Question

I need a suggestion/idea how to create a 3D Tag Cloud in Java (Swing)
(exactly like shown here: http://www.adesblog.com/2008/08/27/wp-cumulus-plugin/)
, could you help, please?

Answer 1

I’d go either with Swing and Java2D or OpenGL (JOGL).

I used OpenGL few times and drawing text is easy using JOGL’s extenstions (TextRenderer).

If you choose Swing, than the hard part will be implementation of a 3D transformation. You’d have to write some sort of particle system. The particles would have to reside on a 3D sphere. You personally would be responsible of doing any 3D transformation, but using orthogonal projection that would be trivial. So it’s a nice exercise – what You need is here: Wiki’s spherical coord sys and here 3d to 2d projection.

After You made all of the transformation only drawing is left. And Java2D and Swing have very convenient API for this. It would boil down to pick font size and draw text at given coordinates. Custom JPanel with overriden paintComponent method would be enough to start and finish.

As for the second choice the hardest part is OpenGL API itself. It’s procedural so if You’re familiar mostly with Java You would have hard time using non-OO stuff. It can get used to and, to be honest, can be quite rewarding since You can do a lot with it. If you picked OpenGL than you would get all the 3D transformations for free, but still have to transform from spherical coordinate system to cartesian by yourself (first wiki article still helpful). After that it’s just a matter of using some text drawing class, such as TextRenderer that comes with JOGL distribution.

So OpenGL helps You with view projection calculations and is hardware accelerated. The Java2D would require more math to use, but in my opinion, this approach seems a bit easier. Oh, and by the way – the Java2D tries to use any graphic acceleration there is (OpenGL or DirectDraw) internally. So You are shielded from certain low-level problems.

For both options You need also to bind mouse coordinates s to rotational speed of sphere. Whether it’s Java2D or OpenGL the code will look very similar. Just map mouse coordinates related to the center of panel to some speed vector. At the drawing time You could use the vector to rotate the sphere accordingly.

And one more thing: if You would want to try OpenGL I’d recommend: Processing language created on MIT especially for rich graphic applets. Their 3D API, not so coincidentally, is almost the same as OpenGL, but without much of the cruft. So if You want the quickest prototype that’s the best bet. Consult this discussion thread for actual example. Note: Processing is written in Java.