Michael Frank Deering: Graphics Software Projects

Below is a list of the commercial/research 3D graphics software that I was the architect of or the consulting architect of. (Some projects also qualify as VR and are listed in duplicate on that page.)

Sun: Java 3D^TM

I (with others) architected a 3D scene graph API for Java: Java 3D. This software has been and still is widely available for a number of platforms: Sun, HP, SGI, Apple, Linux, and Microsoft.

Java 3D

Sun: HoloWeb

This was a last minute submission to the VRML II competition. (Currently, the file is in inverse page order!)

HoloWeb

Sun: HoloSketch

This was a research project I designed to see what would happen when a high-resolution virtual reality environment was always available. In the main, HoloSketch was a system for creating, editing, and animating 3D objects all in VR. But HoloSketch was also used as a 3D playback environment, a demo system, and a research platform for debugging many 3D graphics concepts: compressed geometry, 3D scene graphs, and per-pixel programmable shading hardware. There was never and intent to release HoloSketch as a commercial product, but a sub-set of HoloSketch was released as a real-time demo with all Creator3D systems, and the design of Java 3D was heavily influenced by our experience with HoloSketch. The second version of the Virtual Portal was run by HoloSketch, and several HoloSketch and HoloSketch related papers were produced.

HoloSketch

Sun: TBAG

This was an earlier research project on high level 3D graphics API's. While it was not commercialized, a SIGGRAPH paper did result.

TBAG

Personal: Ray Tracer

This was the first general purpose 3D graphics rasterization program I wrote, and various versions over the years supported a number of (now common) features.