How to render a 3D model/graphic of a building in a ASP.Net MVC webapplication

Question

I am researching the possibility to render a 3D model or graphic from a building described by data in a ASP.Net MVC webapplication (C#).

Most posts on forums and on stackoverflow and articles on blogs and websites I find about things related are old (2006 and before).

As far as I can tell there are three choices: Direct3D, OpenGL and Unity 3D.

Direct3D is from MS but I can't figure out whether this is suitable for a webapplication or not. Any experience anyone? But as stated before, the highest ranked articles in google are from 2006 or earlier (is it still being developed/maintained/used?).

OpenTK (www.opentk.com) looks the likely candidate for use of OpenGL but the latest release is from October 2006 (although there are recent blog posts on their website).

Unity 3D seems very advanced, modern and recently maintained, however I am uncertain whether it is not to bulky to render a simple 3D model of a building.

I would welcome any suggestions whether one or the other is better suited for the task and preferably examples of implementation.

Cheers, Daniël

Answer 1

I think you might be misunderstanding how this process works.

I assume that you want to render the object on the client?

In that case you need to look at a client-side technology. ASP.Net or any other server-side platform can pass the data to the client but you need to use a client-side technology to do that.

I don't know exactly where this stands right now but I would expect you to need to use Silverlight, Flash or possibly HTML5 for the display.

HTML5 is standards compliant but it is less mature and as far as I know you will need a fairly new browser to access it: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh535759(v=vs.85).aspx

Silverlight is more mature, should integrate naturally with your Microsoft toolset but will require users to install the plug-in before they can use your tool. I don't know how ubiquitous it is, but that may be an issue for you. I would still probably favour this if you want quicker/more achievable development time: http://forums.silverlight.net/t/225673.aspx/1

Flash is very ubiquitious but you will need proprietary tools to develop it and I don't know how/whether it would integrate with the Microsoft stack. I think they would prefer you to use their own stuff. It's good if you want something available on most current browsers but my feeling ( and if I'm honest my hope ) is that it will lose currency as HTML5 takes over.

Of course, if you're properly old school like it's 1998 you should totally go for VRML.

As regards the server platform you use, that's basically irrelevant to rendering and display. It's role will be to pass out data. If you are using a Windows server then you probably want to look at something WCF to pass the data out to your client.

If, you want to render your objects on the server and then use those renderings to create images or video on the client that is a slightly different matter again.