Cathy's Weblog

Our little canvas 3d library project is coming along nicely. The idea is that we will build a smallish api and demonstrate how it can be used in a variety project. Currently Mark and Andrew are working on various classes that will serve as the base for this library.

We have completed the back ground math classes (matrices, vectors, quaternions) and one of the camera class.

Next up we will be adding the Scene/Shape class to the mix.

My hope is to be able to get a simple working demo in the next 2 weeks that will show how these classes will work.

The canvas 3D project has been ongoing for quite a while and the time has come to actually put in a blog post about it. Soooo here goes:

In short our project is to create a simple open source library to allow the delivery of 3D content via a browser using Canvas 3D. 3D is much more complex than 2D. Not only is the data set bigger but things such as camera, scene and so on become involved. Typically manipulate objects in 3D space requires a lot of matrix math that in general is not easy for most programmers. Our project’s aim is to build a set of simple tools and api’s to simplify 3D in the browser.

Currently, in order to use Canvas 3D in the browser, you need to know how to program with open gl. Our goal is to create some javascript libraries that will hide some of the complexities of this.
Things that we are planning to add:

• 3D model loading – The ability to create models in programs like 3ds max/blender and load them with ease
• model manipulation – rotations, translations, etc.
• Scenes – handling multiple objects
• Cameras- multipletypes
• Physics – addition of physics to the objects in the scene

Still in the brain storming kind of phase so lots of ideas still to come. We will be building this up in small steps and releasing as we go. Feel free to test things out and give us some feedback.

Our wiki page:

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Canvas3D_JS_Library