SGI Releases Open Inventor As Open Source 106
SGI has released Open Inventor (TM) 3D graphics toolkit to the open source community. You can read the press release here and their FAQ here. I'm sure many people will ask what is this Open Inventor, so could a /. reader give a few words about it?
WOOHOO! (Score:2)
But Inventor is LGPL! Woohoo! http://oss.sgi.com/projects/inven tor/license.html [sgi.com]
--
'this could be useful...' (Score:2)
from the FAQ :
What is Open Inventor?
Open Inventor is an object-oriented 3D toolkit offering a comprehensive solution to interactive graphics programming problems. It presents a programming model based on a 3D scene database that dramatically simplifies graphics programming. It includes a rich set of objects such as cubes, polygons, text, materials, cameras, lights, trackballs, handle boxes, 3D viewers, and editors that speed up your programming time and extend your 3D programming capabilities.
so, basically it's a set of OpenGL models and widgets,.. i haven't gotten to look at it in depth but if i had to guess i'd say it could be quite handy. i have yet to see it implimented in anything, though.
someone go out and make a 3d tetris with it
...dave
Open InventorTM General FAQ (Score:2)
What is Open Inventor?
Open Inventor is an object-oriented 3D toolkit
offering a comprehensive solution to
interactive graphics programming problems. It
presents a programming model based on a 3D
scene database that dramatically
simplifies graphics programming. It includes
a rich set of objects such as cubes,
polygons, text, materials, cameras,
lights, trackballs, handle boxes, 3D viewers,
and editors that speed up your programming time
and extend your 3D programming capabilities.
Open Inventor:
is built on top of OpenGL
defines a standard file format for 3D data
interchange
introduces a simple event model for 3D
nteraction
provides animation objects called Engines
provides high performance object picking
is window system and platform independent
is a cross-platform 3D graphics development system
supports PostScript printing
encourages programmers to create new customized objects
is fun to use
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
What is Open Inventor? (Score:1)
OpenInventor is a superset of OpenGL, easier to use but I'd say less performant.
But it's really easy to use which make it really fun.
---
Guillaume
there is already an OS implementation (Score:2)
Does anybody happen to know something more? (how does the two compare?)
Open Inventor and VRML (Score:2)
Open Inventors main draw (no pun intended) is its scene graph. Basically, a scene graph is a description of everything in a 3D world. You can use it to render a scene, but its not limited to that. You could visit every node in a scene graph and instead of rendering, you could build a new data structure based on the previous one which does anything you want with the geometry. Which for me means building a display list that will draw the scene using advanced texturing and shading techniques which are not available in Open Inventor. This means that I get to concentrate on the shading, and do not have to worry about how to store my geometry. Open Inventor has a file format as well, so I don't even have to worry about creating a new one.
I mainly see Open Inventor as a prototyping tool, because its possible to get something on the screen with very little code. I also see it as an API to use to create editors and other tools. But, does anyone know any "real" applications that use Open Inventor?
Applications for OpenInventor (Score:1)
Open Inventor (Score:5)
Open Inventor is great at rapidly creating interactive 3D applications. By 'interactive' I mean things where the user can get in and pick objects, move them around, etc. Open Inventor takes care of all the rendering and events for you and so it's pretty easy to get something up and running. Performance is good but not Inventor's main thrust -- so it'd be better to write something like a model or level editor in inventor than a first-person shooter.
I've seen Inventor used to create an architectural modeler with great effect; the author was really able to focus on the interface and not spend a lot of time reinventing the wheel for his underlying data structure. We considered using Inventor for the project that eventually became my children's 3D building blocks program [gollygee.com], but there were licensing issues and we didn't think the performance would be there by the time we wanted to release it. If I were starting again today, I might reconsider.
Re:WOOHOO! (Score:1)
Why VRML Died (Score:1)
VRML died because in order to be interesting, the descriptor files were HUGE (I had a playfile that comtained a the ground, a floor, kneeler wall, columns, and a flat roof to a free-standing pagoda-type thing with a few scene lights so you could see it....very basic, no detail, and the file was something like 200K. And lets not forget how long it tool my P166 to render the scene...
VRML came ont he scene too soon...before high bandwidth, before everyone had a fast computer, before it was practical to use...that's why you don't see it any more...though I still play with is sometimes...
Real(tm) apps (Score:1)
Basically, there are lots of scientific visualisation apps out there that this LGPLed release will help. As it stands, we are now only about 1 library away (ViewKit if it matters) from having the possibility to release our apps as Open Source. (No promises, as we still must convince the powers-that-be in our organisation...)
As always, I speak for myself, not my employer, yadda, yadda, yadda...
