Coin3D is portable over a wide range of platforms: any UNIX / Linux / *BSD platform, all Microsoft Windows operating systems, and Mac OS X.

Coin3D is built on OpenGL and uses scene graph data structures to render 3D graphics in real-time. Basic import, rendering, and interaction with a 3D object can be implemented in just a few lines of code, and programmer efficiency is greatly increased compared with programming directly with OpenGL. OpenGL code and Coin3D code can co-exist in the same application, which makes gradual migration from OpenGL to Coin3D possible.

Coin3D is fully compatible with SGI Open Inventor 2.1, the de facto standard for 3D visualization and visual simulation software in the scientific and engineering community. Additional features in Coin3D include VRML97 support, 3D sound, 3D textures, and parallel rendering on multiple processors.

Those interested, can read about the history of Coin3D here.

Coin3D libraries

The core 3D rendering library Coin uses scene graph data structures to store and render graphics. Its data-driven design (redraws are only scheduled if the scene data changes) makes Coin3D well suited for user interface-based applications (e.g. scientific and engineering visualization applications), since it does not claim excessive CPU resources.

Being only a 3D rendering library, Coin needs a user interface binding to be able to open windows, handle user input etc. GUI Bindings are available for the native Microsoft Windows GUI (SoWin), Trolltech's QT (SoQt), Xt/Motif on X Windows (SoXt), and the native Mac OS X GUI (Sc21).

Coin3D comes with several file import/export libraries: simage for loading and saving images, sound and video files; Dime for loading, manipulating, and saving DXF files; Profit for loading, manipulating, and saving MultiGen Open Flight 3D model files.

The Coin3D libaries page lists all available libraries with links to the individual project pages, latest releases, and Subversion information.

Download and installation instructions

For each release, source code archives and precompiled binaries can be downloaded from each library's release page. The latest source code is also available via Subversion, checkout instructions can be found on each library's project page.

Platform specific information can be found on the Coin3D/Mac and Coin3D/Windows information pages. The recommended way to install the Coin3D libraries on other platforms is the Coin3D Autoconf/Automake build system.

System requirements

The core rendering library, Coin, is platform independent and portable over a wide range of platforms. What is needed is a C++ compiler and the OpenGL library. Coin3D comes with GUI bindings which allow you to interface the Coin library with a variety of GUI APIs. More information about platform portability and using Coin natively, and officially supported platforms, can be found here.

Due to limitations in avaible hardware and developer ressources, we have to limit the list of officially supported platforms to:

• Microsoft Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP (Coin3D/Windows information pages)
• Mac OS X (Coin3D/Mac information pages)
• GNU/Linux on x86 ^[1]
• SGI IRIX ^[1]
• Sun Solaris ^[1]

Other platforms can be supported upon request. Please contact sales@sim.no.

^[1] We do not provide information pages for these platforms, the recommended way to install Coin3D on these platforms is the Coin3D Autoconf/Automake build system.

Licensing

Coin3D is released under a dual licensing model and is available in two editions. Both editions give you full functionality on all supported platforms. Full access to the source code and all available binary packages is provided. Please see the Coin3D licensing overview for more information.

Related projects

Related project lists Coin3D- / Open Inventor -related projects that were not developed and are not directly supported by Systems in Motion.