Real Software Forums

Hey all,
I want to graph some data in one of my programs and would like to create a basic x,y,z axis and plots some points in 3d space, be able to zoom in and out and rotate the camera etc. I download the RBGL3d class and managed to create a camera and some empty space, pretty exciting. I guess now I'm just looking for the simplest way of creating these plots. I don't need texture mapping, or anything fancy I would be supper happy with floating multi-colored-balls. Can any one help me out getting this off the ground. I have about zero experience with 3d, and don't really want to have to learn too much to get this off the ground. Since there is really no documentation for the RBGL library I'm not really making any progress.
Thanks in advance!
Julian

RBGL's API is the same as RB3D's — you should be able to use RB's language reference to glean what each equivalent function is. The primary difference is the addition of the prefix RB3D to each of the function names. But why not use RB3D itself?

Neither RBGL or RB3D builds spheres (or any other shapes, for that matter) for you automatically — you'll have to build that yourself. For RB3D, you can load in a pre-built 3DMF model from a 3D modeler like Meshwork (http://codenautics.com/meshwork/). Meshwork can easily build a sphere for you.

As to moving a camera, things get more complicated. Depending on how you position/rotate/zoom your camera, it's going take a bit of math to get the camera where you want it. Joe Strout's 3D FAQ at http://www.strout.net/info/coding/rb/ has some code for orbiting and aiming a camera.

I did a post a couple years ago about how to do a Cube in 3rd.
Check it out here:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=22359&p=118363&hilit=Carmine#p118363

(I don't have the .zip on my site anymore, but all the code is in the post i think)