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One 3D Format to Rule Them All
prostoalex writes "Three-dimensional graphics for the Web always seemed like a great concept that's not there yet. Five years ago many publications saw a great future in 3D-Web, but somehow things just haven't been moving in that direction. Apparently, the status quo is not making companies in this field happy and so the big guys, including Intel, Macromedia, AutoDesk, EDS et al. formed a 3D CAD working group. They claim that 'the need for a common 3D format becomes clear in a simple perusal of the Web, where the volume of 3D content is minuscule -- well under 1 percent.' The article is published in the latest issue of Intel Developer Update magazine, which is also available as a PDF."
Great. As if Flash isn't bad enough, now everybody's going to have a huge 3D intro to thier web site.
Note to web designers:
Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should
I can see how this would be sweet for colaborative development in the CAD field, but you know people are going to screw up thier web pages with it.
I like text only web pages. Is that so wrong?
Until they get 3D pr0n, the volume of anything but pr0n on the web will remain well under 1%.
3d is for losers who want to jack up a game's price give me the good ole 2d anyday.
Who needs a 3d web? - Are newspapers in 3D? No. hmm, what else is the web good for than news and information,,.. do we have 3d-porn-television? No! maybe 3D-Games? Yes, but not in a webbrowser =)
maybe it is b/c the web is 2D but I really don't see a need for 3D web. I use the web to read news, do research, find jobs, and look at porn. Yeah, I suppose 3D porn would be nice but not really necessary.
Research materials in 3D, hmm, it still would not be the same as holding reference material from 1863 in an archive.
News in 3D? Not really necessary, shit on TV is too real as it is.
The only thing I really care to actually deal w/in 3D MYSELF is video games (Gran Turismo and Madden).
What do I know though right?
Maybe the reason there's very little 3D content on the web is because there's no need?
Just because I can spawn 50,000 popups and have 10 Flash animations playing music at the same time doesn't mean I need it. Some of the best websites - Google's a perfect example - are good because they're simple and elegant.
on a pool on how many pr0n comments this one will generate?
"I turn away with fright and horror from the lamentable evil of functions which do not have derivatives."
What? That strikes me as very very strange. The volume of Jeri Ryan content on the web is similarly minuscule, well under 1 percent. Nobody is saying we need a common format for Jeri Ryan content.
Isn't it just possible that most people don't have 3D content they want to share via the web?
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Hello problem?? This is solution!! Problem?? Problem??
PROBLEM, WHERE ARE YOU?!?!?!
'ARRGH! Pirate Designers of the Internet, we be!'
Forget Intel, Macromedia, et. al. No 3D standard will be viable until it is ratified by the true Web technology leaders - the pr0n industry!
"Good things don't end with eum, they end with mania or teria." - H. Simpson
adobe was working on a web-based 3d application called atmosphere -- it sould even import objects from 3d applications, and could use javascript to let users interact with the objects. it was a neat idea -- you could create whole 3d worlds with gif and jpeg surfaces and have fully rendered 3d objects in the middle, with small file sizes.
what ever happened to this? another one for the toilet?
(note -- this app is, naturally, windows only. but if you have windows, check out the contest winners. neat!)
go get it
Note that this just says that there is hardly any 3D content. Just making yet another file format available is not going to create more content. Sure, it'll ease migration of file between applications, but little else.
And anyway, wasn't VRML supposed to be the de-facto standard for 3D on the web?
So what happened to VRML?
OK, so LOTR was a decent movie, but I'm getting really sick of this slogan being put places it really shouldent be. Just my (albiet, off topic) 2 cents.
Flash back to 1998, before the Y2k bug ended civilization and killed us all and all that stuff... VRML was going to be the "next big thing, honestly, trust us on this".
Imagine what knocking good fun Biff would have with this 3D hoo-hah.
Or JeffK, for that matter.
... but a uniform 3d format would be a great improvement. I'm learning some 3d by working on a polygon pusher and I discovered that finding good specs and a good format which is supported by a wide range of modellers is impossible. The closest I came was the .obj. I just hope theyll make it xml compatible so that I don't have to write yet another meaningless parser.
Look a monkey!
That reminds me:
returns are fixed at 10 percent... you must agree that's excellent,
And on top of your fee, you'll be involved ARTISTICLY!
