Struggling to understand GLCanvas / GLPanel

In order to make my software work with webswing I need to use GLCanvas / GLPanel as webswing doesn't like heavyweight components. I'm really struggling trying to understand how to implement this.

Right now I have a JDialog with a Canvas3D as a child and all my code uses Java3D. I think I need to change the Canvas3D to a GLCanvas? But clearly it's not that simple as things like SimpleUniverse and PickCanvas which take a Canvas3D in their constuctors won't take a GLCanvas.

I think there is something fundamental about Java3D / Jogamp and JOGL I'm failing to understand. Do need to bin my Java3D code and convert it all to JOGL equivalents?

Java3d is essentially its own library, it started off doing its own direct OpenGL or directx rendering and eventually moved to using jogl on the backend for that part. You can't really mix and match the jogl and java3d pieces. While in the long term it's probably better to move away from canvas3d and take a render able from jogl, this would be a massive break of the java3d API and probably more trouble than it's worth for existing users.

My $0.02

Harvey

unixnerd, you could port your code to another 3D engine or framework that uses GLCanvas and GLJPanel, for example JogAmp's Ardor3D Continuation but it's not a trivial task and I can't be sure that Webswing will work with that.

Phil needed to use NEWT to support Android, maybe his work could be used to provide another canvas extending GLCanvas instead of using Canvas3D.

Thanks for the help guys, going to have to have a long think about the way forward for this.

Is there a public document somewhere about which subset of JOGL is supported in Webswing?

They have demos with source code on the website. I've raised support tickets a few times with the guys there and they're really friendly and quick in responding. Quite gutted I'm not going to be able to go forward with them :-(