Java 3D Installation

As of Aug 2005

Prior to the Java3D 1.3.2 release, there was an executable installer for most platforms. Since the shift to the more open codebase of 1.3.2 and beyond, there is no nice installer to use anymore. The developers are looking into a number of Open Source solutions to this issue, but for now we only have use of the zip file downloads.

The process is the same for all platforms now. Firstly, head to the downloads page and grab a copy of Java3D for your platform. We'll assume you have a Java runtime of some form already installed (if not, head over here).

• Unzip or untar the Java3D download
• There will be another zip/tar-gz file included named j3d-132-platform.zip
• Change into your JDK/JRE installation directory, for example c:\j2sdk1.5.0\.
• Extract the contents of the zip/jar file here, making sure to keep the directories.
• Check that in your bin directory you have 2 DLLs named j3d-ogl.dll, j3d-utils.dll (unix equivalents are libj3dcore-ogl.so, libj3dutils.so). On MS-Windows you'll have a 3rd DLL j3d-d3d.dll. In your lib/ext directory you should have three files j3dcore.jar, j3dutils.jar, vecmath.jar

You should be now ready to run Java3D demos and applications. None of these base downloads come with demo applications as part of the code. You'll need to grab those separately.

Theory

User's have it easy... they have a Java runtime, a simple straightforward install.  Software developers on the other hand are faced with two runtime environments - the SDK and the JRE. Inside our IDE's our applications and applets function nicely from the SDK (or IDE virtual machine).  However once we exit to the command line or try to run an applet from a browser a different environment is used, the "JRE". So if we don't install extensions (like Java 3D) into both environments we start seeing cryptic error messages! And Sun's install routines barely make you aware that you have a JRE and the Java 3D SDK install doesn't bother to warn you that it didn't install into the JRE also.

So as a software developer you can either follow the above installation procedure or you can manually place the necessary files in all needed locations (both SDK and JRE).