What ever happened to that format, anyway? It was pushed by Sun and I worked with OpenGL-based creation tools on Indy and O2 systems. (I also did some markup by hand...)
Apple's 3DMF format worked similarly. What was wrong with them?
Those who complain about affect & effect on
I wonder if any of the big companies mentioned ever thought to include input from some of the 3d projects going on around the net. They might be suprised by the info they get.
What's with all the comments about a 3-D web being useless? Did anyone read the article (why do I even ask)? Noone (sane) thinks the web should be 3D (at least as long as we are all viewing it on 2D screens). However, there is still content that is inherently 3D that people want to put on the web. A standard format for such content is a good thing.
-- jason
... they need to make a 3D format that works across all 3D rendering packages. As it is, you can't go from Lightwave to 3D Studio MAX (or vice-versa) without having to make huge tweaks or changes to make it work. The most infuriating thing is that fundamentally, they aren't that different from each other. If somebody would come up with an 'esperanto' file format that anybody can support, then it's worth buying multiple 3d packages as opposed to sticking with just one.
When that happens, then 3D artists will be able to use the 3D Package they are comfy with to generate 3d art for the web. Until then, nobody's going to convince me to use some other toolset I'm not familiar with just to support a gimmick.
As stated before, 3D on the web is not a big screaming deal.
"Derp de derp."
Most of the three dimensional editors that I use suck in some way. I don't hold it against them, it's a tricky thing to do. But I'd love to be able to generate my own 3-D files from a script - so that I could generate many variations, for example - which is something most editors don't let you do. An open file format would be a great boon to those of us doing 3-D CAD work, as we could get into writing some of our own tools with a minimum of effort.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
I don't want any 3d pop up/under ads.
Reading the post it seems that people think that 3d isn't necessary. Well then how often do we hear people complaining about modern guis being bad. This might be an alternative. I know browsing isn't regular GUI, but it could give us a new dimension (doh.) It could spur new ways of navigating. I'm not saying the newspage fonts should be 3d. 3d and 2d should be combined. One could for instance navigate a page in 3d and then lock on to the interesting things you wish to read.
Look a monkey!
As someone who runs a 3d oriented online community (PoserPros), I think a standard for 3d content is long, long overdue. We will soon be launching a 3d asset store for our community, and if the browsers had a full featured 3d standard today, it would just open that many more option to display our content to our members.
3d technology is bound to revolutionize the web the same way it revolutionized the movies...
It's called VRML, it's been around for a while... The reason that few people use it is because most of us have almost no application for 3D graphics on our websites other than novelty.
Why would you purposely invite a company that has managed to completey destroy every project it has touched. Certainly they don'w want this group to fall apart discussing SLA's before any *real* work is even started?
Intel used to do research in fractal image compression too. back in the early 90's.
btw, why nobody uses it? it compresses much better than JPEG, IIRC, and it has smaller file size etc.
besides -- a common 3D thingy can probabbly help Intel optimize code for their SSE and MMX etc. which is all about "the web" now-a-days =) (p.s. anyone notice there are no more intel commercials on TV now?)
My life in the land of the rising sun.
And I should know, because I do a lot of work producing it. It is by no means a lonely field, but there are relatively few people who do it.
;)
Why put anything on the web? It's relatively cheap compared to printing flyers or magazines or novels, and there is really no parallel for instantly delivering interactive media (I've done dozens of web-based games, 3D and 2D using all of the technologies you've heard of and I'm sure several you haven't). But really, why?
You see, 3D is complicated. I've regularly had to participate in hiring of modelers and artists capable of collaborating producing good, efficient 3D art on a deadline, and real skill in this field is still rare. I know the tools, and I've watched them work, and I see why. It takes a unique blend of manual dexterity, artistic ability, spatial skills, math, and geekdom - especially the last, because you have to be a geek to keep up with the tools and the issues, which are heinous. That law about the more special-purpose and expensive a piece of software is, the worse it is, applies to 3D tools in spades. There are so many bizarre little problems.
