Easy SDK- Guide to the Web3D Consortium's
Software Development Kit (SDK)
http://sdk.web3d.org

Nicholas Polys
npolys@virtuworlds.com
VirtuWorlds LLC - www.3DeZ.net
Web3D Consortium - www.Web3D.org

Motivation and Overview

In its third year of semi-annual releases, The Web3D Consortium is proud to present the Summer 2002 edition of Web3D X3D Software Development Kit (SDK) CDs. This comprehensive suite of X3D™ and VRML software are available online at http://sdk.web3d.org and provide a huge range of viewers, content, tools, applications, and source code. The primary purpose of the SDK is to enable further development of X3D-aware applications and content. Primary contributions will be demonstrated and free CDs will be given to attendees.

The SDK is a collection of information and both commercial and open-source software contributed by the Web3D Consortium Members and Working Groups. Releases of the SDK are scheduled for The Web3D Symposium and SIGGRAPH which usually occur in February/March and July/August respectively. These are watershed events in the Web3D Industry and are consequently prime convergences for graphics designers and application developers whose interest is real-time 3D. The Web3D SDK offers something for all graphics persuasions from green to guru- from the beginner, viewing their first world, to 3D developers and application programmers looking for the latest prototypes and source code.


Hello Web3D !

Viewing (Disk 1)

Have a viewer installed?

  • Become familiar with the navigation controls and features of your Web3D browser
  • Browse the exciting content on SDK Disk2 (see below)
  • Check out the online gallery worlds from the Web3D Consortium and its members [http://www.web3d.org/fs_gallery.htm]
  • Explore our Authoring software, Resources, and Tools to build your own environments and virtuality!

Need a free viewer?

By platform install

It is advisable to check the latest program documentation to determine what X3D Profile(s) and encodings it supports. At the time of this writing (April 2002), numerous companies and open-source groups have planned new releases for SIGGRAPH which will include support for different X3D Profiles and the XML encoding. Currently, the VRML97 Profile and VRML (utf8) encoding are the most widely supported.

Depending on your platform and needs, you may install a standalone player or plug-in players for Explorer and/or Netscape.
Nowadays, thankfully, many of these players may co-exist on the same system.

Company / Product Platforms / OS   Company / Product Platforms / OS
 
Parallel Graphics Cortona Win, Mac, WinCE   Xj3D (*)(°) Java3D
Blaxxun Contact Win   FreeWRL (*) Unix, Linux
OpenWorlds Horizon SGI, Win   MacLookAt (*) Mac
Nexternet Pivoron Player Win   OpenVRML (*) Win
GOMID iConnecter 3D Java   Zaptech Twirl (*) Mac
SRI Terravision Win, Linux, SGI      
Lattice XVL player Win      
     
* Open Source
  
   
° supports integrated authoring
 

By applet

These softwares are runtime rendering applets in Java... if you have a JVM, no plug-in install is required to display Web3D.
They were built to deliver and integrate a streamlined subset of VRML97 functionality (Web3D content at the Interactive and Extensibility Profiles). You will suprised how much you can accomplish and extend with such light engines!

Company / Product    
   
Blaxxun blaxxun3d      
Shout Interactive Shout3D      
Parallel Graphics Jet      

Content & Examples (Disk 2)

Whether you are looking for widgets, textures, objects, or worlds to browse, build, or test, you will find it on disk 2:

X3D Examples
Conformant scene examples are accessible in X3D, VRML97, and HTML through an autogenerated website interface:

  • Humanoid Animation (Hanim)
  • GeoVRML
  • Universal Media Panoramas
  • NURBS
  • Lattice
  • VRML97 Specification examples
  • VRML Sourcebook examples

Conformance Suite
Built from the NIST VRML97 Conformance Suite, these node-by-node, field-by-field examples are accessible in X3D, VRML97, and HTML through an autogenerated website interface.


Universal Media
Installer, archive, and Quick Course

Universal Media increases the realism of online Web3D worlds (VRML, Java 3D, and other online 3D technologies) and decreases network downloads by defining a small, cross-platform library of locally resident media elements (textures, sounds and 3D objects) and a uniform resource name (URN) mechanism by which Web3D content creators can incorporate these media elements into their worlds.

PROTO Repository
VRML97 Reusable Software Components (Javascript and Java behaviors) are a great way to build applications quickly.


Web3D Links


Tools

Authoring (Disk 1)

Demo tools

Blaxxun Avatar Studio Impressive capabilities and choices;
VRML export disabled in demo.
Parallel Graphics
3D Authoring Tools
  • Internet Model Optimizer
  • Internet Scene Assembler
  • Internet Space Builder
  • Internet Character Animator
  • VrmlPad
  • Extrusion Editor

Trial versions with some features disabled.
GOMID Naya Avatar Creator

Easy to use and map a face image;
Demo version with limited figure libraries, but exports H-Anim VRML.
OpenWorlds Merchant A suite of Import-Export libraries for reading in and writing out VRML97 into various rendering libraries.
Lattice Designer Lattice Designer is the modeling software that can create directly XVL (eXtensible Virtual world description Language) data. Demo version times out.


