[vtkusers] Re: VTK vs Java3D

[Sebastien Jourdain]

> I'm new to VTK and to 3D visualization. Since I know and love to program in Java my first work with 3D world was of course Java3D. 
> 2/3 days ago I encountered VTK. What do u say Should I continue working with Java3D or dive into VTK? 
> and if u can please, in short, tell my the pros and cons of VTK vs Java3D
>
> Thanks a lot!
>
> Eyal

Java3D give an higher API than OpenGL to manage 3D world with for example an hierarchical view of 3D object in the 3D scene.

VTK is able to show a 3D world, but its goal is to process data and make a 3D or 2D representation of that processing. 
Mainly, VTK give a great API to build a 3D view of any 3D data and make complex data processing on those data. 
You can build complex 3D scene with VTK but you will loose the high level of object management of your 3D scene that you have in Java3D, in fact in VTK the 3D scene is composed of a set of 3D and 2D object, it's not a tree at all where you can interact at each node level.

Hope this could help,

Regards,

Seb