Last but not least, most of the widely used 3D authoring systems are, or have historically been, very very expensive - $5,000 - $10,000 - $25,000 is not an unusual amount to spend just on software. There are cheaper tools, but remember, you have to interoperate with web middleware, and pretty much everything just imports from 3D Studio Max. And then, what's your presentation platform? VRML (ech)? Shockwave 8.5 (~$1,000)? There are others... my point is that most of these cost money too. Pre-rendering to Flash is the cheapest and actually very attractive, but then you don't get anything in real time and it's really just a clever trick for making a canned animation.
The net result is that there are very few hobbyists producing 3D for the web - games or anything else. And then we have companies. So why would companies want to produce 3D content when they get almost as much oomph with good 2D technology (or just plain graphics) without the significant costs, and endless technology headaches? That's because even with the best middleware, you might see 10-25% of your users have some kind of 3D hardware/software related problem... old video drivers bunging up D3D which bunges up whatever your middleware is, weird budget 3D cards, software mode, etc... Most businesses just want to spend the least amount of money to reach the largest possible audience. And that was true before the drive to produce any kind of non-ecommerce-related commercial web content at all pretty much dried up.
There are still a few people left who we haven't eliminated who, for whatever reason, it makes sense to produce 3D for the web. Product demos, promotional games, and the rest. Believe me, competing for their business is far from easy.
Don't get me wrong; I welcome better tools and better standards. There might be a niche for simple object inspection or static environment presentation ala a not-totally-braindead-VRML. But it's really not a big deal at all. Most of the real issues to do with web 3D are on the OS side of the equation - uniformity of hardware, APIs, cross-platform issues, etc. IOW just "Stability" and "Reliability." It's really, really hard to deliver 3D content to a wide PC audience even without the massive additional headaches of the web. At the end of the day, I think web 3D will come into its own when we collectively find it easy to author 3D the way we author text-and-graphics websites now - in other words, maybe never. Until then, it will remain a specialized niche which is (these days) reasonably well served by the existing toolmakers and not really susceptible to wide-ranging standards due to the divergent needs of the participants.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
I can see a good use for 3D graphics on the web.
:)
Let's say you are researching cars for a new car purchase. One day, you may go to Toyota's website and bring up a preview of their new Celica. Because it's a 3D model generated from the original Cad data, you would be able to zoom in, view it, and see the car in all its glory, even down to the smallest of details.
That, is a GOOD use of 3D technology on the web.
But, then there are the bad uses. Have any of you actually watched the movies? Let's use one in particular as an example: Jurassic Park. Do you remember the web manager on the computers when the annoying brat girl was trying to restore security within the compound? Zooming around in a 3D world trying to find the information you need? Give me a freaking break! We as a species can barely even understand information organized in a 2 dimensional plane, not to even talk about 3. Every interface I've seen that tries to throw some 3D interface on top of something has just been plain BAD.
Still, you could use 3D for some good stuff. Using 3D to add nifty graphical flourishes and to speed up the rendering of PDF/Flash like graphics are another good use for 3D. Hell, maybe one day we'll even have a 3D (say a toolbar) that you can drag around, and then pull and push it in 3D. Might be a good way to zoom in and zoom out while scrolling around a 3D view, but to think that the entire computer interface can be written in 3D is stupid.
So where does that leave us? Well, we can do the 3D now with Java, or ActiveX or something similar. It's not the ideal solution, but nothing ever is.
So let's develop a new 3D format. Oh wait, graphics capabilities are changing faster than our microprocessors. By the time they come up with something decent, I can all but guarantee it'll be obsolete.
And bandwidth? Hah! Do they even realize how much bandwidth even a small scene could potentially takeup? Most of the world is STILL running over dialup!
Quite frankly, I think it's just NOT practical, which is why we haven't seen it yet. In all honesty, why can't they just make OpenGL a standard interface for JavaScript? Imagine if your browser window was an OpenGL view, and you could control that with javascript? Who needs flash anyway?
Bryan
Useless and impractical as that standard may be.
Computer screens are 2D. TWO DIMENSIONAL. Thus, they're best suited to displaying TWO DIMENSIONAL things, not 3D things (games are an exception).
3D file browsers, web pages, word processors, and whatever else are cool, but not nearly as useful as the plain old 2D ones. FACT -- its hard to read stuff at an angle.
Lets give the 3D stuff a rest. It may be cool, but its completely useless. I am not a believer that people can always handle things better in 3D. Try finding some file on your desk. You can do it, but it'll take you awhile. Certainly not as convenient as the way an OS displays files, organized in folders and whatnot.
