Attached Link: http://www.msnbc.com/news/716222.asp

X3D, an offshoot of XML, boasts a smaller footprint than the nearly 2.5M VRML plugins. Thoughts?

Attached Link: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-844985.html

Listening? Here and there. ;-) Tony Parisi, X3D co-author is one of my best friends, and was invited to my wedding, but couldn't make due to a new son that just arrived. I've also been hanging with Mark Pesci since VRML 1 days as well. So needless to say, we don't just listen, we talk as well. Burning Man, the common denominator. Attached is another good link on the story. Duane, it's good to know that this caught your atttention and you're driven to express interest. I have big hopes for 3D on the Web, even if petunia refers to it as poo-ware. ;-) Steve Cooper Curious Labs

Attached Link: http://www.web3d.org/fs_membersonly.htm

While it's sounding better, it's nowhwere near as nice as the new Web3D offerings from Adobe (Atmosphere), Macromedia (Shockwave3D) and Virtools. I can't tell you if it's looking better, as the "Gallery" at http://www.web3d.org/fs_membersonly.htm is "members only". So I have to pay $100 just to see if the stuff played in this standard looks any good!?!? Frankly, these folks at web3d.org don't know how to 'sell', aka get artists to use, a standard. What killed VRML wasn't just file size, after all, it was also, and perhaps mostly, the inability of the programmers to get artists to create compelling content in VRML. It looks to me like the web3d group is repeating that mistake again. Meanwhile, Adobe and Macromedia know how to make tools artists will use and distribute the plug-ins users will require. File size: No matter how you cut, compelling 3D content is big, and a 3D web will not arrive for general users until broadbanc arrives for general users, making the 2.5MB file sizes of the players not much of an issue. Note that the X3D article says that the "smallest" component of the standard is 300k. I'll bet that to get the same functionality you can get from Shockwave3D (gravity, physics, game programming, multiuser play & chat, etc.) you will have to download at least as much code as the Shockwave plug-in. Finally, relying on 'standards' means relying on Microsoft to support and implement them, while Adobe and Macromedia have more ability to work out partnerships with M$ (and sue M$ if it doesn't live up to them). While X3D might (someday) be an ok way to demonstrate rotating product models, I think that for the complex kinds of animations Poser makes, CL would be better to focus on working with Adobe and Macromedia (not to mention collision detection and gravity!).

Hot damn! Star Office can already save everything I do in it in XML format... this'll make things waaaay easier, once I get around to remaking the website :) /P

Digit8r Our development partnership with Viewpoint and Adobe has lead to our creation of the animated character component for the Viewpoint Media Player, as is used in Adobe's Atmosphere tool. This gave Poser artists the opportunity to create animated 3D avatars for Atmosphere using either Avatar Lab or the Pro Pack's Viewpoint exporter. We are also working closely with Macromedia and just last week released a beta version of a Pro Pack SW3D exporter to enable Poser to create animted character content for the Shockwave 3D format as well. The X3D initiatve has some promise, and could be a strong player, and perhaps Poser could have something to do with helping that occur. We want to see 3D on the web succeed someday and if that occurs, want to be able to supply tools that make the process of creating 3D character content for the web an intuitive process, ultimately letting artists control the look and feel of that content. That almost sounds like a mission statement ;-) Steve Cooper

Penguinisto---Linux---Penguinisto=Linux...Ahhh...now I gets it. You a RedHat man or Mandrake? Or are you old school Caldera? Lemme see,...in your position, I'm guessing your also a Unix convert, perhaps not by choice. Sorry, I just got the Penguin connection and got carried away. So how close was I?

OK. Here's what I want to see. A lightweight (meaning compressed), secure (meaning encrypted) protocol/plugin for streaming 3D animations, with the same basic features RealMedia offers. Embeddable with/without playback controls, optional hotspots, slideshows as well as animations, scalable render quality keyed to modem/internet speed (rather than Real's method of recoding at separate resolutions and bloating the file)... If you know anything about SMIL you know where I'm going. Devise the technology first and worry about the killer app second. Cybering some might-be-a-woman in Sims drag in a virtual chatroom just seems too close to watching plushies get it on for my likes. And what digit8r said about rotating products is too true; a much more useful application would be a lo-res travelable Visible Human or working see-through Wankel Rotary Engine, esp. if there were some interactivity.

Everything you ask for is available through Shockwave 3D, check it out on the Macromedia site. Curious' contribution to what's going to be a revolution for us animators is to provide the wherewithall to get the animation data complete with an avatar into w3d data. There's still a lot more to do but what a start! Oh and the rotary engine thing, that's possible with the exporter, in fact that's possible without it, Shapeshifter will create simple primitives and you can rotate and move them reasonably easily with Lingo add some buttons and away you go.....

