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3D Formats from Commercial Software vs. VRML & Java3D?
RickMuller asks: "I'm interested in molecular graphics, a field entirely dominated by
OpenGL. I would love to see something more web-friendly come along. I've worked with
VRML and
Java3D, and have been very puzzled why these technologies didn't become
ubiquitous. Now there are new 3D efforts by Adobe
and Macromedia (the Adobe Atmosphere download is available as a beta-download and is way cool!). The press is heralding this as the 3D web revolution. Why should these technologies succeed when VRML or Java3D failed?"
anyone who has actually done some
....
research into what mpeg4 will do when it reaches FULL maturity
realizes that vrml is inside it at the core system level
why?
because it will be there for streaming 3d
and avatars etc
anyone who says vrml is not robust enough has
not used it to its full potential
that being said im the first to admit that the main problem with vrml is conformance and
interoperability {check the archives at web3d.org} . too many plug ins and viewers
but that just pulls it up to par with html xml and
most other web languages
:O
the others are fairly cool
{adobe and macromedia}
macromedia has expressed interest in
having some sort of vrml to shockwave3d i/o and interoperability
java 3d does have the ability to
produce worlds based off of vrml
but its so slow and i dont want to compile a
new applet for every different browser and version!
the other more corporate offerings are just that
btw vrml is an iso standard and the next level:
X3D will be a great step in its continued growth
also check out blendo a vrml derivative to be induced onto the playstation2, its done by sony
so... http://www.blendomedia.com
it has the abiity to use live video as well
and as far as being too lazy to produce quality
vrml well
this took me eight hours:
http://www.hyperbomb.com/ayb/
use cortona plugin {by far the best for windows}
for proper enjoyment {course macromedia and adobes are only avail on windows too}
http://www.parallelgraphics.com
i have exp helping vrml on linux too via the openvrml {rpms at www.hyperbomb.com/openvrml/} and freewrl projects both located at sourceforge.net
but these projects go slower than the commercially developed ones... i wonder why?
oh and here is another short example of a sphere in vrml
-------
#VRML V2.0 utf8
Sphere {}
-----------
phwew that was tough
be advised ive been using vrml since 1995
its easy out put from databases too
why?
cuz its plain old text not some bloated binary format!
toodles
back in the day we didnt have no old school
VRML is a markup language, like HTML for 3-D spaces. OpenGL is a library that programs use to do graphics (primarily 3D) with. I could see a VRML program written in GL, but other than that, I don't see how they relate much.
As for Java3D, unfortunately, the Java2 spec has yet to see much market penetration, since IE & Netscape still ship w/ braindead JVMs.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Two things come to mind:
1. Most of the artists I know are too lazy to learn how to write VRML code and even less motivated to learn Java.
2. The Macromedia and Adobe efforts have support from companies like Discreet and Alias|Wavefront.
It's about ease of use. To be fair, most 3d packages can export to VRML, but usually they're very basic (no animation, no materials, etc.).
Also of note, OpenGL implementations are available for Java. Two come to mind: GL4Java and Magician. I'm not too sure how popular they are.
The situation for 3D is messy. Just leave it at that.
VRML tried to be the end-all, be-all 3D file format. Which it isn't, BTW, as advances in computer graphics have made VRML not very useful for the kinds of things I want. It is just too general purpose.
The new Web 3D formats are trying to capture a discrete market. People want to see a product in 3D before they purchase it. Of all of them, I rate Macromedia as the most likely to grab the market, given that the Flash plugin is one of the few plugins you can count on having. But they have a little better likelyhood of some success, but only if they latch onto an existing technology, IMHO.
The reason why mollecular modeling is all OpenGL based is pretty simple. OpenGL is a pretty nice library for getting 3D geometry to the graphics card for rendering. It works under any decent OS (Solaris, HP/UX, AIX, WinNT, Win2k, IRIX, etc) that you would want to do that sort of thing on. Programmers have mollecular modeling code that is many years old, probably first designed to work on some sort of early SGI machine, that they have just been linearly porting over to newer platforms without rewriting it.
To make a VRML-based platform, they would have to rewrite things. Sure they might provide an output format for VRML so that you could put it up in a web-based query format. But anything more would require you to rewrite things massively, which isn't a good idea, especially when you can still get p1mp OpenGL cards from Sun, HP, and a few others.
Gentoo Sucks