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From: brentb@tamsun.tamu.edu (Brent)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer,comp.graphics,comp.graphics.animation
Subject: Re: Please Recommend 3D Graphics Library For Mac.
Date: 16 Apr 1993 20:23:27 -0500
Organization: Texas A&M Univ., Inc.
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Message-ID: <1qnm6fINN8tr@tamsun.tamu.edu>
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tsa@cellar.org (The Silent Assassin) writes:
>rgc3679@bcstec.ca.boeing.com (Robert G. Carpenter) writes:
>
>> Can you please offer some recommendations?
>
>It's really not that hard to do.  There are books out there which explain
>everything, and the basic 3D functions, translation, rotation, shading, and
>hidden line removal are pretty easy.  I wrote a program in a few weeks witht
>he help of a book, and would be happy to give you my source.

I think he wanted to avoid reinventing the wheel.
I would suggest that you take your code, and submit it to
comp.sys.mac.binaries to be distributed (including to the ftp sites). 
Many folks, myself included, would enjoy the extra code.

>	Also, Quickdraw has a lot of 3D functions built in, and Think pascal
>can access them, and I would expect that THINK C could as well.  If you can
>find out how to use the Quickdraw graphics library, it would be an excellent
>choice, since it has a lot of stuff, and is built into the Mac, so should be
>fast.

Just to clarify, the 3D routines that are mentioned in various places
on the mac are in a libray, not the ROM of the mac.  A few years ago before
I knew anything about implementing graphics, I came across a demo of the
Apple GrafSys3D library and it actually did a lot.  However, it is quite
limited in the sense that it's a low-level 3D library; your code still has
to plot individual points, draw each line, etc ad nauseum.  It has nothing
on GL, for example, where you can handle objects.

Other things to consider when talking about Apple's old 3D GrafSys library:

* Unsupported;  never was and no plans exist to do so in the future

* Undocumented; unless you call header files documentation...

If one knows something about graphics, you could probably figure it out,
but I'd assume there's better software available that gives better
output and is, at the same time, programmatically nicer (i.e. easier to
program).

Just my 2% tax

-Brent

