Re: [Gnu3dkit-dev] G3DBezier follow-up

[Philippe C . D . Robert]

On Tuesday, October 15, 2002, at 06:06  Uhr, Brent Gulanowski wrote:
> Another question that I hope isn't idiotic, but how does one make use 
> of a G3DBezier object? I mean, how could one draw one? Will we create 
> some more G3DGeometryExtensions that will allow us to produce 
> tesselated/submissible versions of the bezier, plane, sphere, line and 
> other such mathematical objects in some form suitable for OpenGL? 
> Actually, extensions alone might not be enough -- although I guess we 
> could have something which returns a vertex array simplification.

I am not sure myself ..:-) This object was mainly written by Frederic 
Chauvin, I am not sure why he wanted to have it initially. I never 
really used it in a project...

> Since OpenGL has support for NURBS (through GLU), would that route be 
> worth considering? Or would we want to provide our own code? I'm 
> making the hopefully not absurd assumption that we are hoping to draw 
> Bezier and related curves. But perhaps the intention is to leave this 
> up to individual users.

We should consider adding a powerful but simple to use mesh class (a 
subclass of G3DGeometry in the RK), but we should also avoid using GLU!

> If (when) I manage to produce a dynamic procedural LOD mesh generation 
> class (hey, I can always use the code in that article I quoted earlier 
> -- the author posted C++ code for free, so I might just port it), 
> maybe there will be some overlap in functionality.

I'd rather have a nice G3DMesh class in the RK using vertex arrays etc. 
as pure mathematical classes in the GK which are then used by the user 
or RK...

> This brings up a general question. I know of quite a few Open Source 
> projects, most under the LGPL, which already have massive amounts of 
> functionality in them, albeit mostly in C++ (Quesa, Crystal Space, 
> Celestia, IScape -- a cool terrain renderer, Genesis3D, PanardVision, 
> Gizmo3D). What is the attitude towards scavenging whatever we can find 
> and Obj-C-ifying it for use in G3DKit?

Well, this depends on what, what for and where...:-) I guess for 
creating a special purpose utility library this makes sense. For the RK 
itself, I am not sure...

> Here's another link re: terrain LOD, this time with screen captures: 
> http://tulrich.com/geekstuff/chunklod.html

Thanks.

-Phil
--
Philippe C.D. Robert
http://www.nice.ch/~phip