3D interfaces will never be useful on a 2D screen. When VR helmuts and suits become common, then maybe 3D interfaces will find their use, but I'm still doubtful.
The fact is, any thing which is supposed to be productive and is in 3D is just a publicity stunt. Make it look cool. Who cares if it works or not. 3DOS -- useless. Fsn -- useless. Fsv -- useless. 3DWM -- useless. Need I go on? I've used all the 3D interfaces just because they're cool. That doesn't mean that I'm going to use them on a regular basis to do actual work.
As for web-sites, they should convey INFORMATION, not show off the latest new flashy useless technique which hogs up all of our bandwidth.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Oh for gods sake we had VRML we dont need a stupid proprietry format from some corporation. I know VRML isnt exactly great but it can be updated to produce something pretty good, and open. Unfortunately in the real world no-one cares about VRML or SVG or anything, the basterds always win
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
The one area where 3D is actually useful is education, specifically for instructional simulations and/or models (strangely enough, the area of education is also the one area where Flash is actually useful). I break the application world up into 4 parts: instruction, recreation, information and utilities. 3D and Flash have some utility in the instruction and recreation arena but very little in the information and utility world (despite Macromedia's pushing Flash as a Web Application Tool).
X3D is definitely a solution looking for a problem. The Web3D crowd basically killed VRML by announcing their "new, improved, XML-based solution", used by nobody, supported by nobody, and with very little active work. If you get their SDK disks, it's mostly old VRML stuff and old Java3D stuff. This was sad, because it happened just about when hardware got good enough to do VRML properly. VRML over broadband with a current-generation OpenGL board works quite well.
I haven't looked much at HOOPS, but it's a reasonable idea. IGES, the old FORTRAN-based interchange format (80 column lines, no less) is a bit dated.
The problem that this solution is looking for is simple:
TOO MANY FREE CPU CYCLES.
Yup. Gotta sell these shiny new CPUs that nobody needs right now. We'll create this nifty new standard and foist it on the unsuspecting public to help eradicate evil idle time so we can SELL sell SELL!
Its real simple:
What really brought down the cost of 8mm and Super 8mm projectors in the 70's? Porn available on that format which you could watch in your home.
What finally got VCR sales high enough that prices started to come down? Porn videos becoming available in the early 80's.
What made online BBS's really take off in the mid to late 80's? Porn available on the BBS's.
What made Usenet really take off in the real early 90's? uuencoded porn available for download.
What made the e-commerce finally take off? What industry defined profitability on the net? Porn.
Why does DVD have multi-angle? Porn.
Its real simple, until you can get 3-D porn through these standards, they'll remain niche. Why do you all think virtual reality has never taken off? Its not lack of processing power. Its lack of inexpesive, private, immersive sexual virtual reality experiences.
Just like Flash, there is nothing inherently wrong with a web-3D file format. Sure, there are many cases of unnecessary Flash content. Blaming the technology instead of the designer/programmer is stupid.
3D visualization is a valuable technology for many industries. I used to work for a business that specialized in custom display work. Being able to provide an interactive 3D visualization that allows clients to view a piece from all angles is very advantageous. There are many industries that can benefit from 3D visualization similar to the example I've described.
it's only .00001% of what's out there.
Namely, it offers no benefit. Short of real CAD (design walkthrus, etc., where a real depth element is helpful), 2D is typically going to be the fastest means of digestion / navigation for the user.
Incidentally we have Microsoft's 3D GUI codenamed "Longhorn" coming next year... Why is this initiativ coming now? ;)
Accidentally, there are the GPL'd Quake engines around. But, coincidentally, they are shun like the plague by Microsoft...
The reason that 3D markup languages like VRML never took off was because when they were introduced and promoted, cheap and powerful 3D hardware wasn't widely available. When VRML was at the height of its popularity (which was never very high at all), there were very few computers it would run on at a reasonable speed. And it was a hassle to even get it working.
Yeah, it would be really cool if we could navigate the net with an immersive interface from out of Shadowrun or Johnny Mnemonic. But if nobody has powerful enough hardware to run the stuff, then it doesn't matter how robust the software is, it'll still crawl.
