A Glimpse of JFreeChart 3D

[david.gilbert]

I've mentioned a few times in the forum that I've started some work on a simple 3D graphics rendering engine that will hopefully lead to support for "real" 3D charts in the future. It's still *very* early days, but I've made a little demo to show what I have so far:

http://www.jroller.com/dgilbert/entry/a ... eechart_3d

[jwenting]

Looking nice. Would like to see some surfaces (3D planes) though instead of shapes as those are more relevant to charting.

P.S. what do you think of the book? Haven't read anything by Leen Ameraal in nearly a decade because I wasn't impressed with his writings in the mid 1990s (note, he used to write for Sybex at the time, who were at the far bottom of the quality pile at the time).
From Amazon's mixed bag of reviews little can be gauged except that people think the price is a bit steep

[david.gilbert]

Looking nice. Would like to see some surfaces (3D planes) though instead of shapes as those are more relevant to charting.

If you start the demo with WebStart, you can click on those tabs and see some more chart-relevant examples.

P.S. what do you think of the book? Haven't read anything by Leen Ameraal in nearly a decade because I wasn't impressed with his writings in the mid 1990s (note, he used to write for Sybex at the time, who were at the far bottom of the quality pile at the time).
From Amazon's mixed bag of reviews little can be gauged except that people think the price is a bit steep

The book has helped me, so in that sense it is good. At the same time, I think it could be better structured, especially the demo code which is quite an important part of the book. I'll give it a 6.5 out of 10.

[lukkumar]

Hi,
The 3D charts are looking were nice. Go JFreeChart3D Go... U really Rock...Gilbert...
I was wondering how well these 3D charts would work in browser's, I mean as a web application.
I have never done mouse operations on the charts in web applications. Can you please suggest how would it be possible for one to perform mouse operations on a chart that is rendered in a browser as a web application...

Thanks,
Laks.

[joolz]

Pretty cool, though given all my work is web based thin client stuff, I probably won't be able to use it.

[jwenting]

A web application would of course see a static image, not something you can rotate.

An applet could be used to provide animation.

[joolz]

An applet would certainly do the trick, but then the web application is no longer thin client.

[jwenting]

true. And no image format in the world will give you animation like that.
Unless you're going to render an animated gif out of a few dozen frames created out of the same source data but rotated slightly for each frame, and in that case the animation won't be user controlled but a predetermined cycle.

[develop]

this would be so cool.. is this based on java2d or we need to install java3d if we really want to use this charts. (when it will released).

right now we use 3d charts using java3d. if this is based on java2d then i can not wait to replace.. we use jfreechart for all other charts.

Good work.. keep it up.

[david.gilbert]

this would be so cool.. is this based on java2d or we need to install java3d if we really want to use this charts. (when it will released).

It is based on Java2D not Java3D.

[RichardWest]

A web application would of course see a static image, not something you can rotate.

An applet could be used to provide animation.

An applet would certainly do the trick, but then the web application is no longer thin client.

true. And no image format in the world will give you animation like that.
Unless you're going to render an animated gif out of a few dozen frames created out of the same source data but rotated slightly for each frame, and in that case the animation won't be user controlled but a predetermined cycle.

All very valid points, but people want 3d since Excel has it. If we can get 3d into JFreeChart, we can get more people moving away from Excel and embracing JFreeChart. JFreeChart is certainly lighter weight than Excel, more portable, and less restrictive/more flexible with data and customizations.

As for displaying the 3d charts in a static context like an image, all 3d charts suffer from the issues with perspective, viewing angle, etc. In these cases, we are fortunate that 3d charts/datasets can easily become 2d charts in almost all cases without lose of information. You can even collapse 4d charts/data into a series of 2d charts.

[jwenting]

no problem with 3D, all I was pointing out that someone expecting to get the functionality of the demo (so user controlled rotation and translation of the graph) in a webbrowser will need applets.

[mhilpert]

Very nice, David! I'm also starting some 3D graphics stuff on my own and want to avoid Java 3D (APIs). Can you recommend this book with this in mind or does it (also) has lotsa of Java 3D API examples?

[david.gilbert]

Very nice, David! I'm also starting some 3D graphics stuff on my own and want to avoid Java 3D (APIs). Can you recommend this book with this in mind or does it (also) has lotsa of Java 3D API examples?

The book doesn't use Java3D at all, mostly just java.awt.Graphics (I think the first edition of the book was published for JDK 1.1). The authors have posted most of the example code here if you want to take a look:

http://home.planet.nl/~ammeraal/grjava2e.html

I recommend the book, simply on the basis that it helped me quite a lot. It is not perfect by any means - at times I felt like the book could have been better organised. But I don't see any alternatives around (aside from going the route of Java3D or OpenGL), and it certainly isn't a *bad* book.

[rob_dawson]

This looks great it would be really useful for our application. Do you have any timescales on when this might be released ?