Customer Reviews

The Java 3D(TM) API Specification (2nd Edition)

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This book has a good summary of the beta version of the Java3D API. Unfortunately, the book hasn't been updated since then, and the API has significantly changed. This is a reference book, and it contains very sparse overall descriptive information.

As a reference book, it's very frustrating and difficult to use, because so much of the API has changed.

As an overview book, it contains some good information, but not much.

I'm not really happy with this book on either count.

Almost all of the material in this book is a slightly more verbose explanation of what can be found in the docs. If used as a reference this is fine, but for someone who is trying to learn Java 3D it would probably be more useful to get a book that goes through examples and explains more clearly from the ground up. While it was not written badly, this book does not explain the concepts as clearly as they could have been. All of the examples I looked at come with the Java 3D distribution. Personally I would just download all the documentation and the Java 3D tutorial and not spend the $50.

I found this to be a very thorough technical reference on the Java 3D environment. Though it's available online through Sun's Java website, the printed version is conducive to bookmarks and highlighting. Keep in mind, though, that this is a technical reference. Sun's website has an excellent tutorial that explains the basic Java 3D constructs and walks you through several program examples.

The API introduction describes basic SceneGraph construction, Java 3D's three rendering modes, and has a so-called 'recipe' for writing a Java 3D program. Although the discussion of rendering modes was insightful, I thought the SceneGraph and 'recipe' material was much too brief. The online tutorial does a better job of describing SceneGraph construction, and uses the utility class SimpleUniverse as an alternative to constructing the View BranchGraph by hand.

The chapters following the Introduction delve more deeply into the various Scene Graph objects and their construction.

The book excels, however, at describing the finer points of Java 3D. Immediate-Mode Rendering, described in Chapter 13, gives the programmer the flexibility of drawing directly to the canvas and eliminates the need to construct the content portion of the scene graph. I'm surprised the book doesn't mention the SimpleUniverse class, because it's basically shown in the minimal scene graphs in Figures 8-2 and 13-1.

Appendix C, which describes Java 3D's view model, will be particularly useful to those of you porting OpenGL programs to Java 3D. The appendix is a thorough treatise of the how's and why's of Java 3D's view model, including the little-known Compatibility Mode which supports traditional Camera-based views.

Though the book is terse in parts and sometimes requires a bit of digging to find the more esoteric aspects of Java 3D, it is nevertheless an indispensable reference to have on hand.