Ok, I’m totally new to the 3D programming/game. However in our new project I need to build a simple interactive 3D animation/scene that will be presented on a 3D LCD monitor (LG cinema, interlaced image, passive glasses). Had some limited experience in c++ before, but in recent years mostly only use Labview/Matlab in my lab work. Never heard of python (sorry for my limited knowledge) until one of my ex-colleague made a presentation highly recommended it. So here’s my questions:
Can I use Panda3D to create and present a interlaced scene on the 3D monitor (passive glasses)?
If so, can I specify how far the content being presented before or behind the LCD panel (10 meter away)?
Can I use 3ds Max to do certain drawing and import it to the Panda3D
I use Labview (National Instrument) to control my instruments (e.g, lights, camera and motor). Is it possible in Panda3D to generate certain events to sync other applications?
For anyone read this, I appreciate your patience and would like to hear your suggestions.
Panda can request that your OpenGL driver activates and uses the stereo feature of your hardware. Assuming your driver supports stereo, then yes, Panda can perform stereo rendering. Whether it is passive or active or anything else depends only on your hardware and has nothing to do with Panda.
Yes. The impression of distance depends on several factors. In general, if you closely match the interocular distance of the 3-D cameras to the actual interocular distance of the viewer, then the impression of actual distance will correspond to the virtual distance in your scene, so you can place things precisely relative to the screen. (Things generally can’t be placed too far in front of the screen, or the sense of stereo falls apart, but that’s again got nothing to do with Panda.)
There exists an export path for 3DSMax, though it’s not outstanding. See the manual for more details.
Of course this depends on your hardware interfaces, but there are lots of different interface libraries available in Python. I’ve yet to see someone be unable to control a device from within Python. This is more of a Python thing than a Panda thing.
Thank you both for your kindly reply.
So drwr, there’s nothing really have to do with panda? Please forgive my ignorance, I’d like to know what might be easiest way for me to achieve this? Say I need to draw a ball (3ds max?), and show it in the passive screen make it looks like 10m behind the panel, and maybe some interactive with the user? When you say driver, how about about iZ3D, would that work? and how and where to properly setup the 2-camera view?
Don’t misunderstand: you will need to write a certain amount of code in Panda3D to achieve something like this. In particular, you will need to write the code to load the ball model, and set it to the appropriate position in your scene. You will also need to configure Panda appropriately to open a window of the appropriate size and set the appropriate stereo parameters.
This is a trivial amount of code, though. If you have any experience as a programmer it should be quite easy to do after reading through the introductory sections of the manual, browsing the samples, and possibly also reading the page of the manual titled Stereo Display Regions (probably after you are comfortable with Panda in general).
By “driver”, I’m referring to your graphics driver, which is already installed on your computer. It is the driver that implements OpenGL, which is the fundamental language that Panda uses to talk to your graphics hardware. When I say “assuming your driver supports stereo,” I mean that it is necessary for your already-installed software to know how to activate the stereo capability of your display device.
Thank you David! That explains a lot. So if my laptop uses nvidia, and the LCD comes with TRI-Def 3d, adding panda should be sufficient right? Can’t wait to start my first Panda3d project.
