What is a good resource to learn Chai3D?

Question

Apart from the documentation, is there any good source to earn Chai3D coding using C++?

I searched on the internet for some tutorials, but could not find anything. Do you know of some good place to learn programming for Chai3D?

Answer 1

I learned CHAI3D programming by essentially going through all the CHAI3D examples that comes with the SDK. The examples are listed with an associated complexity value (like 20 for the haptic deformable bumpmap and 50 for the GEL engine demo). The examples are well documented and easily understandable. I would say that the best way to go about learning CHAI3D is to modify the existing examples by tweaking & manipulating the code.

Since CHAI3D is built on top of OpenGL, it would be good to have an understanding of that and some 3D math as well. It helps when you want to add custom features like particle systems, shadows etc.

If you want to do more cool haptics stuff (like haptic rendering) with CHAI3D, I would advice going through the Stanford Experimental Haptics (cs277) course site. It has the latest beta of CHAI (2.1) as well as lots of homework examples and learning resources.