Now most new computers come standard with some sort of 3D hardware (finally), so VRML *might* have a chance in hell. Maybe.
Uh... What does SVG have to do with VRML? SVG is for Scalable Vector Graphics -- it's (generally) 2D. In fact, it's a wonderful technology for certain applications. It's open and certified by W3C and it's support is growing. Agreed, VRML "isnt exactly great", but don't go spreading FUD about something you have absolutely no clue about.
VRML is the future!
Shouldn't the WWW Consortium (W3C), instead of the big corporations, be proposing Web standards?. I haven't seen any mention to them in the PDF document from Intel.
For viewing all those really intersting and useful 3D models on CNN's website ;) Who doesn't need a 3D model of the caves in afghanistan
Never underestimate the power of fiber.
Now *there's* a company that wants the best for everybody.
Yea...
Just a continuous string of ones and zeroes, straight into my noggin. All, 2D, 3D and 4D information can be serialized.
Error: PANTS NOT FOUND. Press <F1> to continue.
I, very much agree with your comments. But, you don't have to restrict the designers to text only.
The fact is, most web pages can have very nice designs, including graphics and such without the use of Flash or 3D whatever. The catch is to keep the page sizes small.
I feel that web designers should be forced to access and manipulate their pages via a 14.4 connection. This will make page bloat and poor design obvious and miserable, even to the designers.
But, this is not the case. They design on highend systems with fat pipes. They use tools that add superfluous bloat and make adding extra goodies so easy that they can't resist. Most designers are all too eager to throw in the latest useless "applets" or widgets to try to distinguish themselves and their sites. It's inconvenient for them to work through slow connections and apparently too hard(or are they lazy) to manually strip out the bloat. This results in massive page bloat for pages that provide little or no content. Frankly, many of them also just look awful but, I suppose they could argue that this is subjective.
My point is that contrary to the status quo, 99% of the pages that are on the web, would be far better if the designers would just KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid.
This was useful when i was buying a laptop.. compaq has 3d models of theirs available. It answers the question of 'where does this go, and will that be in the way' without having to go into a store. Its just like the panoramic interior views that car mfrs have on their websites.
While you can't hold the item in your hand.. looking at a 3d model gives you a much greater feel for the product than even a whole gallery of images. It probally takes slightly less bandwidth as well.
SGI designed OpenGL with a client/server architecture from the ground up. With current high-speed internet connections, this is becoming more feasible. You're not going to get frame rates in the hundreds per second, but with texture caching and data compression, OpenGL could be a good solution to this.
This page is a good reference on this.
Where's the W3C on this one?
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
There web designers, try telling gouchi that you wouldn't be seen dead in that dress, does he care, no he's a designer. They get techintions to make the real clothes.
What you should say is,
Bosses,
Web sites should be designed then engineered, don't expect to have a good web site if you only use designers.
Recently the XHTML 2.0 standard became a topic of discussion, and it is touted as essential to move forward in the publication of content to new and exciting platforms, including web browsers on computers of course, cell phones and small devices, and of course television.
That last one got me thinking. I wonder if this effort is going to be aimed at any 3D content publication (especially advertising...).
Another platform is digital books... suppose your eTextBooks (for which you have no doubt paid a small fortune for LICENSE FEES), are filled with some secure form of XHTML content and standardized 2D and 3D image formats and rendering. How cool would it be to have a medical textbook with a 3D walkthrough of the colon?
Perhaps the content will be displayed on those billboards as seen in Minority Report, or maybe 3D content will be sent to your TiVo or Replay device over a special channel for nifty commercials. Or maybe some interesting user interface devices will start appearing on screens to navigate hundreds of channels, especially since we won't be able to record a lot of them.
Anyway, my point is, thinking of "web technologies" in the context of a web browser downloading content over a modem (or better) onto your PC is fast becoming a dated concept. It's not pages and browsers so much as content and platforms, and both of the latter will only become more commercial and, if we're luck, cool over time.
Well note that the name of the new group is the "CAD Working Group" it is a group that is part of the Web3D Consortium (http://web3d.org) while it's not clear how this will all shake out it is clear that the parties involved ARE committed to open standards. For a change this 3D project is starting with a problem (CAD on the Web) and will then produce a solution not the solution looking for a problem approach tried in the past.
