Run Processing within Tomcat-Server

Programming Questions

patrickwg

Run Processing within Tomcat-Server

in Programming Questions • 3 years ago

Hi all,

I´m working on an application for dynamically generating image-based views of 3d-models. As I don´t want to depend on applets, I´d like to use Processing simply to load and render images of 3d-models and pass them back as an image. The whole thing should work as a web-service relaized as spring-servlet, which is called by the client. The web-service contains a PApplet-class which should generate the views and pass them back. As I don´t want to render to screen, I´m using a PGraphics-instance. Though the server starts up correctly (even creating the PGraphics rendercontext without any complains), it crashes completely as soon as I call beginDraw() of my PGraphics-object. I have searched quite a while, but I haven´t found anything regarding such a problem. This is why I´d like to ask wether or not this architecture might work and wether processing can be executed within a tomcat-server. If not, I´ll try a different approach...

Thanks in advance,

Patrick

Replies(4)

PhiLho

Re: Run Processing within Tomcat-Server

3 years ago

As the name implies, a PApplet is an applet, something not really designed to work off-screen. It might work, though.

There were some similar questions in the past, not sure what was the outcome.

If you use OpenGL, it is sure to crash, as it is a technology to run on screen, on graphics processors. But some people made it to work with frame buffers. Again, search old and new forum.

patrickwg

Re: Run Processing within Tomcat-Server

3 years ago

I´ve searched the forum for integrations of Processing into Servlet-Containers like Tomcat. I wanted to use PGraphics, because it was described as a solution for people who don´t want to output there renderings to the monitor. I know the usage of rendercontexts in several other contexts outside of processing and so I thought, I give it a try. The reason why I´d like to use OpenGL is simply a performance issue. Wether or not I output the final image to a monitor or stream it from some kind of framebuffer, I expect OpenGL to use hardware support for rendering and thus be a lot faster than a standard software renderer. I also thought about a different approach using a processing thread to render and an servlet-thread which is able to use the processing thread. Does this appear to be more promising?

PhiLho

Re: Run Processing within Tomcat-Server

3 years ago

Don't search for Tomcat, it haven't been mentioned to my knowledge, the thread I am thinking about was about Google AppEngine;

patrickwg

Re: Run Processing within Tomcat-Server

3 years ago

Sorry for answering that late, but I didn´t have much time the last days. I tried searching for "Google App-Engine" which led to the old forum which was shut down in June. Unfortunately I didn´t get any results there. As a conclusion I guess that trying to run processing within a servlet container like Tomcat probably will cause more trouble than it solves.

So I´ll have to do it somehow different. Has anyone of you ever used Processing as some kind of daemon-rendering-process? As my first architectural ideas seem to fail, I´ll probably try to develop a rendering-process which can be used by other processes to produce rendered views of 3d-models. I´d like to hear your opinion wether or not this is a promising approach...

Thanks!

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