Question: I'd like to render a very simple 3D scene in a java applet. I could do all the math myself and render that to a bitmap, but as I'm sure I'm not the first person in history to have to draw a few cubes to the screen, I was wondering how this is usually done.

Every place I've read has said either Java3D or LWJGL, but as I understand it these rely on platform-dependent code and need to be installed separately from Java, making them both unsuitable for graphics.

So how is this usually done?

Answer: 
[This old page](http://www.garybeene.com/3d/3d-pure.htm "3D on the Web - Pure Java Applets") lists the demos/apps/libraries of 3D Java applets with no hardware dependencies. Unfortunately very few are open-source, others are not even downloadable.

Personally I recommend you to experiment with [Java 1.1 3D renderer by Ken Perlin](http://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/experiments/render/ "Java 1.1 3D renderer"), which has source code available and free to use for academic purposes.

**EDIT**: [jGL](http://www.cmlab.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~robin/JavaGL/ "jGL") is another Java 3D library with no hardware dependencies. It mimics OpenGL 1.\* API. It is licensed under GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
I'm not a Java guy, but 2/3 years ago when I was at univeristy I had the same problem :)
I've tried jogl... and for noob in Java like myself I found it too complicated to configure and write something using it.

I used Java3d and it worked like a charm, the only problem I had back then, was that Java3d did not worked with all graphic cards. But fortunatelly it worked with computers at my univeristy :)