Introduction to Programming with Java 3D
Preface

Welcome to these tutorial notes! These tutorial notes have been written to give you a quick, practical, example-driven overview of Java 3D, the cross-platform 3D graphics API for Java. To do this, we've included almost 600 pages of tutorial material with nearly 100 images and over 50 Java 3D examples.

To use these tutorial notes you will need:

  • An HTML Web browser
  • Java JDK 1.2 (Java 2 Platform) or later
  • Java 3D 1.1 or later

Information on Java JDKs and Java 3D is available at:

What's included in these notes

These tutorial notes primarily contain two types of information:

  1. General information, such as this preface
  2. Tutorial slides and examples

The tutorial slides are arranged as a sequence of 600+ hyper-linked pages containing Java 3D syntax notes, Java 3D usage comments, or images of sample Java 3D applications. Clicking on the file name underneath an image brings up a window showing the Java source file that generated the image. The Java source files contain extensive comments providing information about the techniques the file illustrates.

Compiling and executing the Java example file from the command-line brings up a Java application illustrating a Java 3D feature. Most such applications include menus and other interaction options with which you can explore Java 3D features.

The tutorial notes provide a necessarily terse overview of Java 3D. We recommend that you invest in a Java 3D book to get thorough coverage of the language. One of the course lecturers is an author of the Java 3D specification, available from Addison-Wesley: The Java 3D API Specification, ISBN 0-201-32576-4, 1997.

Use of these tutorial notes

We are often asked if there are any restrictions on use of these tutorial notes. The answer is:

Parts of these tutorial notes are copyright (c) 1999 by Henry A. Sowizral, and copyright (c) 1999 by David R. Nadeau. Users and possessors of these tutorial notes are hereby granted a nonexclusive, royalty-free copyright and design patent license to use this material in individual applications. License is not granted for commercial resale, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from the authors. This material is provided "AS IS" without express or implied warranty of any kind.

You are free to use these tutorial notes in whole or in part to help you teach your own Java 3D tutorial. You may translate these notes into other languages and you may post copies of these notes on your own Web site, as long as the above copyright notice is included as well. You may not, however, sell these tutorial notes for profit or include them on a CD-ROM or other media product without written permission.

If you use these tutorial notes, we ask that you:

  1. Give us credit for the original material
  2. Tell us since we like hearing about the use of our material!

If you find bugs in the notes, please tell us. We have worked hard to try and make the notes bug-free, but if something slipped by, we'd like to fix it before others are confused by our mistake.

Contact

David R. Nadeau
University of California
NPACI/SDSC, MC 0505
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0505

(619) 534-5062
FAX: (619) 534-5152

nadeau@sdsc.edu
http://www.sdsc.edu/~nadeau