[Gnu3dkit-discuss] Coin 3D library

[Brent Gulanowski]

There are many existing 3D libraries at various stages of development, 
and I am often checking out the status of GPL projects, esp. those with 
OS X builds. I have already mentioned OGRE 
(sourceforge.net/projects/ogre), a game engine which treats OS X as a 
Unix (bleah). Two that are in very good shape are NeoEngine 
(sourceforge.net/projects/neoengine) and Coin (www.coin3d.org). All 
three are implemented in C++. NeoEngine has a great OS X port, finished 
a few months ago, and now in very good shape. However, like OGRE, it is 
targeted at game development.

Probably you already know about Coin, but just wanted to make sure. It 
is an implementation of Open Inventor by Systems in Motion. It has an 
LGPL version and a commercial version. They have bindings for a few 
different user interface products. They have a 10.2 compatible binary 
called Inventor.framework. According to the read me, they are working 
on a Cocoa binding. So my expectations of this product are high. 
Nevertheless, C++, but perfectly workable in Objective-C++ applications.

Questions regarding Open Inventor API: What are its single best and 
worst features? Are there things I/we can learn from it that would make 
it worth studying? It is terribly difficult to find general discussions 
of either OI or Coin, so I thought I would ask here. I have the API 
docs, but they are a slog. If its strategies are at all parallel to 
intentions of 3DKit, I could study the API with that in mind.

Thanks,

Brent Gulanowski                address@hidden
--
If you paid a million monkeys to type on a million keyboards, 
eventually they would produce Micro$oft Windows.