NAME

Inventor - a toolkit for writing 3D programs

DESCRIPTION

The Open Inventor 3D Toolkit is an object-oriented toolkit that simplifies and abstracts the task of writing graphics programming into a set of easy to use objects. These objects range from low-level data-centered objects such as Sphere, Camera, Material, Light, and Group, to high-level application-level objects such as Walk Viewer and Material Editor. The foundation concept in Inventor is the "scene database" which defines the objects to be used in an application. When using Inventor, a programmer creates, edits, and composes these objects into hierarchical 3D scene graphs (i.e. database). A variety of fundamental application tasks such as rendering, picking, event handling, and file reading/writing are built-in operations of all objects in the database and thus are simple to invoke.

Since Inventor is object-oriented (written in C++), it encourages programmers to extend the system by writing new objects. Inventor users have created a variety of new objects that are not included in the product, such as: Bezier surfaces, CSG objects, animation objects, special viewers, and many more.

Note that the rendering mechanism inside Inventor objects employs OpenGL. Thus, during rendering each object automatically makes the proper, efficient calls to OpenGL. Furthermore, Inventor rendering supports a caching scheme which automatically generates very fast renderings of the database without traversal overheads.

Inventor picking is extremely efficient and does not utilize rendering. Furthermore, picking returns a variety of 3D information and detail about what objects were picked. A sorted list of picked objects and corresponding information is returned to the programmer. Picking is so fast that programs can perform 3D locate highlighting as the mouse moves across a 3D window.

INTERACTION, EVENTS, AND DEVICES

Inventor defines a event model for writing 3D interaction. This model is window system independent. It is quite easy to use and makes 3D direct manipulation programming possible. Inventor includes a variety of interactive 3D objects and tools for writing interactive objects, such as: Manipulators, Draggers, and Projectors. The flexible event model encourages programmers to extend the system to support new devices and event types.

FILE FORMAT

The Inventor 3D File Format is SGI's standard for 3D data. The format supports both an ASCII and private binary format. The binary format is network-neutral and thus can be exported across machine boundaries.

BENEFITS

Programming 3D graphics applications with Inventor results in large-scale productivity increases. This also increases with time as more tools utilize the Inventor paradigm, user interfaces, and standard file format.

DOCUMENTATION

A list of online documentation is available in the General FAQ section of the web site provided at the end of this man page.

SOURCE CODE

The Inventor Toolkit includes source code to NUMEROUS programs and examples.