CS324e - Assignment 8

Placed Online: Wednesday, November 28
Due: Thursday, December 6, no later than 11 pm (Note: You may NOT use slip days on Assignment 8.)
Points: 50, about 5% of the final grade
Program Shell: Java3D_DIY.java

Individual Assignment. This is an individual assignment. You must complete the assignment on your own. You may use the examples shown in class as a guide, but you may not get help from anyone besides the instructor and TA. Copying code or getting code from anyone besides the the instructor or TA is cheating and will result in an F in the course. You can discuss approaches to the problem with others as long as you don't write code or look at code. You may get help on syntax errors from others.

Purpose: The purpose of the assignment is to create a program using Java3D to build a simple 3D scene with animation

References: You may find the following references useful.

• Java3D documentation

• Java3D Tutorial from Oracle

• Another Java3D Tutorial with some simple examples

 Getting Started:  The Java3D package is not part of the standard Java library. The computers in the Painter Hall 5th floor lab already have Java3D loaded.

To use the lab machines:

•  start a new Eclipse project.

• in the project select the Project menu option, scroll down and select Properties
  

• in the window that pops up select Java Build Path and the Libraries tab
  
   
• click the Add External JARs button
• navigate to C:\Program Files\Java\Java3D\1.5.1\lib\ext and select the 3 jars jd3core.jar, j3dutils.jar, and vecmath.jar and click the open button
  
  
  
   
• click the okay button
• To test if you have added the jars correctly create a new class named HelloUniverse. Copy and past the code from HelloUniverse.java. If you have set things up correctly the HelloUniverse program can be run and shows a spinning ColoredCube.

If you want to work on your own computer you will have to download and install Java3D.

For Macs you can visit this site. The instructions for installing are here. (Note, I have not tried to set up Java3D on a Mac myself. Other students have reported various difficulties. Oracle's instructions are sparse. It may be possible to use the Eclipse java3d plug in. See this page for more information.)

Assignment: Create a simple 3D scene. Add your code to Java3D_DIY.java.

1. The scene must consist of at least 10 individual, visible objects.

2. Use the built in Java3D Primitive classes, Box, Cone, Cylinder, and Sphere.

3. You must use at least 2 of the 4 Primitive classes.

4. Your primitives must have at least 2 different kinds of appearances. (You can have other appearances as well including Materials, ColoringAttributes, PolygonAttributes, Textures and so forth, but there must be at least 2 distinct appereances..)

5. You must include at least 2 kinds of interpolators for animation. (position, rotation, scale, color, etc.)

6. The animation should run continuously as long as the program is running. (There can a brief pause at the beginning if you want.)

7. Your scene must be significantly different than those demonstrated in class. 5 of the 50 points will be how original / cohesive your scene is.

Refer to the Java3D documentation, the ThreeDMotion and InterpolatorExamples programs.

When you complete the assignment fill in the header information at the top (Eclipse sometimes collapses this comment, so be sure to expand it.) and turn in your Java3D_DIY.javawith the header filled in. Be sure you upload the file to your CS324e folder.