Two words... (Score:1)
Always wanted some of that spiffy SGI stuff, just couldn't afford it. Now I'll be able to and hack in the features *I* want. =)
Vote [dragonswest.com] Naked 2000
coin3d (Score:1)
Re:Open Inventor and VRML (Score:1)
Examples are virtual worlds to explore, the virtual Mars project, a small app I coded to show family trees in a "Jurassic Park/I know this - this is Unix" kind of way:)
Really easy to texture/image map, light, animate etc.
The Cosmo VRML viewer works quite well on PCs now as well.
Frog51
Re:Graphics Attention (Score:2)
Dammit, it's got NOTHING to do with Linux. The software is now Free, which means you can build, use, and modify it on any of a wide array of systems. It's about having the source, not about Open Inventor for Linux. There's been OI for Linux/x86 for years already. I can't believe how narrow your view is.
Re:'this could be useful...' (Score:1)
To all OpenInventor programmers... (Score:1)
--weenie NT4 user: bite me!
Inventor derivation for VRML killed VRML (Score:3)
When the early VRML specification was derived from Inventor, (the spec writers used several other open source specs including one I contributed to), they based the file format on Inventor. This was good for them, as they worked at SGI and had access to the parser source.
However, nobody ELSE had access to the parser source, and the complexity of its recreation, along with critical ambiguities in the original spec, made recreation a many man month ordeal. Until recently, those parties that did go through this ordeal chose to sell their implementations under somewhat expensive commercial licenses.
This is why so many applications could export VRML, but few could read it back in. This led to the spec remaining in the hands of a few commercial entities, where it has remained despite claiming an "open" consortium (that you must purchase a seat on.)
The new X3D spec is an interesting mapping of older VRML onto XML, but instead of simplifying things they chose (surprise) to map directly, retaining much of the original problem.
Inventors source release probably has more to do with Fahrenheight(sp).
Re:LIMIT 50 (Score:1)
Wake up and smell the sTuDlYcApS d00d. oss.sgi.com is an SGI 1000 series server. It has 2 700 MHz Intel weaklings. And yeah, it's running Linux. Maybe the download limit is there to keep ignorant fools from getting at it. Especially since you can get it by CVS too. oss.sgi.com is a lot more than just an FTP server; placing a limit on FTP connections is a sensible thing to do. Get a clue, man.
Oops (Score:1)
Sorry for the poor formatting.
Open Inventor:
* is built on top of OpenGL
...
* is fun to use
Anyone else find that last one humorous?
--weenie NT4 user: bite me!
Re:Open Inventor and VRML (Score:1)
Re:Why VRML Died (Score:1)
I wonder what would happen if they tried again? Now that we have 3D accelerators and broadband, VRML could possibly be an alternative to tools like Flash. I know that Flash and VRML are very different things, but I've had just about all the 2D vector graphics I can stand ^_^
Re:there is already an OS implementation (Score:1)
Coin and Open Inventor should have about the same functionality. Coin has a better configure/build system IMO, and has a Qt binding (and a Gtk binding in the works), and a couple of extra Linux-specific extensions like joystick4linux and video4linux textures (not in the main source archive).
Re:Open Inventor and VRML (Score:1)
Excuse me but why do we have to do your job? (Score:1)
At last - SGI have made a great call (Score:1)
Some History. (Score:3)
Open Inventor, as the FAQs will tell you, is a 3d format designed to work with OpenGL.
Mark Pesce [hyperreal.org] used Inventor as a starting point for VRML-1 around 1995. VRML-1 was the first real attempt to create a standard 3d file format that would work over the web. It has seen limited success as a standard of exchange betweed CAD programs.
A second version of VRML based loosely on VRML-1 (but not backward compatable with it) was proposed by one of the major industry players and rapidly became an ISO standard in 1997. By many arguments, it failed as a standard because the required plugin is not installed by default. There are other reasons too, but by and large, mention of VRML still gets a "huh?" even from some fairly computer savvy people.
The next version of VRML being developed by the Web3D Consortium [web3d.org] is based on XML. The tags are designed such that conversion from VRML97 to X3D is quite straightforward. If X3D is built into IE and Mozilla, we could finally see the standard VR format gaining acceptance.
As for all the Open Source software flying around in the 3d community now, it tends to make things less exciting from a money point of view. OTOH, I'm sure the same web designers who like to make bandwidth hogging flash sites are getting very excited now.
I am obviously biased in certain areas. Other, less biased histories can be found at: http://hiwaay.net/~crispen/vrml/history.html
Offtopic, I know, but ... (Score:1)
I'm looking for cost-free stuff that isn't cripware to get started. I have a very strong math/physics background, so I have no problem describing equations of motion, but I haven't the faintest as to how to get started.
Also, how prohibitive is the hardware for this kind of thing?
Re:'this could be useful...' (Score:3)
Maybe you haven't, but I can guarentee you've seen the results. VRML is based on OpenInventor, for example.
