Hey Guys,
I'm doing a trade-study of sorts for a project I'd like to get funded at work. My objective is simple: create a 3D interactive post-test data visualization tool for a projectile. I have rotational and translational data. If any of you are familiar with Simulink, I've tried using it's 3D Animation toolbox only to find that 1) it's heavily reliant on a VRML project modeling tree that no one should spend time becoming an expert at, and 2) the aforementioned VRML project can only accept a single euler axis/angle input. Also, the tool is not as transparent as one would want, and debugging is a nightmare.
I've decided to look elsewhere, as licensing and other hiccups (version control) are extremely undesirable, my team and I have decided to go against the grain and create some home-grown tools. Someone suggested OpenGL or DirectX and, after some time going through directxtutorials.com (and paying the premium fee) as well as delving into the OpenGL forums (all the while getting a taste of the bitter battles that are fought between the two), I've decided to focus on DirectX as a potential development kit.
My question is this: I can't justify to IT the purchase of any licenses for 3DSMAX or any other modeling software that we'd need to create an X-file of the projectile, nor any of the other environmental nice-to-haves that'd be great to show the customer, so are we going to have to code the vertices into the source? By that I mean will I just have to bypass loading an X-file? That could get tedious, but then again, we're only talking about a small projectile that has to have moving fins. After that, we're just going to feed it existing data for rotation and translation (I know that seems like I'm over-simplifying it). I'm really not trying to offend any of you experienced game developers out there, as my inexperience with game development might be readily apparent. But that being said, we're not creating a game - we're just a team of engineers simply taking advantage of the tools that the Direct X SDK offers in terms of user interaction and visualization of our product in action. Thanks to any of you who should reply.
