Looking for opinions of 3d graphic programming

Marvin Thorman

I have done quite a bit of work in Matlab. I picked up C# last year and have done some extensive programming there too. I would like to rewrite some of my matlab 3d surface programs in c#. As a math teacher, I am not to terribly interested in game programming, rather the ability plot a mathematical surface and spin them in space. I would also like to be able to wrap an image onto a 3d object. For example, I wrote a program for my students for spereical trig. They had to compute the launch angle to rendevous with the moon. To illustrate the problem, and allow them to visualize what different angles did, I wrote a program that wrapped an image of the earth around a sphere and then had myself a 3d globe that I could spin in space and dipect multiple plane passing through it. I would like to be able to control the alpha blending to adjust transparency. I would like to be able to just send some kind of mesh of points to the engine and let it display it appropriately. Is it easiest to do this directly from directx or opengl or get some external library. I would rather not reinvent the wheel. I would like open source if possible, but could put a couple of hundred down for a professional library if it was a good one and did what I want it to do.''

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Scott Lysle19y ago
I see, you are looking specifically for a library that you can code your own applications against; there are actually some good 3D CAD modeling tools that can generate the datasets you might be looking for but I don't know of any libraries; I have not used the free stuff but, using CATIA, I have built 3D datasets that were used to do things such as define complex castings or build stereolithography models; in fact, I built the F-22 stick grip and throttle grips doing exactly that; first in stereolith, and then from the castings built from the same dataset.

Matlab does have some extension (I don't know the cost) that can be used with their product to do 3D modeling but it seems more aimed at things like flight simulation.

Once place you might want to look is FreeBytes (http://www.freebyte.com/cad/cad.htm#2D3DCADSystems) section on 2D and 3D cad modeling tools. There is one in particular you might find interesting since it does solids and surface modeling, you can find it here: http://www.powershape-e.com/. I have not used it and it might stink but it might be worth looking at. In my experience, I used CATIA and Pro/E for engineering quality 3d modeling; neither of which is for the budget minded. As far as third party libraries, I don't know of anything right off hand that would fit the bill, LEADTOOLS has a lot of imaging libraries (not cheap, the vector imaging library and SDK is about $2,000) and I am not sure that it would do what you want it to do anyway. They seem to focus on medical imaging more so than other areas and that is a stretch of a comparison against what you are looking for.
Mike Gold19y ago
I think you need something like AutoCAD for that
Marvin Thorman19y ago
Those two links are more for drawing by hand type of authoring. I am talking about mathematical surfaces. The bottom 3 images on the following link are samples of what I am wanting to do in c#. I want to write software that will display the mathematical surfaces and allow me to manipulate them. http://www.collegedaleacademy.com/thorman/
Scott Lysle19y ago
Well, these tools might not be exactly what you are looking for but here are a couple you might look at: (the price is right anyway)

OpenSource Blender
http://www.blender.org/

Alice 3D from Carnegie Mellon's Stage 3 Research Group
http://www.alice.org/