Projects I've been directly involved in that used OpenInventor include: Virtual Sets (On TBS and TNT, for "Inside the NBA" and "NFL halftime shows", as well as "People Count", a public service show), Moxy Moto (a character on the Cartoon Network awhile back), and "Kenny's Kourt" (formerly "Court Vision") on Inside the NBA.
Not only do you get "scene graph" management, but as you mentioned, you get 3D interface tools for interacting with your models, very easy selection methods for choosing parts of geometry, and really nice callback features. All this, and anything it can't do can simply be done in OpenGL, since that's the rendering context it uses anyway.
If you can't tell, I'm very excited about this. I've been looking at open source alternatives, but haven't really been totally happy. TGS already had a linux implementation, but for us hobbyists it was quite expensive, and had a really restrictive license (everyone who used your software needed a run time license).
But I thought that TGS (template graphics systems) "owned" Inventor now...maybe they just licensed it and the contract just expired, I don't know, but TGS has been the company maintaining it for the last couple of years. I'm really quite excited about this!
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Re:coin3d (Score:1)
Then if TGS [tgs.com] open sourced their Windows and MacOS versions of Open inventor that would be even nicer.
Re:Why VRML Died (Score:1)
I think VRML died because it was a technology without a purpose... okay, there are a lot of uses for VRML and VR in general, but they're pretty niche.
It's like all of those 'innovative new navigation schemes' the average Shockwave author comes out with: very pretty, but a list of links is usually more functional.
VRML was originally hyped as the technology 'the new web' would be based upon -- we'd stop writing flat pages and have everything 3D in cyberspace. It's a marketing person's wet dream, but it's easier to read Slashdot in a nice flat font than having to "explore" the latest JonKatz column from the surface of a texture mapped octahedron. Navigating my file hierarchy with a tree-like Explorer is bad enough, let alone leaping around it like Mario.
If three-dee was such a big deal for publishing, Playboy, GQ, et al would be pop-up books -- hey, that's not a bad idea... =)
Re:Open Inventor and VRML (Score:1)
I guess my view of using Open Inventor as a prototyping tool comes from being a game programmer. As such I feel compelled to implement everything from the ground up so I can eek every last ounce of performance out it.
Inventor could be called a tool for 'Getting It Done'(tm) which must be why it is used in scientific and visualization applications, where the application itself may be complicated enough without having to worry about how to draw everything. Sophisticated simulations are more likely to have their performance limited by sheer complexity than by graphics, so Inventor makes a lot of sense.
Re:What is Open Inventor? (Score:1)
If you mean that it's possible to do things faster in OpenGL, then you are right. But generally speaking, unless you are a masochist, OpenInventor is really pretty optimized, taking care of display lists and so forth for you.
And OpenGL isn't really accurately described as a "superset" of OpenGL, that would imply it's OpenGL and more functions - it's a C++ encapsulation of OpenGL is a more accurate description, that takes care of a LOT of dirty work for you, including picking and selecting and 3D interactivety (like the trackball and handlebox nodes).
Any interactive OpenGL applications benefit tremendously from OpenInventor. In fact, the 3D interaction is based on a SIGGRAPH paper from way back, which described the problems of interacting with 3D on a 2D screen. SGI did a fantastic job with this, in my opinion.
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Re:Graphics Attention (Score:1)
Re:Why VRML Died (Score:1)
--
"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life."
But the BNF was always freely available. (Score:1)
I think the format is quite simple and sensible. Of course, I may be biased from having used it for so many years.
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Re:First! (Score:2)
OT - Re:At last - SGI have made a great call (Score:1)
"The world is your oyster"
not, lobster ^_^. I am having trouble figuring out what "the world is your lobster" would actually mean if it was correct.
Also Apprentice Re:there is already an ... (Score:1)
Re:Open Inventor and VRML (Score:2)
VRML 1.0 was based on the Open Inventor ASCII *file format* with minor extensions like links to URL's but that's about all. Open Inventor is a rich 3D graphics API with manipulators and a suite of useful tools which have also been released. Literally thousands of 3D applications have been written on Open Inventor. It is primarily a 3D graphics programming interface which also has a native file format.
Re:Offtopic, I know, but ... (Score:5)
It depends. If you want to program still and animated 3D graphics, then you have quite a few choices. Here are a (tiny) subset of the ones I know:
If you're not interested in programming - just modelling and creating then check out:
All of these tools and references are free and work on Windows and Linux alike.
Also, how prohibitive is the hardware for this kind of thing?
All you need is a resonable midrange PC and a decent accelerator. A hardware-accelerated graphics card on your platform is a must to view complex 3D graphics at any kind of framerate. Vendors with good Linux support include include Ati, nVidia, Matrox and 3Dfx.
