[FRIAM] Animation via Behavior: Killer Game Programming in Java

[Russell Standish]

You might want to check out Breve. It's an ALifer's simulation
environment, so agent based, and has a physics engine. I've seen demos of it
running swarms of boids at ALife 8, and it looked pretty cool.

Cheers

On Thu, Oct 19, 2006 at 10:37:11AM -0600, Owen Densmore wrote:
> This may seem a bit odd, but bear with me!
> 
> We've been using Processing.org's great graphics system: the  
> libraries and the nifty IDE and tools for managing  
> "sketchbooks" (projects), building web pages/applets, and even  
> building applications for Windows, Mac and Linux.  We've had success  
> (i.e. got paid for!) two projects using Processing: a Stadium model,  
> and a generalized Data Visualization system.  Quite nice.
> 
> So now we've got two interesting environments for modeling: NetLogo,  
> our old friend which keeps getting better, and Processing which seems  
> great for what I'd call "wire frame" modeling.  We've also got high  
> end rendering experience with Blender: we can both use it to build  
> Processing meshes for our models and can render agent motion inside  
> blender, using NetLogo and Processing output.
> 
> BUT we're missing a "sweet spot" in the middle: a fairly realistic 3D  
> environment that can do realtime modeling .. i.e. animation via  
> behavior.  We also want to have some notion of "physics" .. i.e.  
> things bouncing off walls or agents colliding.  (Blender thus far has  
> not worked, but we're still poking.)
> 
> This prompting me to look into Java graphics and game books, one of  
> which is Killer Game Programming in Java.  The book has a website  
> which includes a LOT of material that is not in his book:
>    http://fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th/~ad/jg/
> This let to getting in touch with the author, asking for pointers to  
> "game engines", see email attached.
> 
> Now to the question to FRIAM:  Has anyone found a good environment  
> for agent based modeling with "game-like" 3D realism and with modest  
> libraries for collision detection, scene graphs and so on?
> 
>      -- Owen
> 
> Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net
> 
> Begin forwarded message:
> > From: "Dr. Andrew Davison" <ad at fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th>
> > Date: September 4, 2006 10:56:45 PM MDT
> > To: Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net>
> > Subject: Re: Processing.org
> >
> >
> > Owen,
> >
> > Thanks for the pointer to processing.org. It's a very nice system.
> >
> >> We're also looking for Java "game engines" to make our work  
> >> simpler.  Do you have any pointers?
> >
> > Here's a snippet from an article I'm writing:
> >
> > Xith3D (http://xith.org) uses the same basic scene graph structure  
> > as Java 3D, but can also directly call OpenGL operations. Since the  
> > high-level APIs of Xith3D and Java 3D are so similar, porting Java  
> > 3D code over to Xith3D is fairly straightforward. There are  
> > versions of Xith3D that run on top of JOGL and LWJGL.
> >
> > jME Graphics Engine (jMonkey Engine, http:// 
> > www.mojomonkeycoding.com/) was inspired by the scene graph engine  
> > described in 3D Game Engine Design by David H. Eberly (http:// 
> > www.magic-software.com/Books.html). jME is built on top of LWJGL.
> >
> > JAVA is DOOMED (http://javaisdoomed.sourceforge.net) includes  
> > loaders for Quake 2 MD2 and 3D Studio Max 3DS files . The  
> > implementation uses JOGL, and the distribution includes Escape, a  
> > Doom-like game.
> >
> > Aviatrix3D (http://aviatrix3d.j3d.org/) is a retained-mode Java  
> > scene graph API above JOGL. Its tool set is aimed at data  
> > visualization rather than gaming, and supports CAVEs, domes, and HMDs.
> >
> > JView (http://www.rl.af.mil/tech/programs/JVIEW/) is another  
> > visualization API, supporting both 2D and 3D graphics, developed by  
> > the U.S. Air Force Research Lab. GL4Java, an older low-level Java  
> > API for OpenGL, was used to build it.
> >
> > Espresso3D (http://www.espresso3d.com/), a games-oriented library,  
> > includes OpenAL audio, sprites, collision detection, input, and  
> > rendering support. It's built using LWJGL.
> >
> > - Andrew
> >
> 
> 
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

-- 
*PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
may safely ignore this attachment.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish                  Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics                         	 
UNSW SYDNEY 2052         	         R.Standish at unsw.edu.au             
Australia                                http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
            International prefix  +612, Interstate prefix 02
----------------------------------------------------------------------------