Open Inventor 2.1.5 review

Open InventorTM is an object-oriented 3D toolkit offering a comprehensive solution to interactive graphics programming problems

License: LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License) File size: 8088K Developer: A. Naaman

0

Open InventorTM is an object-oriented 3D toolkit offering a comprehensive solution to interactive graphics programming problems. It presents a programming model based on a 3D scene database that dramatically simplifies graphics programming. It includes a rich set of objects such as cubes, polygons, text, materials, cameras, lights, trackballs, handle boxes, 3D viewers, and editors that speed up your programming time and extend your 3D programming capabilities.

SGI has received numerous requests for a GNU/Linux® version of Open Inventor. By open-sourcing this toolkit we are making it available on Linux and at the same time enabling this large and very active user community to study, understand and enhance Open Inventor.

Earlier this year SGI released the source code of the OpenGL Sample Implementation to the open source community, clearing the way for high-quality OpenGL implementations on Linux. The release of Open Inventor further highlights SGI's commitment to providing hardware and software technologies that are useful to graphics developers.

Here are some key features of "OpenInventor":
is built on top of OpenGL®
defines a standard file format for 3D data interchange
introduces a simple event model for 3D interaction
provides animation objects called Engines
provides high performance object picking
is window system and platform independent
is a cross-platform 3D graphics development system
supports PostScript printing
encourages programmers to create new customized objects
is fun to use