Open Inventor, from a user's perspective (Score:2)
Assume you have an arm attached to a body. You want to reach the arm out. You could rotate the shoulder, and the rest of the arm would rotate, as it would be down the object graph from the shoulder. You could add a second rotation onto the elbow, and then on down to the hand etc. Yes, you can do this with OpenGL, but the way OI does it is a bit easier to understand.
Plus, you had a "preview" program (Can't remember what it's called) where you can basically build your models out of OI widgits, and then get the text, so you know what the coordinates of everything are, etc. One of the handiest things in the world, IMO.
Re:Some History. (Score:2)
There is much more to Inventor than the file format, it is an API, not a file format, you develop powerfull 3D applications with this product, not meaningless graphics for web pages.
Re:Some History. (Score:2)
...and the FAQ WON'T tell you it's a 3D format, if you'd read the FAQ you'd know what it actually was. Go read the FAQ you cite.
Re:Offtopic, I know, but ... (Score:2)
If you're on Windows, check out www.strata3d.com
for a decent free, OpenGL accelerated modeler.
Also, check out www.gamedev.net. They've got some good message boards for OpenGL, and some good tutorials.
There are some good tutorials at http://nehe.gamedev.net/opengl.asp.
Re:Offtopic, I know, but ... (Score:1)
http://www.povray.org [povray.org]
POVRAY is a free, open source (not GPL but something similiar) ray tracing engine which has a fairly simple language for defining scenes.
It works with nearly every OS. However it is quite a bit different from OpenGL. POVRAY is a program for creating scenes and movies while OpenGL can be used for more interactive types of programs.
The source distribution of POVRAY has a file called povuser.txt which will walk you through a tutorial of its general features and capabilities.
F**king brilliant (Score:2)
They did an incredible job - it's one of the best designed C++ libraries I've ever used. It's not suitable for games but for putting good 3d interactive graphics in a professional program without spending *years* learning the details of OpenGL it is wonderful.
This is the one move that SGI could have made to prevent Direct3D winning the 3D api wars. Scenegraph based applications are an order of magnitude easier to program.
Thanks SGI - I might even buy another SGI now (I know SGIs came with OpenInventor - but it wouldn't work gcc before)
Re:What is Open Inventor? (Score:2)
Re:Some History. (Score:2)
Unfortunately, the API and the file format both appear to be called Open Inventor. At least, I have heard many people use the same phrase to mean too different things.
So, do you mean Open Inventor as in Free Beer, or Open Inventor as in Free Speach?
Of course you develop apps with the API, and of course the apps don't have to be used for stupid web graphics. That remark was tangential to... awwww fagedaboutit.
Re:OT - Re:At last - SGI have made a great call (Score:1)
Re:there is already an OS implementation (Score:2)
None of the others, not even Coin, is complete, they just don't compare favourably, the Inventor tree which has been released is the SAME fully functional code base that applications on IRIX have been developing against for years. It is the official implementation, not a separate implementation with gaps in functionality.
Re:'this could be useful...' (Score:3)
Not quite right. VRML 1.0 was based on OI. VRML 2.0 is not and barely resembles it terms of capabilities.
In the end, both try to do the same thing: Scengraph based graphics representation, User programmable behaviours, customisable/extensible node types. They just do it in very different ways.
But I thought that TGS (template graphics systems) "owned" Inventor now...maybe they just licensed it and the contract just expired,
Correct. The interesting thing that I want to know is how does this news effect the Coin3D [coin3d.org] folks who already have an OSS (QPL) version of OI. They were showing this off at Siggraph and it looked pretty complete and very quick.
Re:First! (Score:1)
('bout time we actually had an article the motivated people to type more than 'FP' as soon as they see it)
Re:Inventor derivation for VRML killed VRML (Score:2)
My contention has always been that failure to maintain backward compatability between VRML-1 and VRML-97 *seriously wounded* VRML. It isn't dead.
As for parsers, I have seen yacc compatable grammars for VRML-1 and VRML-97. I'm not sure what you mean by trivially parseable. The VRML grammars are certainly a lot easier to understand than the C-grammar.
I felt no need for a generated lexer/parser when I wrote my first VRML software back in '96. I wrote it all by hand, and continue to write parsers by hand, but maybe that's just me.
Wow... all of the sudden, Slashdot==comp.lang.vrml
Re:But the BNF was always freely available. (Score:2)
But not usable in a commercial product.
Sure the file format was simple, but the event model was very ambiguous and open ended in many fashions - and that's after my working group spent a lot of time trying to fix it with revisions to the ISO spec and then the EAI spec following that. (Yes, I lead the working groups to do that. Check the user bio).
I also spent a lot of time working on the J3D loader to get the model up to scratch and it is a real shit to do if you want anything other than a time zero loader.
My understanding of X3D is that they still haven't cleared up many of the inconsistencies, just swept them under the carpet.