I can see a reasonable market for 3D rendering tools, but the result only has to be a little movie, IOW a translation to 2D mpeg, which the *viewer* does not need 3D for. IOW, the maker of the image/movie needs 3D tools, but not the client (browser).
Now, maybe interactive 3D would require 3D tools on the client-side. For example, browse around in a virtual art gallary (kind of like the earlier Doom games, but less violent.)
But, beyond that, it would get old hat pretty quick.
Plus, if it is too complicated, then the navigation may confuse the viewer. For example, a virtual mall model where the reader can browse the mall via browser before shopping there. But, if the building is complicated, the user may go "F this, just give me a regular layered floor map with clickable areas!"
The problem is that nobody can find a practical use for it that does not have decent 2D counterparts. Most uses would be esthetic-oriented, meaning they are likely to fall out of style after a small 3D boom.
Table-ized A.I.
Hello problem?? This is solution!! Problem?? Problem?? PROBLEM, WHERE ARE YOU?!?!?!
Web Services is joining 3D in the hunt. They just found Push Services dead of starvation in a dusty corner. Stay tuned...
Table-ized A.I.
a brief perousal of the PDF shows that this is a
working group within the web3d consortium..
more info is available at:
http://www.web3d.org/fs_workinggroups.htm
As you can see from my .sig, and my un-updated URL, I used to be obsessed with just such a thing. Long story short, VRML-1 inspired, VRML97 failed to build upon it properly, failed to deliver, and worst of all failed to perform. A Quake-like VRML97 world renders on my system at less than 1 fps. Quake renders on my system at >30 fps.
The answer to the 3d format question? NONE. Why? Because if you really want to do 3d, you can implement something in Java and load whatever format you want. I hate to say that, I spent a lot of time wishing it weren't true, but I had to face it. I also had to face the fact that standards are irrelevant in 3d because it's all about performance, Performance, PERFORMANCE. For the time being, 3d is one of the most peripatetic (sp?) art forms in a medium that is already very impermanent. Maybe 100 years from now when all our boxes are capable of rendering 3d so realistic that it can fool the human eye, it will make sense to lock into a format and create content that will be "for the ages". For now, the techniques are being obsoleted after every work of art is produced.
It would be interesting to see more animation/CAD tools that export interactive Java-based 3d for the web. MSFT's C# stuff might do interesting things in browsers too, assuming it doesn't let some script kiddie take control of your system before the page loads.
Then of course there is the fact that 99.999% of the time, you just don't need 3d on a web-page. I don't need the Magna Carta, Shakespeare, popular lyrics, or the Nevada State Code in 3d. Those panoramas of houses for sale and furniture displays that let you change the fabric on a sofa are cool, but those are just a few niche applications where it makes sense.
Also, the availability of 3d tools doesn't make people 3d artists any more than the availability of camcorders makes people video artists. It turns out that people with a talent for visual art are (surprise, surprise...) rare! If you want to see more compelling visual arts, you are better off encouraging visual arts programs in the schools. Good luck.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
There is not fucken way I am gonna wear those silly red and blue goggles!
Table-ized A.I.
I work for a company that builds training and intranet software. We have frequent requests for solutions involving Web-based 3D. Web-based, because browsers are ubiquitous. 3D because it's the best tool for a support rep to answer questions like "how do I take the battery out of my cell phone?"
If you can pull up a model of the phone, flip it over, and say "see that button on the back at the bottom, press that, put your thumb in the middle of the back and push towards that button..." you can be a lot more helpful, with a shorter call and a more satisfied customer, than reading instructions about a phone you've never seen off of a Web page.
There are already lots of common 3D formats. Why do we need another commom 3d format?
This is just a marketing push. Formats are irrelevant. They are not holding back progress.
Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML).
Hideous, twisted language - I spent days working in it for my challenge project at school, attempting to reconstruct a building on campus. By hand. Boy was that stupid.
All that aside, it's already here. It could use some extension (some people have proprietarily extended it to include NURBS, reflection, refraction? - this should become part of the open standard). We've got a base foundation, why go inventing something else, that will probably be XML based and even MORE bulky than VRML? Oh yeah - I hope they come up with a binary encoding scheme for VRML. Plain-text programming is nice and all, but damn it's huge to carry those things around.
