Creating Open Inventor Scene Descriptions

While you generally get the most out of Open Inventor by writing C++ programs that use its libraries, you can access a large portion of its functionality by writing simple scripts in the Open Inventor file format, an approach which should be much more accessible to non-C++ programmers. These web pages will focus primarily on using Open Inventor files to create 3D scenes and animation effects. The key topics or concepts that you need to learn about in order to use Open Inventor are:

1. utility programs
2. scene graphs
3. file format
4. including files
5. order of effect
6. groups
7. shapes
8. transformations
9. cameras and lights
10. engines
11. materials
12. sharing nodes
13. other information sources
14. in-depth examples