Re:OT - Re:At last - SGI have made a great call (Score:1)
Frog51
Performer and Open Inventor? (Score:2)
Slightly OT, but we have all been talking about how the nVidia cards have the best consumer OpenGL ICD and that they will not release it to help Matrox and ATI etc. catch up........what chance of SGI (who MUST have the best OpenGL ICDs period) helping everyone play catchup instead.....then we can all have some Schweeeeeeeeeeet Free ICDs.
Parts of blender are GPL (Score:2)
The importance of OpenInventor (Score:2)
Re:LIMIT 50 (Score:1)
Re:Inventor derivation for VRML killed VRML (Score:3)
First the left right parser in order graph traversal just applies incremental state changes to the OpenGL state machine. This is easy, the application of these state changes is extremely well documented, intuitive and trivial.
Second, this traversal design has advantages and disadvantages, but it is a conscious decision. It is actually a powerful and intuitive way of structuring a database where as changes get made to a scene graph they have repercussions for the appearance of objects based on the predictable drawing order, this is how all graphics hardware works today and the state engine in OpenGL is the primary motivation for doing things this way.
Third, this approach seems efficient from a graphics and processing standpoint, unfortunately it is not. The main problem is that when you draw an object in the middle of the graph it's appearance potentially depends on data at any stage previously encountered in the graph traversal, this is entirely predictable but you still have to traverse the graph and at least check for the possibility. So, on balance I think it's the wrong approach but I can understand the motivation.
Fourth, this is DEFINITELY NOT what killed VRML, what killed VRML was the utter lack of demand at that time for 3D on the web. SGI sunk millions into the Cosmo effort and pulled the plug when the "second web" didn't happen (OK you might say it did but it wasn't about 3D cartoons in a web browser). With hindsight there was insufficient interest to justify the expense of making 3D easy enough to be viable. Meanwhile folks smart enough to invest in real infrastructure software for B2B or eCommerce made a killing.
Just look how fast VRML died when SGI stopped pumping millions into it's development & promotion. It practically vanished overnight but it was an Open 3D format, and it was good enough as a standard to get used if it was needed. Just look at some of the horrendously bad standards out there. The traversal order issue is trivial by comparison and certainly didn't affect the acceptance.
Finally, this Open Source release has zip, nada, zero to do with the Fahrenheit project. It is definitely a grass roots effort, I know because I saw it happening and I saw the engineers (and a few folks in marketing) arguing passionately for this to happen. If Fahrenheit were still around it might have been different but one of the reasons Fahrenheit isn't around is SGI's commitment to Linux and inability to get Fahrenheit on that platform so there's nothing sinister here. This release is about helping Linux growth and applications availability, improving support for Inventor, and meeting customer demand for Inventor on Linux.
Re:Why VRML Died (Score:2)
VRML was, in this aspect, pretty similar to HTML: you can write code by hand and produce tight, optimized files, or you can use FrontPage and produce bloat. Of course, it was quite more difficult to code 3D scenes on your own, by hand, (which reminds me of my POV-Ray using days... but I disgress), but that's why you had gzip for.
Re:Some History. (Score:2)
It's LGPL, it's free speech..... and beer if you used to pay $4000 for a licencse from a private vendor.
Offtopic. (Score:1)
As most of you know, the GeForce2 Ultra Windows drivers took a jump to version 6 (detonator 3.) However, it seems that most of the performance improvements in Detonator 3 are already in the Linux OpenGL driver. That's a bad thing. Since it seems that the Detonator 3 drivers improve performance by 20% or so on average, it means that the benchmarks where Linux was running neck-and-neck with Windows were inaccurate. If benchmarking is done between equal platforms, Detonator3 and Linux OpenGL, it might show that Linux was still 20% or more behind the performance of the Windows drivers. Is anybody aware of such a test? Also can anybody back up the fact that the Linux OGL driver contain the tweeks in Detonator 3. My source was some guy on Slashdot, be he seemed to know what he was talking about.
Re:Why VRML Died (Score:2)
VRML used the ASCII 3D format which is naturally very large, much larger that a binary equivalent and a binary inventor format existed, although compressing the ascii should have been possible.
I expect the motivation was to allow people to text edit the data in ascii format, much as you can with html. This is a strength of Inventor but it's getting to the stage where this kind of thing is impractical.
Re:Real(tm) apps (Score:2)
Re: Excuse me but why do we have to do your job? (Score:1)
My sentiments exactly.
"Woohoo! A software title is now open source! High fives, everybody. Erm, but can someone tell us what it is?"
Re:Performer and Open Inventor? (Score:2)
On the diff between Performer and Inventor, the text you posted is completely accurate although Performer is not Open Source.
Java3D (Score:1)
J3D is portable across udnerlying 3D libraries. Currently there are version for both OpenGL and Direct3D.