I knew there was a reason we should upgrade our copy of Director at work... Would you be so kind as to provide some demonstrative links for us here to examples on the Macromedia site?

Attached Link: http://www.macromedia.com/software/director/special/inspiration/

Here you are! You'll find quite a few examples from this page. I'm hoping to get a page up with some tips and tricks, in the meantime: *************** I've discovered that the way the animation is prepared is important. The exporter isn't as forgiving as Poser. Some glitches that are hidden by the IK in Poser become exposed when exported to Director. It's necessary to create the animation and then check it by turning off IK to see if any of the movements will be wildly out in the final exportation. **************** In Director, it's tempting to just put the 'keyboard input' trigger on first with the 'drag camera' action, this will cause a crash (hit escape to free everything up again) You need to add the camera's movements in instalment. Add pan camera first, then add the keyboard actions individually. Add the next set of camera movements, 'pan camera horizontally' add the keyboard from the cast window and so on. ***************** Sometimes, when the Shockwave player is installed twice it causes problems with play back, the page will ask to download the player again and won't be available for off-line viewing. It's easy to put right, download the 'uninstall Shockwave player' from Macromedia's site and reinstall the player. That solves most problems with the player. ******************** To get your animation to play in the largest possible size, i.e. taking the whole of the web browser, select the second tab on the publish settings and select percentage, Director automatically selects 100%. ******************* The Poser Exporter works best with versions of Windows after Win 98. It will still work in Win 98 however it can't cope with as many vertices. You can export figures but only up to the Mannikin, even lo-res is too big. To export a decent Poser figure upgrade to a flavour of Win 2000 or XP or be content with the Mannikin and props. ************ You can save your animation by right clicking, this will take you to Macromedia where you'll be given the option to download Shock Machine. This app is a little gimicky but it's a useful way to store your animations. To view it properly you'll need to make a tiny bitmap image, you can add this at any time. Once you've downloaded Shock Machine, navigate to the folder called Shockwave.com in your program files folder and explore the content folders. You'll find the default .bmp files there just load one into Fireworks or a similar program and create a more relevant one. Then save it into the same folder as Shock Machine saved your file. If anyone else comes up with others, please let me know and I'll collate them all together....

Attached Link: http://www.shapeshifter3d.com

Oh and shapeshifter's available here: There's an evaluation version that's restricted to a minimal amount of vertices. But it's perfectly possible to export a machine from Poser. The point at command is particularly useful for creating pistons and cylinders. With the Poser exporter the animation is created as a whole and exported as a complete animated world. Other flavours from other apps can create boned characters with options of different animations that can be applied in real time from the shockwave movie but ....phew! God knows how much time and brain power that'd need.....

I mentioned Star Office because they have both a Windows and Unix versions... never messed w/ Director before, but I know what it does, and it makes sense that CL would want that in their beta-testing. I doubt that avatars would be the way to go - and 3Danything on a web format (anyone else here mess with DHTML at the actual code level?) is gonna be a toughie. Netscape 3 came with a basic VRML component, but all you could do with it is travel clumsily around a great big "Letter N on a globe" on their 3d page. It also slowed down the 'puter by a huge margin. Unless the speed ('puter and modem) bottlenecks can be solved or circumvented, it'll be tough to really do all that much with any 3d-based web design. To Electric Aardvark: Hehehe - guilty as charged :) (for the record I prefer Red Hat, in spite of the fact that Caldera's HQ is literally right down the road from where I live.) I've grown past the zealotry though. I use Win2k on my laptop (Poser, Bryce, and some in-school apps), and Linux on my desktop (home router, games machine, data archive, 3D modelling, etc.) Heh - I'd already gotten onto Curious Labs about a Linux version of Poser, but it'll take time before I can nudge them in the right direction. I did get it to (sort-of) run under WINE (I've only managed one render on it without the thing blowing up on me), and Poser does use Tcl/Tk as well as Python scripting... both items being extremely compatible with Linux, since they both came out of Linux development efforts. I think CL is having problems with getting an *ix version of Quicktime going, IIRC - it's a rather vital part of Poser. I can run the QT player under WINE as well, but like Poser, it ain't the most stable thing I've ever laid eyes on; although QT Player does run much more reliably than Poser under those circumstances. /P

Attached Link: http://www.enigmastudio.co.uk/stretchnwalk.htm

Have a look at this, I'm not that proud of the animation, I haven't had the luxury before of being able to think in terms of 100's of frames and the web in the same thought before but it demonstrates what's possible. Also, take a look at the file size..........

Bugger! Use your arrow keys to navigate through the animation, 'r' key to reset the camera.....