Overview

Overview

Who Should Read This Manual?

This is for you if…
…you are installing the Cult3D Designer application.
…you are creating a Cult3D animation.
…you are converting a 3D model into Cult3D format.
…you need a walkthrough of how to create a small Cult3D project.
…you need technical information about Cult3D and related tools.

This is not for you if…
…you are just going to use an existing Cult3D animation.
…you are only going to install the Cult3D Player plugin.

What Is Cult3D?

We are using the term end-user for the person who is the ultimate consumer of a Cult3D animation, e.g., the person who while browsing the web sees a Cult3D animation on a web page and interacts with it.

We are using the term author or Cult3D animation author for the person who imports, edits, or creates Cult3D animations using the tools described in this manual.

Cult3D is the new multi-platform 3D object rendering engine. It is a 100% software product. No additional hardware—such as 3D accelerator cards—is required.
As a desktop or notebook user, you can now view 3D objects in realtime, a capability formerly found only on high-end workstations. Cult3D gives internet users the opportunity to view high-quality 3D objects online on most platforms.

Cult3D consists of three components:

the Cult3D Player plugin, which allows users to view Cult3D objects on the web, and
the Cult3D Exporter plugin, which converts objects created in many popular 3D graphic design programs, and
the Cult3D Designer, which expands on the data from the Cult3D Exporter into a fully interactive object with sound and animation.

Cult3D Is Not VRML

Cult3D is a different technology than VRML. Ordinary VRML is far slower and of less quality in the rendering than Cult3D. The larger set of rendering options gives Cult3D both better fidelity and smaller file size than other software based 3D rendering formats.

The Cult3D Technology

The Cult3D technology is a software only, multi-platform rendering engine delivering realtime interactive 3D graphics of unprecedented quality and speed. Cult3D allows fully animated 3D scenes ranging from simple sequences of motions all the way to complete interactive 3D presentations, without any special hardware support.

The Cult3D Player plugin is optimized to run on a wide range of computers and configurations, from low-end systems with low bandwidth connections—such as a first generation Pentium PCs or Power Macintosh computers—without sacrificing responsiveness or quality.

With built-in compression and streaming capabilities, the Cult3D file format is small and efficient, resulting in faster downloads and progressive viewing. Once a Cult3D object is exported into the Cult3D Player file [*.co] format used by the Cult3D Player plugin, it can no longer be opened and edited. This prevents the object that you, as an author, put on your website—or otherwise publish—to be changed or extracted for use by others. Should you need to make changes to the object yourself, you can simply open the Cult3D Designer file [*.c3d] describing the object, make the needed changes, and re-export it into the Cult3D Player file [*.co] format. Easy and safe.

Cult3D's event driven architecture gives you the ability to set up all the criteria for what your object can or can not do depending on what the end-user does or does not do with your defined scene. In addition, you can use the traditional timeline animation for a more complex animation sequence. By supporting both of these modes, Cult3D gives you the ability to create almost any presentation, while still keeping the authoring process simple.

The Cult3D Designer Application

The Cult3D Designer is an application for adding the interactivity to your already modeled 3D object.

You can add animations, sounds, links, Java code, clickable areas, and movement constraints to the object. Using a Cult3D Exporter plugin for you favorite 3D modeling/animation software, you can export the data as a Cult3D Designer file [*.c3d] to be loaded by Cult3D Designer. After editing the object, Cult3D Designer saves the presentation as a Cult3D Designer file [*.c3d] (for the object data) and a Cult3D Project file [*.c3p] (for project information and references to external resources such as sound and Java code).

Once you are satisfied that the presentation is complete, you write it out as a Cult3D Player file [*.co] for the Cult3D Player plugin to play. (See Working with Cult3D below for a more detailed description of this process.)

All actions and interactions in the model are defined by events. An event can be a pressed key, timer expiring, mouse button clicked, etc. Events are generated by such actions as play sound, play animation, goto url, etc. You can also add Java code to manage more complex sequences of actions.

The Cult3D Designer can edit and extend the objects and animations exported by the Cult3D Exporter in the *.c3d file, in order to define and add more complex sub-animations (such as interpolation—morphing—between two different frames in the animation.)

Cult3D Designer writes a compressed binary file with the extension *.co that can be published locally or on the net. Typically, vertice animation is expensive in file size, but Cult3D Designer optionally allows the use of lossy compression for the vertice information, resulting in smaller file sizes.

Working with Cult3D

Here is an example of a typical project made into a 3D presentation using Cult3D Designer.

Use your 3D modeling package and take either an existing model or create one from scratch. Remember that even though Cult3D can handle very complex objects, the end-user experience is going to be much better with a model that is well-balanced between enough detail to show what is going on, and beeing small enough to load and render fast.

Once you are happy with the way the model looks in your 3D modeling application, it is time to export it to a Cult3D Designer file [*.c3d]. This is the file format used to maintain a Cult3D object by Cult3D Designer. (Later we will convert the data into something Cult3D Player can view.)

You can now edit the object in the Cult3D Designer by adding events, actions, sounds, etc.

You can preview the end-user's view of the object inside Cult3D Designer so it is quick and easy to iterate the design until you are happy with the result. Then save the object back into a Cult3D Designer file [*.c3d] so that if you need to make changes in the future, you can easily just modify what you now have.

Now is the time to create the file the end-user will actually view. This Cult3D Player file [*.co] is compressed (possibly even with a lossy compression algorithm, should you so choose) and heavily optimized to reduce file size, as well as arranged to allow Cult3D Player to start displaying the contents even before the whole file is downloaded.

Important!
Make sure you have also saved your object as a Cult3D Designer file [*.c3d]. Once you have created a Cult3D Player file [*.co] you can not convert it back into editable data or even open it in Cult3D Designer. This allows Cult3D to truly optimize the file for viewing and throw away all the editing information. It also protects your model from wanton modifications by others. Only you or people you give the Cult3D Designer file [*.c3d] can modify the object and then create a fresh Cult3D Player file [*.co] again.

Now all you have to do is to place the Cult3D Player file [*.co] where the user can access it (typically a web server, but it could be a file server or even the user's local disk) and make a link to it from some web page.

If you had a Cult3D Player file [*.co] named plan-40.co, then the snippet to access it might look like this.


<object
    align="CENTER"
    classid="clsid:31B7EB4E-8B4B-11D1-A789-00A0CC6651A8"
    width="500" 
    height="275" 
    border="1" 
    codebase="http://www.cult3d.com/download/cult.cab#version=3,1,0,1">
  <param 
      name="SRC"
      value="plan-40.co">
  <embed
      pluginspage="http://www.cult3d.com/newuser/index.html"
      src="plan-40.co"
      width="500" 
      height="275"
      color="000000"
      type="application/x-cult3d-object">
  </embed>
  <param
      name="BGCOLOR"
      value="000000">
</object>