Freeware/Open source

X3D Edit X3D-Edit is a graphics file editor for Extensible 3D (X3D) that enables simple error-free editing, authoring and validation of X3D or VRML scene-graph files. Context-sensitive tooltips provide concise summaries of each node and attribute. These tooltips simplify authoring and improve understanding for novice and expert users alike. This distribution includes X3D DTD and Schema, as well as XSLT stylesheets and batch files for the translation of VRML97, X3D, and HTML files.
Chisel, Vorlon Open Source VRML97 file validator & optimizer for post-production
NIST Viper VRML97 Parser
White Dune A graphical VRML97 editor and animation tool. White_dune can also load and store X3D (xml encoding) files, if configured to work with the nist.gov X3D translators. GNU General Public License (GPL). Builds for Linux, SGI, Win, Sun.
GeoVRML
  • ShapeViz - ShapeViz is an application that can take ArcView Shape files, view them, and convert them into VRML and GeoVRML. It runs under Windows 98 and NT. Conversion Tool is based on the SEDRIS conversion libraries and lets you convert coordinates between latitude/longitude and Universal Transverse Mercator.
  • DEM2GeoEG - A program to convert USGS Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data into a VRML .wrl file that uses the GeoVRML 1.0 GeoElevationGrid. One benefit of this is that you can inline multiple GeoElevationGrids into a single scene and they will be correctly located with respect to each other. You can vary the number of polygons, vertical exaggeration, color, and texture of the output. Source code available.

Serving (Disk 1)

Apache Cacoon XSL server
Cocoon is a 100% pure Java publishing framework that relies on new W3C technologies (such as DOM, XML, and XSL) to provide web content. Available locally is Cacoon and Jakarta-Tomcat. Apache for Windows is also included.

Parallel Graphics Multi-User Solution information and Islands client software

Source Code (Disk 1)

DIS-Java-VRML, a (VRTP) Virtual Reality Transfer Protocol
DIS, Java and VRML can provide all of the pertinent capabilities needed to implement large-scale virtual environments (LSVEs). DIS is essentially a behavior protocol tuned for physics-based (i.e. "real world") many-to-many interactions. Java is the programming language used to implement the DIS protocol, perform math calculations, communicate with the network and communicate with the VRML scene. VRML 3D graphics are used to model and render both local and remote entities in shared virtual worlds.


GeoVRML
Included is the jar file installer that is needed to view GeoVRML 1.0 content, the full Java source code for GeoVRML, the EXTERNPROTO definitions for all of the new nodes, and a number of example GeoVRML 1.0 worlds.


UCL MBone
The UCL Mbone Conferencing Applications are a suite of applications that allow users to participate in local area and wide area conferences over the Internet using audio, video, and shared workspace tools. They support multiway participation using IP multicast and point-to-point communication using unicast connections.


Blaxxun Contact 4.3 - Community Source License
Currently only available for the WIN32 platform using either OpenGL or Direct 3D as low level rendering API. There is a core library providing rendering, utility, media support and VRML scene graph services. On this core the sources for two different front-end’s are provided: blaxxuncc3d.ocx An MFC Based Active X Control as a plugin for Active X Applications (e.g. Microsoft Internet Explorer) GLView.exe A standalone MFC Based application including some editing capabilities and a SceneGraph Tree Viewer. A Netscape Navigator plugin is provided which is realized as a small wrapper for blaxxuncc3d.ocx. The EAI is internally realized using COM (blaxxunVRML.idl)

FreeWRL, OpenVRML, Zaptech browser source code included !


SAXON
The SAXON package is a collection of tools for processing XML documents via the Extensible Stylesheet Language for Transformations (XSLT). Binary and Source Code included.


expat
expat is a high-performance XML parser written in C++. Pages, binaries and source available
 


Resources

Disk 1

Web3D Consortium Specifications & Recommended Practices
This section contains the Web3D Consortium's Specifications for building Web3D content.
VRML97, External Authoring Interface (EAI), Humanoid Animation (H-Anim), GeoVRML

MPEG4 Documentation & Overview


CVS client
CVS is used by developers in the Web3D Consortium Source Code Task Group to maintain group source software.
Copies of binary clients are provided here for Windows and Macintosh systems.


Web3D Links


Disk 2

Web3D X3D TaskGroup Snapshot
Primary resources, supporting documents, guides, and prior work as of July 1, 2002.


X3D is a trademark of the Web3D Consortium.
All other trademarks and registered trademarks previously cited are the property of their respective owners.