ThreeSpace
Summary

Adam Chodorowski & John Nilsson

June 28, 2001

Contents

• 1. Summary
  • 1.1 Purpose
  • 1.2 What went right
  • 1.3 What went wrong
  • 1.4 What to learn
  • 1.5 What lies in the future

1. Summary

1.1 Purpose

The purpose of this document is to provide an overview of the development process of ThreeSpace. While the other documents provide a more detailed and technical view of ThreeSpace, this document will explain our own experiences and views on the project.

1.2 What went right

First of all, the program works and fulfilled most of our requirements. The Java3D engine worked pretty well for the needs we had and made the learning curve to 3D programming less steep. The visual effects that can be made by mathematical filters and color filters are really amazing, we were not expecting the range of objects that can be made through these simple tools.

1.3 What went wrong

Our ambitions for ThreeSpace were certainly a bit high for the time constraint we had. The time to learn the Java3D API was a bit longer than expected, which was a result of our low knowledge of 3D programming. The time for testing and debugging was, as a result, much too short in our opinion.

The structure of the GUI is very nice but the structure of 3D objects can be improved upon. At the present, our knowledge of Java3D and 3D programming, lets us see some shortcomings our current design. However, the structure is sufficient for the requirements we had.

1.4 What to learn

As always, it is important to learn that these kinds of projects take much longer than expected. More time needs to be spent on testing and debugging to make the program more robust and stable. And last, but not least, we learned that we should have written much more documentation in the code when coding.

1.5 What lies in the future

A restructuring of the Geometry, Shape and SceneObject classes will be made to make it easier to create ShapeCreator-plugins. Several new Filters have been thought of and will be implemented in the near future, including a MathColorFilter. Animation is already available in the beta-stadium and we will continue developing it. The beta-animations created are really awesome! Imagine a sinus-wave pulsing over a greenish mountain!

To allow other developers to work on the project it has been posted on SourceForge.net. Already some D00 students have been looking at the program and hade ideas to Filters, Savers and Loaders. This is, of course, really fun and to allow several developers to work on the program SourceForge is necessary.