Hi friends,
I am interested in developing commercial 3D applications of my own. With regards to that goal, I checked out some engines/libraries/applications like lwjgl, jogl, jirr, java3d, env3d, ogre4j etc available to a java programmer. Although the check was’nt a thorough one, I came to understand immediately that some were not being maintained properly, some obsolete, some too low level for my purposes and some good but not exactly what I am looking for.
Then I came to know about jME, and thanks to all of you who are actively involved in its development, it is a very good framework to base one’s application/game on. One must appreciate the hard work that has gone into making jME so good, it fulfills all the basic needs of a 3D application developer by providing the essential functionalities.
I am basically a java programmer and not an expert in 3D development, but I find it very very interesting and want to learn more about it. I went through the basic jME tutorials and they are good. I see lots of scope in jME for my purposes. I have a few general questions too though.
Firstly, I have seen that the term “game” is being used almost ubiquitously with jME, surely it is a game engine mainly, but from whatever I have found out about jME, I see that it can be used to develop other kinds of 3D applications as well. So can we not advertise this engine to be a general 3D application engine too ? Because otherwise many who don’t know about it yet, would think it is just for games, like I initially thought. Or am I missing something here ? Can I actually use jME for other purposes than game development, free of cost and commercially ?
Another thing I would like to know is, can I use the scene composer inside my application ? I want to use that editor as a part of my application, is it possible ? If yes, can you please tell me how or give me some links or basic ideas ?
Would be nice to know about all that. I am looking forward to an interesting interaction with jME anyways though. Thanks.
You can use jme3 for anything you see fit. We advertise jme as a game development package because we intend the toolset to be specifically tailored for game development. You can create any 3D application with jme3 though but we regard it a little more than just a 3D visualization library for java. By creating a complete environment incl. GUI etc. libraries and project setup we aim to allow real platform dependent development by continuously using the jme3 api for all platforms. The use of AWT or Android-specific UI and other API’s is strongly discouraged.
The Manual and Wiki contain information on how you can create plugins for the SDK, doing it the other way round (using the OpenGL window in another app) doesn’t really justify the work involved, best to start an application from scratch.
Thank you normen for the reply and the clarifications.
I thought, may be, as the scene composer (and other editors) is already available in jME, then I should be able to re-use it in my own application. And by 3D applications I mean not just simple visualization apps of sorts, rather, I have ideas for and feel jME is robust enough to build much more sophisticated apps than games only. But anyways, I would study the documentations more and try to understand the underpinnings myself.
Thanks so much once again! Cheers from my side for a wonderful collective effort that is jME!
The things that the SceneComposer does are just the basic things that you do (and learn through the tutorials) in code as well. Its just there so you (and other non-programmers) can prepare and edit the assets needed for a game. Studying the wiki you’ll find out that probably 50% or more of the work on a game goes into the assets as opposed to the code (for AAA games even more so, indie games tend to be code-driven mostly).
@kishupro said:
And by 3D applications I mean not just simple visualization apps of sorts, rather, I have ideas for and feel jME is robust enough to build much more sophisticated apps than games only.
I think you are showing a lack of knowledge of games here. Modern games (especially 3d AAA and MMOs even more so) are actually some of the most sophisticated software currently being written. There isn't much out there with the sort of budget/number of developers/etc as some of those games have.
JME is designed for real-time rendering of 3d objects. If that's your requirement then I'd expect it to be a fairly good fit whether you are rendering a racing game, particle simulation, alien planets based on data returned from satelites, or anything else.
@ Normen
Yeah I checked out Scene Composer a lil more and found that it is just a visual tool for some basic things that can be implemented through code. Actually, I found something more useful. They are “Scene Monitor” and “Scene Worker” from a guy named Andrew, and he is using jME. But unfortunately, it has not been updated for jME3. It would be helpful if something like that were available for me to use. But I hope the extra time and effort I would have to spend on developing that myself would help me understand jME much better. Thanks for the inputs!
@ Zarch
I said that in a context bro. What I meant was that I feel jME can be used to develop much more sophisticated apps than ONLY games (which surely can be sophisticated too, no doubt there). That is, I am NOT looking out for just simple 3D visualization apps. And I said that because I felt, Normen might have been thinking I am looking for just those kinda apps with jME if I were not making games.
Hopefully that clears things. You are right though, I do lack knowledge, because I believe learning never ends! Anyways, thanks for your time and inputs too! I think we can always learn new things from each other.