Interactive 3D for the desktop and Web. It's not the future. It's here today. Java 3D Jump-Start is your concise introduction to the 3D technology that delivers the most power with the least coding. In this hands-on guide, a world-renowned Web3D expert and a member of Sun's Java 3D engineering team unveil the Java 3D API, providing insider's insights and real code.

Discover how Java 3D unleashes a new generation of 3D programs for the desktop and the World Wide Web -- and master all the skills you need to start building spectacular Java 3D applications and applets right now! Using the Java 3D Explorer interactive application developed exclusively for readers of this book readers, you'll learn:

• Real World Case studies: e-commerce, entertainment, 
  data visualization, collaborative engineering, and beyond
• How the Java 3D API compares with other graphics options
• The Java 3D API's powerful scene graph programming model
• High-level constructs for creating, loading, and manipulating 3D geometry
• Appearances: Describing color, texture, material reflection, and 
  other characteristics of 3D objects
• Java 3D API tools for transformation, viewing, and picking

With Java 3D Jump-Start, Java and Web professionals can harness the full power of 3D computer graphics to create fully interactive and immersive 3D programs for the desktop and the Web. Not "someday." Today.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

AARON E. WALSH is Chairman of Mantis Development Corporation, a development firm specializing in advanced multimedia and network technologies. An active member of the Internet standards community, Walsh is Chairman of the Web3D Consortium's Universal Media technical working group, Chairman of the Web3D-MPEG group responsible for the convergence of Web3D and Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) technology, co-chair of the Web3D Intellectual Property Rights group, and Web3D Liaison to MPEG and the World Wide Web Consortium. An international best-selling technology author, he is author of the best-selling Core Web3D, MPEG-4 Jump-Start and XHTML Example by Example (Prentice Hall PTR) and founding Series Editor of the Prentice Hall Web3D Series.

DOUG GEHRINGER is a Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems and a member of the Java 3D Engineering Team. He has spent the past fourteen years at Sun working on graphics software, and has extensive experience programming for all of Sun's graphics APIs, including GKS, PHIGS, PEX, OpenGL and Java 3D. A respected expert on graphics performance tuning for large-scale applications, he has worked on a number of the largest Java 3D projects in existence. One of the first developers in the world to use Java 3D, he co-authored the original Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) that is today maintained by the Web3D Consortium. An active member of the Java 3D community, Gehringer is Java 3D technical editor of the best-selling Core Web3D (Prentice Hall PTR) and author of the Java 3D Explorer companion application created exclusively for Java 3D Jump-Start readers.