[MUD-Dev] How to represent a 3d object...

[Ben Greear]

I am thinking about how to represent a 3d object in a 3d world.

I believe that polygon rendering is my best bet, both because I am not
horribly efficient with graphics programming, and because it is easy for
me to realize.  Also, the new Java 2d API should give the the support I
need....

Still, I'll need to be able to figure out what polygons to draw, and what
to fill (tile) them with....

I envision the object as a collections of intersections (nodes) and faces. 
To draw the object, then I'll calculate orientation and distance from the
viewer, figure out what sides (faces) are visible, and then draw each face
onto a 'canvas'.

The two big questions are:  what kind of data structure should I use for
in-memory storage, and how to encode this for storage in a persistant
storage mechanism.  I can see advantages of allowing only three vertices
to protrude from any given node, but perhaps other systems are better?

There must be some standard way of representing this on disk, does anyone
have any pointers??

Thanks,
Ben

Ben Greear (greear at cyberhighway.net)  http://www.primenet.com/~greear 
Author of ScryMUD:  mud.primenet.com 4444
http://www.primenet.com/~greear/ScryMUD/scry.html


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MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future.