Re:Open Inventor (Score:1)
Re:Java3D (Score:1)
Inventor - a higher level than OGL (Score:1)
On the down side, it tried to be all things to all people so it was (at the 1.0 level anyway) very large. It had a huge number of methods and a gigantic symbol table (link times were a little slow.) Also, because it implemented a scene graph to enable fast drawing and abstracting the data rep away from you, it often meant that you ended up with 2 copies of our scene data unless you built the app to use Inventor specifically from the begining. i.e. I was asked to attach an Inventor viewer to an existing app. I would have to take the data structures from that app and pass them into Inventor's Scene Graph via the Inventor api, where this data was duplicated in Inventor's internal data structures. Even freeing the external apps data rep meant that the memory was still around, just ready to be used for the next malloc, which either lead to fragmentation of high memory use.
All of these observations are based off of 1.0, not sure what it looks like now. I'd use it again, but if I were building an app aroudnd it, I'd make sure that I designed the data structures to mesh with Inventor well.
Re:'this could be useful...' (Score:1)
TGS's version of Inventor, however, has several things in it that the Open Source version doesn't have (yet). These include the capability to load VRML 2.0 files and thread safe code.
Tied to Motif? (Score:1)
Does anyone know how closely tied it is to Motif? Is it the whole thing, or just a small part? How hard would it be to use it in, say, a GTK+ [gtk.org] program without dragging Motif (or even Lesstif [lesstif.org]) along with it?
(I would download it myself and take a look, but their server seems to be /.'ed.)
Re:'this could be useful...' (Score:1)
Open Open Inventor, from one of its developers (Score:5)
Synopsis
Ultimately, Open Inventor is useful as a 3D prototyping tool. It's a great way to get a simple, interactive 3D program running quickly.
Beyond that, I don't think that it's particularly useful. It falls into the classic trap of 'jack of all trades, master of none'. There is nothing that it does particlarly well except prototyping; so there are no rich Inventor applications.
My experience with Inventor
When I started at Silicon Graphics working on Inventor, (or Scenario as it was called at the time) I was filled with optimism and excitement. This tool was going to make 3D ubiquitous. I had thought that the reason that there were so few 3D applications was that they were too hard to write; and that by building a generic high-level toolkit we could solve that problem.
The big problem ended up being that by building a high-level toolkit; you end up taking over the application. If you want to provide high-level functionality, you necessarily have to circumscribe the possible applications. You have to adopt the Inventor scene graph, nodes, and traversal. These may not be appropriate for your particular application, in fact, they are almost guaranteed not to be. You can extend Inventor by creating your own nodes, and several users have done that to get more performance; and a closer match between their application and the Inventor infrastructure -- but that's only a step along the way to creating your complete independent application IMHO.
There were great things about the Inventor development experience. I have never worked with as bright or dedicated a team of programmers as Carey, Strauss, Paul Isaacs, Nik Thompson, Dave Mott, Dave Immel, Josie Wernecke, and Alain Dumesney. I was in charge of backups, and it was not uncommon that almost every of the hundreds of source modules was changed in a day -- we were making large scale changes at an incredibly rapid pace as we prototyped, learned, and experimented. ILM was one of our beta-sites, and they got more out of Inventor than I ever thought that they would.
Inventor also cured me of C++. It seemed at first that C++ would be perfect for something like Inventor; but it was a near disaster IMHO (not shared by everyone on the team, I should point out.) C++ gives you some extra rope; but it quickly becomes tangled around your neck.
The biggest problem by far was nodes and traversals. You can think about them as two different dimensions. Nodes are things like cubes, cylinders, materials, colors, lights, and so on; while traversals are for rendering, bounding box calculation, printing, and the like. Nodes are the nouns, and traversals are the verbs.
C++ works for one-dimensional extensions, but we had to resort to a traditional function table to do this two-dimensional extension. It works, but it's a mess; and the language only got in the way instead of helping. This is only one of the many examples were the promise of C++ was not only not fulfilled, but was shown to be the exact opposite of what was promised; it hindered rather than helped.
Going forward
At Siggraph this year, there were no less than four scene graphs for Linux discussed during the Linux/OpenGL BOF meeting. I wish them luck, and hope that they find something useful in the Inventor source.
OpenInventor hacks (Score:1)
http://vismod.www.media.mit.edu/people/kbrussel/Iv y/
With Ivy, you can mess witb OpenInventor interactively, from the scheme prompt. Can't beat it!
Re:Tied to Motif? (Score:1)
Re:Java3D (Score:1)
And why should putting it ontop of OI make it any faster?
As has been already posted and discussed, Java computational performance is a match for C+= today. (See Chris Rijk's excellently researched and analyzed article "Binaries v. Bytecodes" on www.aceshardware.com.)
Going to native code can actually slow down Java applications. For an explaination on why this is true, see the Native code section of the book "Java Platform Performance: Strategies and tactics."
