Looking for an easy to use 3D Java Engine API (i.e. not wrapper) that has a good community and good development. Extra features (i.e. audio, input, etc.) are not necessary but nice.
List of the most popular Java 3D graphics APIs I found:
Wrappers / Low Level
- JOGL - Strong community / Good support / Active
- Java3D - Abandoned (or slowly dying), phased out Scene Graph (or re-tooling into JavaFX?)
- lwjgl - Open GL wrapper, with audio and input handling / Active
Engines
jMonkey Engine - Wikipedia - Active
- Branching between version 3.0 and 2.0 (may hurt community)
Bindenlicht - No Wikipedia! - Not active
High Level (Not designed for gaming)
- Processing - Doesn't seem suited for gaming but for graphics visualizations and demos
- Jzy3d - An easy to use Java API for 3d charts (surfaces, scatters, bar charts, etc). Built on top of JOGL
Update: Please pick a JAVA engine and explain why its your choice! Thanks!
Answer
I would look at Ardor3D and have another look at JMonkeyEngine.
Ardor3D
UPDATE: Ardor3D's developer ceased the project, but a subset of it continues to exist
Created by the original JMonkeyEngine developer(s) who decided a clean break was required so they could start over and use all the experience gained to create a better API and platform.
The people I know who have used Ardor3D have very positive things to say about its design and API. It is actively maintained and has a good community and good API documentation, although tutorials are a little short in supply and generally you'll have to be familiar with 3D programming concepts to be able to pick it up.
JMonkeyEngine 3
A community-led rewrite of JMonkeyEngine 2, driven by dissatisfaction with JME2 design and related issues caused by said design, it has gone from strength to strength since its release.
There is ample documentation including tutorials and plenty of projects using it. If you had issues with JMonkeyEngine 2 or earlier, it is well worth another look at version 3.