PeasyCam provides a dead-simple mouse-driven camera for 3D Processing sketches.

Notable changes in version 0.3.0:

• Camera movements have a bit of "momentum" now, which gives it kind of a pleasing feel.
• You can now query the camera for its current state, and set it to a saved state. The state is serializable, so you could, e.g., construct a tour, then play it back. State changes are optionally animated.

General information about PeasyCam:

Code:

PeasyCam camera;

void setup() {
    camera = new PeasyCam(this, 0, 0, 0, 50);
} 

That's it. Now a mouse left-drag will rotate the camera around the subject, a right drag will zoom in and out, and a middle-drag (command-left-drag on mac) will pan. A double-click restores the camera to its original position. The shift key constrains rotation and panning to one axis or the other.

The PeasyCam is positioned on a sphere whose radius is the given distance from the look-at point. Rotations are around axes that pass through the looked-at point.

PeasyCam is impervious to gimbal lock, and has no known "singularities" or discontinuities in its behavior. It relies on the excellent Apache Commons Math geometry package for its rotations.

jeffg wrote on Mar 3^rd, 2009, 6:08pm:


Excellent idea! Watch this space for a reply.

jeffg wrote on Mar 3^rd, 2009, 6:46pm:


Determining what point in 3D space is meant by a user gesture is way beyond the scope of my library. You could perhaps apply some other techniques to determine the clicked-on object, then tell PeasyCam to navigate there, but PeasyCam won't be adding features like that.

OK, version 0.4.1 is up with the following new methods:

Code:

lookAt(x,y,z,animationTimeInMillis)
setResetOnDoubleClick(boolean)
setMinimumDistance(double)
setMaximumDistance(double)
 

Let me know how it goes for you.

Trying to do a 3d color pick in the buffer, however, I'm having a problem getting the camera into the buffer.  Any way to send it the current camera position and feed it into a camera() control for the buffer?

setResetOnDoubleClick now works great.

Mixed results on the lookAt().

Perhaps the program doesn't know which one is which here - same number of variables.

  camera.lookAt(double x, double y, double z, long animationTimeInMillis);
  camera.lookAt(double x, double y, double z, double distance);

This one worked fine, which was the main function I wanted.
  camera.lookAt(double x, double y, double z, double distance, long animationTimeInMillis);

Tested setDistance() again but didn't work for me, but unnecessary due to the new lookAt feature.

John, Here is a quick test that I ran with the setDistance.

If setDistance is before the lookAt, I found that both work fine.  It sets the distance and then looks at the point.

     cam.setDistance(200);
     cam.lookAt(100,0,100);

If setDistance is after the lookAt, only the lookAt will work.  The camera looks at the point, but does not set the distance.

     cam.lookAt(100,0,100);
     cam.setDistance(200);

Hope this helps

//When the key "1" is pressed, it does not set the distance.
//When the key "2" is pressed, it sets both the distance and the lookat.
//Pressing 1 or 2 will set the center sphere to 100,0,100.
//Double click will set it back to 0,0,0.

import peasy.*;
PeasyCam cam;

void setup() {
 size(800,600, P3D);
 cam = new PeasyCam(this, 500);
}

void draw() {
 background(0);
 stroke(255);
 line(0,0,0,100,0,100);
 translate(0,0,0);
 sphere(10);
 translate(100,0,100);
 sphere(10);

if(keyPressed) {

   if (key == '1') {
     cam.lookAt(100,0,100);
     cam.setDistance(200);
   }
   else if (key == '2') {
     cam.setDistance(200);
     cam.lookAt(100,0,100);
   }
 }
}