Java 3D

[01001101]

Hey, I want to start upping my applications and programming in a 3D environment. I found the Java 3D API and wanted to install it on my machine.

Forgive me if this is stupid, but I'm not exactly sure how to install it. I've been using actual applications for programming like eclipse and when I download the file for Linux of the Java API (Java SE Desktop Technologies - Java 3D API) I just get a bin file.

I went to the install guide at Java 3D 1.5.1 Installation Instructions, and followed all the instructions. I didn't get any error message, I just don't know how to start the API. Is there any way that I can integrate it in with Eclipse or something?

[quad64bit]

If you're really interested in 3d, I would strongly recommend using an openGL binding instead. As far as I know, the Java3D package isn't hardware accelerated, and since it is it's own special API, you'd spend a lot of time learning something that isn't of much use anywhere else. JOGL and LWJGL are both java-openGL bindings. JOGL (Java Open GL) has been around for a while, but I find it's tutorials to be lacking, outdated, and constantly non-functional. LWJGL (Light Weight Java Game Library) supports more than just openGL, it also has OpenAL for audio, and OpenCL for GPU programming included. It's a rather simple to use framework, that still exposes OpenGL directly. When you use it, you can make polygons and all sorts of things, and it is hardware accelerated and cross platform.

Minecraft was written using LWJGL if I'm not mistaken.

lwjgl.org - Home of the Lightweight Java Game Library
JOGL - Java Binding for the OpenGL API

Good Luck!