Kore Nordmann - PHP / Projects / Politics
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:Author: 		Kore Nordmann
:Date:			Tue, 07 Aug 2007 21:57:10 +0200
:Revision: 		3
:Copyright:		CC by-sa

==================
3d library for PHP
==================

Image_3D is a 3D library for PHP 5.

.. image:: formel_1.png
   :alt:   Rendered Formula 1 car

It may surprise you, that someone writes a 3D library in PHP - and you're
right. This is not very useful, fast or featurerich (compared with povray,
opengl, or whatever). But it is amazing what you are able to do with PHP and
how fast you can do this (bearing in mind, it's PHP). So let's take a look at
the features: 

- Finite count of RGBA lights (pointlights, spotlights, ambient) 
- Several different objects (cube, sphere, torus, cone, pie, map, ..) 
- Import of 3ds objects 
- Full support for transparent polygons 
- Different output formats and output drivers (svg, gd, imagick, ASCII) 
- Different renderers (isometric, perpectively)

.. image:: colored_spotlights.png
   :alt:   Colored spotlights

And everything of the above mentioned is easy extendable, so you can easily
write own drivers, renderers, objects and lights. The package is available at
`pear`__ . If you have pear installed on your system just type:

::

	pear install -f Image_3D
	
Otherwise you can grap the archive or check it out
from cvs. Richard Davey wrote `a great article`__ on Image_3D. And you can get
some more information from the talk I gave at the last International PHP
Conference on this topic.

__ http://pearadise.net/index.php/view/package/pear.php.net/Image_3D/
__ http://www.corephp.co.uk/archives/15-Creating-3D-with-PHP.html