   Open inventor?
  Hi, I''m interested in developing a 3d app(modeler) and i just discovered open inventor. I''m on win xp so i searched for win versions and found sgi and tgs. On the tgs site i couldn''t make out if it was free as you can dowloadload, is it a free trial?Also, has anyone here used it and is it recommended using for developing a 3d app or should i do it from scratch with opengl and c++. There doesn''t seem to be much info on it around, i''m thinking about getting the book inventor mentor but i''m not sure if its worth using.Also on one site i found it said inventor mentor was online free somewhere but cant find it, is this true?I would appreciate any info on Open Inventor at all.Thanks
  I''ve used open inventor rather extensively to write a visualization and simulation tool for the space station(this was for nasa).  SGI open sourced their version and provide it for free.  TGS may have done the same, but when I last used it you had to pay for a dev license, and probably a distribution license as well.  Their website is what you want to check - and if it''s still unclear, you can call their sales dept.I pretty much learned inventor from the book, the inventor mentor.  If you''re serious about using inventor, you must get that book.  I haven''t heard anything about it being online though.The real question is - do you want to use inventor?  Inventor is certainly not the most advanced system out there, but it is very easy to get an app up and running.  It provides a lot of nice effects for free - loading and rendering models, camera modes, and animation.  However, you WILL see an overhead from using inventor over opengl, and sometimes it is a bit harder to customize the opengl behavior you want.For your purposes it sounds like inventor would be a good choice. ;  Hey thanks sjelkjd  , I think i''ll give open inventor a miss, the whole idea of making the app was to learn more about opengl and i think i''d miss out on heaps of stuf with OI.Thanks again