to play 3D windows within an MC front end?

Hope that helps.