Java3d 1.6 Internal Rendering Questions.

-I aim to use the Java3D internal renderer to load a Blender 3D. blend file to render an Animation.
You can view my animation file at

https://sabercathost.com/90xW/Animation.blend

The java lib I plan to use is java .Blend,

http://homac.cakelab.org/projects/JavaBlend/

-If using java.Blend, Does Java3D 1.6 include rendering detection support for Freestyle Marked Line Edges from Blender 3D?

-If using java.Blend, does Java 3D support consistent detection for coincident surfaces, all containing the identical
material object reference?

Hi

JavaBlend is excellent. Blender export to Collada seems to loose the actions which is problematic and a bit tricky to work around, maybe rmk0 knows that far better than me. I find JavaBlend excellent.

I'm not sure that Java3D has such features, maybe the latter is ok but not the former. Phil and Harvey might confirm or not.

Do you plan to use skeletal animations or key frame animations?

-I plan to use key frame animations at least, though any support for skeletal animations would be good, were they there in Java3D 1.6 too.

Can Phil and Harvey reply to my questions here, or can their username links be supplied in a reply here?

ZacharyABCD,

There is no importer currently for blend files, you will have to build one yourself. But it's been done before for LWJGL and JMonkeyEngine, so I presume looking at those solutions will get you moving. However it appears that there is no one currently loading animations in.

All the current JAva3D loader do not load animations, so obj file loaders just load static meshes.

Java3D does have extensive support for Behaviours and Interpolators of all kinds, obviously particularly the Transform Interpolators.

I have spent many long years importing the animations from NetImmerseFile formats, and it is unfortunately no small task. But the end results can be excellent video

Lines can be rendered using the LineAttributes of appearance and if they need to act as outlines stencils can be used via RenderingAttributes of Appearance

Coincident surfaces are detected correctly by the NormalGenerator, so if your model data doesn't contain normals, they cane be generated. If this is a reference to the Blender Line rendering issue of more than 3 faces using an edge, then that won't be an issue, as your data will have to be transformed into vertices and triangles before being rendered on the OpenGL driver, and that transformation step will explicitly declare every vertex.

I'm not sure if the above answers your question exactly, please feel free to elaborate on your thinking.

Thanks,
Phil.

-Is there addition work being done on Java3D to include implementation of the Blender 3D timeline or dopesheet?
For loading and submission to Java3D of an Animation, with Key Frames?  Could there be?

If you are not committed to Java3D maybe you will find other engines are more suited to your use case.
My personal preference is jMonkeyEngine (http://jmonkeyengine.org), it has support for reading blender files or other export formats like OgreXML.

-At least to start with, I am aiming for Java3D rendering itself.

-Is there addition work being done on Java3D to include implementation of the Blender 3D timeline or dopesheet?
For loading and submission to Java3D of an Animation, with Key Frames?  Could there be?

jmaasing wrote

If you are not committed to Java3D maybe you will find other engines are more suited to your use case.
My personal preference is jMonkeyEngine (http://jmonkeyengine.org), it has support for reading blender files or other export formats like OgreXML.

-Is there someone who can address the focus of my questioning?

Zachary,
No there is no plan to write an importer for blend files, sorry.

Currently all development efforts for Java3D are in improving it's support for OpenGLES 3 and getting it running on Android.

The next item after that will probably be support for GL4 or Vulkan, and things like shadows, and better multi FBO pass support.

But if you want to write an importer it would be gratefully incorporated in the java3d-utils!

Phil.

I see what the dope sheet is, it's far from being trivial.

You can look at this loader, it's a good source of inspiration as it supports key frame animations and it's based on Java3D:
http://arnoux.ch/thierry/Anim8orLoader/

You have to subclass com.sun.j3d.loaders.LoaderBase. SweetHome 3D has a DAE (Collada) loader and a 3DS loader too.