Converting screen coordinates to OpenGL coordinates

This article looked interesting.

http://nehe.gamedev.net/data/articles/article.asp?article=13

gluUnProject converts Windows screen coordinates to OpenGL coordinates. This means that you can get the position of your mouse on an OpenGL Window and use this method to find the x, y and z coordinate of where you clicked.

These people posted a blog entry about it:

http://gamedevofdoom.wordpress.com/

I don't know them and have not tried the code from the nehe site, but it is a start.

Ruby online sample program

http://tryruby.hobix.com

This site has an online version of Ruby to try without needing to install anything.

Java 3D

Java 3D sounded like an interesting concept for doing portable 3-d graphics. However, I don't really like the idea of needing to install a plugin for it to run. For instance, a library computer may not grant enough access for the plugin to be downloaded and successfully installed.

More recently JOGL has gotten some attention. However I tried some demo applets and they also did not run on a pc without a plugin.

Robotics store in Southern California

http://www.tinmanrobotics.com/

A store specializing in robotics is available in Southern California now.

Mac, Qt toolkit, C++

There are some new posts from last month at this blog:

http://thadbeier.blogspot.com/

Thad is a technical partner at Hammerhead productions.

His recent posts describe his experience with porting some code to a Mac and the Qt UI toolkit.

3-d desktop scanner

This company has a 3-d laser scanner for the desktop.

https://www.nextengine.com/indexSecure.htm

I am curious as to whether these types of devices are used in industry.

Blender 2.5

There is some news about blender 2.50.

http://www.blendernation.com/2007/12/28/first-architecture-sketches-of-blender-250/

I am interested in object oriented programming, and one of the changes discussed is a redesign to use the model-view-controller architectural pattern.

A multi-touch interface was briefly mentioned. The transcript also contained the concept of an "operator" that sounded like the gof command pattern.

Python scripting was part of their discussion. I still have not gotten much experience with Python.

I've read the mvc pattern is also often used in web frameworks, like Ruby on Rails. I still would like to learn more about that tool as well.

php mysql golive and paypal

http://www.developertutorials.com/tutorials/php/php-and-mysql-with-paypal-7-11-14/page1.html

This link has a tutorial for using php, mysql, and paypal to enable an e-commerce site. Adobe GoLive is used.

some graphics related online demos

This site accompanies the book Subdivision Methods For Geometric Design: A Constructive Approach" by Joe Warren and Henrik Weimer. I do not have the book, but the web site looks interesting.
http://www.subdivision.org/demos/index.html

from a different site:
Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool. Processing is developed by artists and designers as an alternative to proprietary software tools in the same domain.

http://processing.org/learning/3d/index.html

siggraph 2006 notes and pictures / academics

Today is unusual for me because I had to get up early on Saturday for work. Also, I now need to wait for some things to get done around the house. So I have more time to web browse.

Boston, MA hosted the Siggraph 2006 conference. A summary of it is here.

Hopefully later he will post notes about the Siggraph 2007 conference in San Diego.

On the more research oriented side is this professor's site:
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~gopi

He was born in India, but works at UCI now. It looks like he has published quite a lot of papers and has earned some awards. He has worked at UCI for over 6 years now.

Also in the area are these professors:
http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~dt
http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~pfal

They also have published quite a lot.

Their papers seem rather advanced for me. I am planning on sticking to textbooks and lecture notes. One textbook that was assigned as part of a class I took is Computer Graphics with OpenGL by Hearn and Baker.

The instructor who taught that class had some of the following links on his home page.

A computer graphics course that uses that book:
http://www.cse.psu.edu/~cg418/download.htm
The school that teaches that course is Penn State University.

Other schools with online notes are York University and University of Waterloo:
http://www.york.ac.uk/services/cserv/sw/graphics/OPENGL
http://www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs488/
I have not gone through those sites yet.

For the class, we did try a couple of these tutorials from Nate Robins:
http://www.xmission.com/~nate/tutors.html

3d file format for opengl

I've tried occasionally in the past to find code to import a file with 3d data into an opengl app. Today I ran across this post about that.

what is the best 3d file format for openGL?

So far there is a link to http://www.wotsit.org/list.asp?fc=2.

Blender-Compatible Motion Capture Library

Blender-Compatible Motion Capture Library

The blog entry at the site above links to another site describing how to import and use motion capture data into Blender. I have not tried it, but it sounds interesting.

DOSBox

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net

Its a DOS emulator that uses the SDL library to do graphics. I still haven't checked out SDL yet. This looks like a neat application of it though.

Blender

http://www.blender.org/tutorials-help/faq

Blender is a free open source 3D content creation tool that uses the GNU General Public License.

The Python scripting feature sounds interesting, and it might be useful for working with OpenGL on a Linux system.

Computer Science 1 - Freshman Computer Science Seminar

Fall 2006

from the general catalog:

1. Freshman Computer Science Seminar. (1)

Seminar, one hour; discussion, one hour. Introduction to department resources and principal topics and key ideas in computer science and computer engineering. Assignments given to bolster independent study and writing skills. Letter grading.

http://www.oid.ucla.edu/webcasts/courses/2006-2007/2006fall/cs1

Simple DirectMedia Layer

http://www.libsdl.org/

from the site:
Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform multimedia library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, 3D hardware via OpenGL, and 2D video framebuffer. It is used by MPEG playback software, emulators, and many popular games, including the award winning Linux port of "Civilization: Call To Power."

I have not tried it yet, but it sounds interesting. I haven't had much time lately for learning graphics related information.

Nvidia Tesla

www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/77/1

Also has brief history of CUDA.

What is subdivision modeling

http://www.subdivisionmodeling.com/

It has some basic info. I am still trying to learn information such as this.

OpenGL and Windows Vista

http://www.opengl.org/pipeline/article/vol003_7/

from the article:

"So Windows Vista is here, but what does it mean for an OpenGL user and developer? In this article we will try to give OpenGL application developers a quick peek at what to expect and the current state of OpenGL on Windows Vista."

http://www.opengl.org/pipeline/article/vol003_9/

from the article:

The Khronos OpenGL ARB Working Group has received requests for clarification concerning the performance of OpenGL on Windows Vista.

Tao Framework

The Tao Framework provides .NET and Mono bindings to various native libraries, including OpenGL, SDL, Cg, DevIL, ODE, OpenAL, and more.

http://www.taoframework.com/Home

freeglut

http://freeglut.sourceforge.net/docs/api.php

Computer Graphics Course from Fall 2003

6-837Fall2003 MIT OpenCourseWare