--Knots;
Anarchy$ dd if=/dev/random of=~/.signature bs=120 count=1
There is no doubt that 3D is terribly complex -- it's like software in a lot of ways. It has different complexity for each object, and productivity is completely ignorant of Moore and his law. One solution which Intel and Macromedia have been pushing to help with this is creating online marketplaces where vendors from all over the world can publish and aggregate their 3D content for reuse, similar to component reuse in software. One website that does this is Turbo Squid. Why build a ps2 model everytime? If the world can aggregate enough cheap and free 3D content, hopefully 3D will be used frequently and used in a context that makes sense.
Their sales pitch is certainly of dubious value. Paraphrased, it reads "There's no 3D because there's so many file formats out there. Let's make a new one!" If they had some technical or even political reason why theirs would succeed where others (*cough* IGES *cough* STEP *cough*) have failed, their claims wouldn't sound so empty.
Polygons, as in maybe an OBJ file, are fine, but if you have a more advanced modeler which uses nurbs or splines or something, your drawing will be almost useless after conversion into polygons. Usually the edges don't match, it doesn't form a true solid, and the wire count increases by about a thousandfold.
Some sort of standardized vector format which can use equations to represent curved surfaces is absoultely needed. Polygons just can't cut it anymore.
Clickety Click
For more than ten years I developed and sold a 3D translator. Over and over, users asked for a common format. There are many obstacles in the way. First of all, 3D programs oriented to video output are all in deadly competition. Their marketroids don't want compatibility unless it's one-way into their program. Next, they aren't necessarily similar in their representations of 3D data, meaning surfaces, polygons, materials, mappings and motion. If the common format doesn't support what program X does, developer X won't like it. Finally, today's video-oriented 3D programs depend more and more on proprietary plug-ins that recreate the 3D data. What you see on the screen only exists as the combination of a few parameters and some platform-specific code. CAD and video 3D often have very different goals, so their data is quite different, and their exchange needs are quite different. The last time the 3D players tried to find a common format, they made VRML. Search for the archives of the VRML mailing list.
I think largely it was a chicken-and-egg problem. None of the major browser players included VRML as a native format (sure, there were plugins, but people hate downloading plugins) because there wasn't much content. And the content providers weren't interested because it wasn't natively supported by any of the major browsers.
Now, if things had gone a little differently in the browser wars (which were peaking around the time VRML might have taken off), and one of the major browser vendors had rolled in VRML (or included a plugin) instead of trying to come up with yet another non-standard HTML tag, we might all be viewing Slash3D.
Perhaps it's just as well...
-- Alastair
My first experience with a 3D web site was in 1995. First, downloading the Microsoft VRML plugin for what must have been IE ver 1.0, then waiting anxiously for Microsoft's 3D "Haunted House" to load.... ... and then getting the result. Did I mention that it was also the LAST experience I ever had with a 3D web?
Best of luck to you guys, but...
Cmon people, use your imaginations. In say 5 or 10 years when GPUs will be significantly more powerful than they are now and 3D GUIs will be normal this will make a lot of sense. Why do we need 3D? Why do we need 2D? Lynx works just fine, right? :) We don't need it, we just want it because it looks cool and there are possibilities that haven't been fully explored yet. Imagine a 3D chat room for example. It has been done before (badly) but when it comes for real there will be a serious need for a 3D markup language that is more widely accepted than VRML is now.
alex
--- Wherever you go, everyone is always connected...
I was under the impression that Microsoft killed VRML. Just when it was starting to get interesting, MS bought one of the more advanced VRML plugin makers, Liquid Reality (I think it was). They were just about to release their latest Netscape plug-in, the IE plug-in wasn't even in pre-release phase, yet. Then, just before the release, MS bought them, changed the liquid metal siloet logo to a cone, sphere, and cube (too sexy for MS), and announced that the Netscape plug-in would not be released until an IE version were also ready. So far as I know, it never happened.
Naturally, all of the other VRML browsers, seeing MS buy a VRML browser company, threw in the towel and stopped development. Why continue making a plug-in when MS is just going to bundle theirs and kill you off?
VRML was yet another casualty of Microsoft's drive to own the Net. MS has really been the center of killing innovation on the Internet.
