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SoSphere Class Reference

The SoSphere class is for rendering sphere shapes. More...

#include <Inventor/nodes/SoSphere.h>

Inheritance diagram for SoSphere::

List of all members.

Public Methods
	SoSphere (void)
virtual void	GLRender (SoGLRenderAction *action)
virtual void	rayPick (SoRayPickAction *action)
virtual void	getPrimitiveCount (SoGetPrimitiveCountAction *action)
Static Public Methods
void	initClass (void)
Public Attributes
SoSFFloat	radius
Protected Methods
virtual	~SoSphere ()
virtual void	generatePrimitives (SoAction *action)
virtual void	computeBBox (SoAction *action, SbBox3f &box, SbVec3f &center)

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Detailed Description

The SoSphere class is for rendering sphere shapes.

Renders a sphere with the size given by the SoSphere::radius field. The sphere is rendered with the current material, texture and drawstyle settings (if any, otherwise the default settings are used).

The SoSphere node class is provided as a convenient abstraction for the application programmer to use "complex" shapes of this type without having to do the tesselation to polygons and other low-level programming herself.

A good trick for rendering ellipsoidal 3D shapes is to use an SoSphere prefixed with an SoScale transformation to "flatten" it along one or more of the principal axes. (Ie use for instance an SoScale node with SoScale::scaleFactor equal to [1, 1, 0.1] to flatten it along the Z direction.)

A sphere is visualized by the underlying rendering system by first tesselating the conceptual sphere into a set of polygons. To control the trade-off between an as much as possible correct visual appearance of the sphere versus fast rendering, use an SoComplexity node to influence the number of polygons generated from the tesselation process. (The higher the complexity value, the more polygons will be generated, the more rounded the sphere will look.) Set the SoComplexity::value field to what you believe would be a good trade-off between correctness and speed for your particular application.

See also:

SoCone, SoCylinder, SoCube

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Constructor & Destructor Documentation

SoSphere::SoSphere (  void )

Constructor.

SoSphere::~SoSphere (  )  [protected, virtual]

Destructor.

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Member Function Documentation

void SoSphere::initClass (  void )  [static]

Sets up initialization for data common to all instances of this class, like submitting necessary information to the Coin type system. Reimplemented from SoShape.

void SoSphere::GLRender (  SoGLRenderAction * action )  [virtual]

Action method for the SoGLRenderAction. This is called during rendering traversals. Nodes influencing the rendering state in any way or who wants to throw geometry primitives at OpenGL overrides this method. Reimplemented from SoShape.

void SoSphere::rayPick (  SoRayPickAction * action )  [virtual]

Calculates picked point based on primitives generated by subclasses. Reimplemented from SoShape.

void SoSphere::getPrimitiveCount (  SoGetPrimitiveCountAction * action )  [virtual]

Action method for the SoGetPrimitiveCountAction. Calculates the number of triangle, line segment and point primitives for the node and adds these to the counters of the action. Nodes influencing how geometry nodes calculates their primitive count also overrides this method to change the relevant state variables. Reimplemented from SoShape.

void SoSphere::generatePrimitives (  SoAction * action )  [protected, virtual]

For internal use only. Reimplemented from SoShape.

void SoSphere::computeBBox (  SoAction * action, SbBox3f & box, SbVec3f & center )  [protected, virtual]

For internal use only. Reimplemented from SoShape.

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Member Data Documentation

SoSFFloat SoSphere::radius

Radius of sphere. Default value is 1.0.

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The documentation for this class was generated from the following files:

• SoSphere.cpp
• SoSphere.h

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