I'm not dead yet (thwak!) (Score:1)
The best thing about VRML is that anybody can make a VRML model. It's plain text (utf8) and marvelous worlds have been built using nothing more than vi or notepad. The worst thing about VRML is that anybody can make a VRML model.
A 200K file for a little bitty building is obscene. You absolutely did not do this by hand. You got it from a modeler that exported VRML, and you figured, "hell, it parses, let's put it on the Web".
I'm not singling you out. Far from it. The thing that was the absolute worst PR for VRML was that easily half the VRML worlds out there were bloated pigs just like your world. That's because hardly anybody valued small, fast worlds, and even fewer knew how to build them. For instance, I've got three VRML decimators (one uses Garland & Heckbert, one uses Hoppe, and I don't know what the third one uses), and I wouldn't dream of publishing a VRML model on the web without sending it through at least one of the decimators.
And don't get me started on color and lighting. Jesus H. Christ, you can do beautiful things with lighting in VRML. You don't have photon tracing (which means the scene will render in your lifetime) but you've got enough effects to make something really beautiful. Not one world in a twenty uses anything but the headlight and primary colors. That alone is responsible for VRML's rep as "cartoonish".
There are many better examples than this one [hiwaay.net] of what you can do with color and lighting when you take a little time, but I might as well toot my own horn.
Rev. Bob "Bob" Crispen
The VRMLworks [hiwaay.net]
Re:Java3D (Score:1)
As has been already posted and discussed, Java computational performance is a match for C+=[you mean C++ ?] today.
I have not done any J3D and only a little AWT and Swing but I have done a ton of Java(http://jcifs.samba.org [samba.org]) and I frankly don't see how what you say above is possible. Java is slow. Java AWT is slower. I found the article you mention but just don't have time to read the whole thing at this moment. You have a relavent section you can point me to? A string I can search on using find in the browser would be great.
KidSock
Re:Inventor derivation for VRML killed VRML (Score:1)
What does B2B stand for?
Re:Graphics Attention (Score:1)
Re:Why VRML Died - platform support (Score:1)
I have a slightly different perspective on this. IMO, the main reason that VRML died was because the tools were pretty much Windows and IRIX only, at a time when most 'net content was created by Mac designers working with Unix (but not necessarily IRIX) people.
--
My name is Sue,
How do you do?
Now you gonna die!
Re:Inventor derivation for VRML killed VRML (Score:2)
I agree that ultimately "utter lack of demand at that time for 3D on the web" was the ultimate problem. But VRML came out at a time when, if implemented properly (i.e. high-speed plugins), it could have stimulated that demand. Those in the community continue to becry the need for "the killer app", without realising that games continue to distract the 3d mass market, and hold a bar far past the 'academic' (i.e. more accurate color model but 1/10 the frame rate) rendering pipelines available for VRML.
Also, there is a relationship to Fahrenheit here: SGI invested a great deal of time and resources on this new scene graph model, only to have Microsoft steal some of their best people and introduce the platform restriction. Releasing OpenInventor as OpenSource is an attempt to regain mindshare in the scene graph API space that they lost when Fahrenheit was dumped back to MS.
I'm not attributing bad motives to SGI, the LGPL Inventor release was a "good thing" (although I'd like to see a less encumbered license.) I also still remember quite vividly that they promised for SEVERAL YEARS!!!!! to make the VRML grammer available for unemcumbered use, and never did, and ultimately sold it to a corportion that merely sat on it.
only the runtime was free. SDK was always extra. (Score:1)
Only the runtime for Open Inventor was supplied with IRIX. The developer kit was always available for an extra charge (until now I guess).
Anyway this is very exciting news!
Performance isn't simple (Score:1)
BUT if you want a soundbite, the soundbite is this...
There is no magic here. Java compiles to native code just as C or C++ does. At run-time however (when Java compiles) there is optimization information on what your program actually does that is not available at "build-time" when C++ compiles which thsu results in ebtter optimisation of the code.
Additionally Hotspot does "risky optimizations" because it can back them out if the guesses prove wrong. This is something a build-time compiler cannot do.
Finally, you can amke any code slow but ineffective/inappropriate programming. Most Java prgorammers are still very new to the language and how it works. It hasn't been around long enough for a body of practices to build up yet.
In that regard, I find this whole "java is slow" thing frankly ratehr amusing. If yo uwant to take a time-trip back 5 years, take any senatce with the words "java is slow" in it, and repalce the word "java" with the word C++
Re:Inventor derivation for VRML killed VRML (Score:1)
Microsoft announced that they will not be productizing XSG (what they ended up calling the Fahrenheit scene graph). There wasn't any lost mindshare to be gained back.
I also still remember quite vividly that they promised for SEVERAL YEARS!!!!! to make the VRML grammer available for unemcumbered use, and never did, and ultimately sold it to a corportion that merely sat on it.
