3D Features

3D Features Planned for Version 8

Introduction

This page presents the list of 3D features schedule for JavaFX 8.0. This information was presented at this year JavaOne as part of the 3D Made Easy with JavaFX technical session.

Three umbrella JIRA issues were created to capture most of this work: Movable Camera , 3D Geometry, and 3D Attributes

Proposed Features

Movable cameras and SubScene

• Camera is now a Node
• Camera can be added to a scene graph
• Camera's position and aim (or orientation) is set using standard Node transform properties and methods
• For backward compatibility, fixed camera need not be added to the scene
• Added new properties for near & far clipping plane
• SubScene is a special Node for scene separation
• It can be used to render part of the Scene with different camera
• Possible use cases are:
  • Picture in picture
  • Overlay or "heads-up" display for UI controls in a scene with a moving camera

Camera Class Hierarchy

Code segment

Specifying a Fixed Camera (existing 2.2 API)

// Create a camera and add it to the Scene
Camera camera = new PerspectiveCamera();
scene.setCamera(camera);

Specifying a Movable Camera

// Create a camera and add it to the Scene
Camera camera = new PerspectiveCamera();
scene.setCamera(camera);

// Add camera to scene graph (so it can move)
Group cameraGroup = new Group();
cameraGroup.getChildren().add(camera);
root.getChildren().add(cameraGroup);

// Rotate the camera
camera.rotate(45);

// Move the cameraGroup (camera moves with it)
cameraGroup.setTranslateZ(-75);

3D primitives

• Added two type of 3D shapes, extending from an abstract Shape3D base class:
  • User-defined shapes (MeshView)
  • Predefined shapes

User-defined shapes

•  User defined mesh (geometry) of a shape by specifying a set of points, texture coordinates, and faces (triangles that describe the topology)
•  User defined smoothing group to specify group of faces that are part of the same curved surface
•  A mesh is sharable among mutiple user-defined shapes

Predefined shapes

•  Three commonly used predefined 3D shapes are introduced: Box, Cylinder and Sphere

Shape3D Class Hierarchy

Mesh Class Hierarchy

Code Segment

Defining a MeshView

// Create the arrays of positions, texCoords
float[] positions = createPositions();
float[] texCoords = createUVs();

// Create faces (indices into the positions, texCoord arrays)
int[] faces = createFaces();

// Create a mesh
TriangleMesh mesh = new TriangleMesh();
mesh.setPositions(positions);
mesh.setTexCoords(texCoords);
mesh.setFaces(faces);

// Create meshView
MeshView mv = new MeshView(mesh);

XXXXXXXXXXXx