How Does Open Inventor Relate to OpenGL?

If you are familiar with OpenGL, you are probably curious about how OpenGL relates to Open Inventor. This section supplies an overview of how the two libraries interrelate. Using Open Inventor with OpenGL provides additional information on how to use Open Inventor and OpenGL in a single program—taking advantage of the fast, flexible 3D rendering of OpenGL and the high-level objects and versatile scene database offered by Inventor.

Open Inventor uses OpenGL for rendering. In OpenGL, however, rendering is explicit, whereas in Inventor, rendering, along with other operations such as picking, reading, writing, and calculating a bounding box, is encapsulated in the objects.

OpenGL provides immediate-mode access to the frame buffer. It can also use a display list to record drawing commands for objects. This display list can then be played back on demand.

Open Inventor does not provide immediate access to the frame buffer. As described previously in the section Objects, not Drawings, it is based on an object-oriented programming model that creates high-level, editable objects stored in a database. Each of these objects encapsulates a set of operations that can be applied to it: rendering, picking, database querying and searching, and bounding-box calculation. In Inventor, rendering to the frame buffer occurs when the render action is invoked. If an Inventor program never issues this command (either directly or indirectly), no drawing will appear.

A simple analogy may help to convey a feel for how Open Inventor contrasts to OpenGL. Suppose it is the year 2020 and you have the time, money, and skills required to build your dream house. You can choose one of two basic approaches, or you can combine elements of both approaches.

The first approach is to go to the Handyperson Builder's Emporium and purchase all the required materials separately—nails, wood, pipes, wires, switches, concrete, and so on. This approach gives you complete flexibility, but it also requires detailed knowledge and skill on your part to determine which parts you need and how to construct all elements of the house.

The second approach is to order a collection of prebuilt units from the Dream Home Catalog, published by a ten-year-old firm that bases its product on concepts of Japanese home building, modular office construction, and the highly successful prefabricated window companies of the 90s. The catalog provides a wide variety of wall-frame units, concrete forms, siding packages, windows, and doors.

The first approach—starting with raw materials—is analogous to using OpenGL for interactive graphics applications. Building a house with this method, you have complete flexibility over how the raw materials are used. You need to be familiar with the details of home construction, and you need different skills to build each part of the home from scratch—plumbing, electrical, carpentry.

The second approach—selecting prebuilt units from a catalog—is loosely analogous to creating an application with Inventor. The wall panels are prewired with the electrical, security, and plumbing connections. This prewiring can be compared to the built-in event model provided by Inventor. In addition, the complete inventory of parts, sizes, and costs is automatically computed by the catalog firm when you place the order. In a similar way, all operations (rendering, picking, bounding-box calculation, and so on) are built into Inventor objects. You do not need to add extra code (or, in the case of the house, perform extra calculations) to obtain this information. Because the catalog company has been buying parts from the Handyperson Builder's Emporium for years, it knows the exact material and sizes to use for maximum economy and minimum waste. Similarly, Open Inventor achieves high performance from its use of OpenGL.

Although the catalog offers a collection of ready-made modules, you have choices about which modules you use and how to put them together. Whenever you purchase modules from the Dream Home Catalog, standard sizes are used to facilitate replacing, repairing, and updating different parts of the house. With Open Inventor, applications achieve a common look and feel because Inventor provides a set of components with a unified user interface.

If you require parts not available in the catalog, the company also allows you to design your own custom parts and buy the pieces directly from the Handyperson Builder's Emporium. Perhaps you want curved corners on your wall units rather than right-angled corners. Inventor, too, allows you to design your own objects (through subclassing, described in The Inventor Toolmaker). With this added flexibility, you are not constrained to the catalog parts, but you can use them to save time and money when they're suitable.

If you want to save even more time, you can choose a complete house kit from the Dream Home Catalog. It offers many different models: A-frame, Ranch, Victorian, Colonial. These house kits are analogous to Inventor's node kits, which provide packaged sets of objects commonly used together.

When each house has been completed, it takes a highly trained eye to determine which house was constructed from raw materials and which was constructed with catalog parts. Both houses have fine quality finishing, are made of the best materials, and exhibit sturdy construction. Both exhibit touches of creativity and distinctive design.

The same could be said of applications built with OpenGL and those built with Open Inventor. The approach taken must suit the needs of the builder, and the two approaches can be combined as desired, using a combination of prebuilt Inventor objects and components and OpenGL commands.