If you're referring to Cosmo3D, what happened was a little more complex. Cosmo Software was spun off and acquired by Platinum, who did publically commit to open sourcing Cosmo3D. However, Platinum was then acquired by CAI (at which point I believe the remaining Cosmo engineers left or were laid off), and CAI didn't follow through.
Re:Tied to Motif? (Score:1)
There's nothing stopping you from opening up your own window and then tying the rendering context it.
libInventor.so (the core Open Inventor library) is window system independant (mostly). The only exception I can think of off the top of my head is the offscreen renderer which has some X code (but no Motif.)
Re:Java3D (Score:1)
http://www.igd.fhg.de/CP/kahlua/ [igd.fhg.de]
Re:Performance isn't simple (Score:1)
I'll have to say "bull" on this one. What extra information would byte code have that source code wouldn't? Sound's like a perpetual motion machine to me. Just feed the byte code back into a "byte byte code compiler" and get super duper optimized code. Seriously, though optimizing code paths in a running program is the only thing Java has up on plain ole C++. I say plain old, because C++ makes compile time vs. optimization vs. size trade offs. But if you look at super optimizing compilers Digital/Compaq's new C/C++ compiler or add on packages like Intel's VTune or the GNU Super Optimizer, you start to see some of the tricks that Sun uses on Java.
The reason Java performs pretty decently nowadays is because Sun had to invest heavily in alternative algorithms and compile strategies. Example is the benchmark Sun showed proving Java could allocate/deallocate memory faster than C++. It only proved that Sun's memory algorithm was better. If you could bolt their memory allocator onto a C++ compiler, you'd probably see the pendulum swing the other way.
Comparing Java to C++ is like comparing different CPU architectures. On the surface they may appear equal (or one appears better) but when you start to look at the work per clock you start to get an idea of how efficient each CPU really is. Java may have cool tricks, but you're going to lose performance some where. If you thought C++ programs took forever to load, look at Java. Now, instead of the inconvenience of waiting for code to compile, you now have the inconvenience of waiting for it to load (or load parts of it) -- only to get achieve the performance plain ole C++ has been providing for years.
Re:Java3D (yeah, it sucks) (Score:2)
The performance of Java 3D is abysmal. Sure, you can build a few 3D molecules, but try mapping video onto it in real-time. Uh-uh; no way. Try powering it with a big graph, oh, say 30 objects or so (*nothing* in OpenGL)... forget it. Open Inventor is not the fastest engine on the planet (not supposed to be), but it's WAY faster than Java3D.
I still hold out hope for Java. It's got a future as a replacement for CGI, or database clients, but don't even think of using it where you need performance and access to system level hardware acceleration.
Peace.
Scott
yes (Score:1)
python... (Score:1)
Re:SGI at Linuxworld (Score:1)
Re:Graphics Attention (Score:1)
Just couldn't resist. :) And yes, I've worked with OIV on that platform. There's nothing you could offer me that would get me to use a microsoft product ever again. *shudder* Just thinking about that experience is disturbing.
Re:Inventor derivation for VRML killed VRML (Score:2)
Most of the errors are glaring but I'll address the most glaring offensive to the real engineers at SGI:
You claim Microsoft stole SGI's best people. I can't think of one. I think one engineer form SGI did some contracting for Microsoft after SGI halted it's efforts on Fahrenheit but Microsoft didn't steal any of SGI's best people, never mind the hoards you imply. Good people have left SGI at various times for places like NVIDIA, ArtX, ATI, 3DFX and others but I can assure you that Microsoft isn't the place SGI engineers dream of working in, the very opposite is true. The assertion is almost comical, and they can keep Rocket Rick Beluzzo, he exploded on the launch pad after FSG hit the fan.
Re:The importance of OpenInventor (Score:2)
It would never fly, not after Cosmo3D, OpenGL++ & Fahrenheit. The API story has come full circle and landed back at square one, if you look at the history of this you might guess why but there are other scene graph products supported by SGI based on customer demand, it's not about scene graph wars. The time for that has passed, there's a more pragmatic climate out there and as others have already observed, scene graphs make distinctive design tradeoffs which affect suitability for specific markets. For example SGI also has Volumizer, Performer, and Optimizer which fulfill rather specific requirements which Open Inventor isn't ever likely to address.
Re:Inventor derivation for VRML killed VRML (Score:2)
Nobody can say for sure what else might have emerged in those days, but I'd guess it would have taken way longer, may have ended up worse than Open Inventor and would have ultimately fared no better in the market. The Open Inventor choice helped support for VRML especially early on, that seems obvious and contradicts your claim. Could the format be improved for some applications? Yes. Was there a better choice available for VRML? Probably not.
Re:Tied to Motif? (Score:1)
Check us out at www.coin3d.org [coin3d.org].
Regards,
Morten (Coin developer)