From: Sidney Fels [ssfels@ece.ubc.ca] Sent: Thursday, October 14, 1999 9:41 PM To: 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu Subject: RE: 3d modeling tools Hi Mike and all, We have written and used a system called InvenTcl which is the embedding of OpenInventor inside of Tcl/Tk with an object oriented extension. The Inventor widget allows you to set up keyboard and mouse bindings to inventor objects so that you can quickly prototype interaction paradigms. This may be of use for what you are thinking about. I have also written Tcl drivers for a cyberglove and polhemus so you can bind these sensors to Inventor objects as well. Additionally, you can make animations using scripts. If you are interested, here's the URL: http://www.mic.atr.co.jp/organization/dept2/inventcl/ Because InvenTcl is interpretive it is very easy to get prototypes going quickly. Also, because it uses Open Inventor any skill you have using Open Inv. will transfer easily. Likewise, any Tcl/Tk knowledge you have will transfer. Right now it has only been developed for SGI systems, however, a port to Linux and the Wintel world is in the works. It is also free (except you need an Open Inventor license). Let me know if you want any more info. Hope this is of some interest to you. Sid ------------------------------------------------------ Sidney Fels Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering The University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC, CANADA, V6T 1Z4 phone: +1 604 822-5338 fax: +1 604 822 5949 email: ssfels@ece.ubc.ca http://www.ece.ubc.ca/~ssfels PS: Here's the blurb from the web page: InvenTcl is a Tcl/Tk extension to provide a 3D graphics programming environment. InvenTcl combines Open Inventor with [incr Tcl]; an object oriented extention for Tcl/Tk. It bridges the Open Inventor class libraries and the scripting environment in Tcl/Tk, which allows programmers to manipulate 3D graphics interactively at the command interface level. The purpose of this project is to provide Open Inventor programmers with interpretive access to Inventor and Tcl programmers to have a powerful and easy to use 3D graphics toolkit. InvenTcl provides an Inventor compatible class hierarchy for [incr Tcl] and programmers can access all methods of Open Inventor classes from Tcl/Tk script. For each instantiation of a class, a new Tcl/Tk command will be defined. Using this object command, you can access each of the methods just same as in [incr Tcl]. In this manner, user can access to all the functions available in Open Inventor and they will have a direct relationship to the class libraries defined by Open Inventor.