The Underscore Archives

Hi All

 

I'm new to this mail-group and was recommended it by an associate as a
potential source for answers to my questions.

I am a 3D artist (as such) and the mainstay of my work is in character
modelling and animation. I am currently feedup with the quality of avatars
presented on the web and would like to develop an engine to up the bar a
bit.

 

A brief outline of what a want to do:

 

I want to compile a 3d real-time rendering engine for delivery via the web.
I understand there are real-time engines out there such as Kit3D for
silverlight, Papervision3D for flash and other open-source game engines such
as Ogre but I hope that by streamlining the code to focus on specific
deliverables that performance can be improved (10000 polys on an avatar as
opposed to a whole world)

 

The engine will need to do the following (at least):

1.                   Render a single avatar with a relatively high
polygon-count (no 3d worlds here)

2.                   cope with textures, shadows and bone deformation

3.                   receive animation feed from external source (xml
probably)

4.                   not require downloads by the user (no plugins like cult
3D etc)

 

 

Now I am fishing for answers about the following:

1.                   What would be the best language for me to write this in
(Java3D, Cg, C++, WPF, etc)

2.                   For future proofing can anyone recommend w3D over
collada.

 

I have done some research and it seems to find that Java3D, WPF or Cg is the
route I should adopt.

I am familiar with action script programming and lingo having learnt to
program on spectrum BASIC so am in no way an uber-coder but I am keen to
learn and willing to buy books or even collaborate with a willing coder.

 

Any thoughts anyone, I may be biting of too much here but if any one is
interested in this area and can help me with some advice and guidance I am
certainly not scared to make the attempt.

 

Regards

 

Adrian