Of course it might be nice to have some minimal format that is transferable. Currently the minial format is too minimal (DXF).
.X format from DirectX, etc. The issue is getting each package to support them. Maya and Max and XSI all export .X. Unfortunately none of them import. If they did this would already be a non-issue.
The problem is there is an infinite way of making/generating 3D data and no standard can cover them.
3DS Max has 2 ways to make a sphere. One is the Lattitude-Longitude way, the other is the geodesic dome way. Maya only has one of those ways so if I save the file to that format it will be lost.
This is just one example. Some products have cloth, some have meta-balls, some have nerbs, some have only b-splines, some have subdivision serfaces, some of displayment maps, some support multple UVs and color sets per vertex...etc,etc,etc Some support lambert and phong, others support blinn and ansiotropic. Some have 10 procedural textures. Others have 30.
No "standard" format will cover any of that since each year a bunch of new ways of generating them from different sets of inputs comes out.
The best you can hope for is a low-level format (polygons only, basic materials, and textures, simple hierarchy, possibly very simple animation) But, you lose all the info that made your model easy to use in one package (constraints, expressions, effects, etc)
Those format already exists. VRML, the
I am a little bit skeptical of this effort at the moment:
Notice how a lot of the major MCAD companies are missing from this group? They do have a working group to address this, but I wonder how much success it will have when 3D collaboration on the net is a focus right now with products already on the market, or at the end of the development queue.
Given some of the players, I seriously wonder how open this standard is.
Adobe Systems Inc
Dassault Systemes -- Owners of Solidworks, popular, but totally Microsoft (read) closed MCAD package. Yes I am slamming them!
Microsoft Corporation -- What exactly do these guys have to do with 3D CAD? Nothing, but they want to own more of it. Check out Solidworks above and consider their development directions and development philosophy.
Intel -- Currently playing both sides of the fence by selling base technology while at the same time courting Media companies and Microsoft to make sure the next wave of closed tech runs nicely on their hardware. (They have done good things, but not enough to sell me yet.)
If you take a look here you will see XGL listed as a technology. This is OpenGL contained in an easy to parse format that is already capable of representing any 3D CAD data with good precision.
http://www.web3d.org/vrml/types.htm
Looking at that page, you also see X3D listed right above. I can't help but wonder about the relationship between the trademarks for OpenGL and X3D. Seems like more of the same OpenGL vs Direct X / 3D wars we have been seeing for some time now.
Clicking on either of the X3D XGL links takes you to the X3D specification page. Hmmm.... No mention of XGL, just X3D and how it will improve on VRML.
Another interesting fact here. Almost all MCAD and 3D visualization / Animation software makes use of OpenGL for its display. There are reasons for this. One simple one is that OpenGL really is open and runs anywhere. There are many others related to the strength and precision of this API.
So, everyone is generating OpenGL displays for their MCAD. Converting this to XGL is going to be straightforward with the added advantage of being able to render an accurate WYSIWYG display for 3D.
Why then, would everyone just go and embrace this new standard that breaks a lot of that?
Just some food for thought.
Blogging because I can...
That's an amusing notion!
Yeah, they totally dominate 2d CAD, always have, always will. But in 3d they are totally irrelevant. Now that they've been shut out of 3d they're crying about the need for file standards just like all the companies they shut out of 2d were years ago. Boo-freaking-hoo!
As others have said already, there is no need for 3d on the web. Those few who have a use for it are already doing it with the tools that are available already, and apparantly that only accounts for less than 1 precent of the content on the web.
I used to publish 3d CAD drawings to our customer's personal project pages on the website of my old company. There already is a format that works great; it's called eDrawings. I know from experience that it'll convert from AutoCAD and SolidWorks, and I'm pretty sure it'll do Pro-E and SolidEdge as well. You can save it with the viewer embedded in a self-contained executable, file size is reasonable, the end-user has full control over rotation, zoom, etc., and it's as easy as printing to PDF.
So, what exactly do these guys claim to be bringing to the table?
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Their can be only one!
(Ducks and runs...)
Blogging because I can...
I think Povray kicks ass... plain text.. http://povray.org
Its called Quake3, etc.
Sheesh. How hard was that? Next!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Except for a few exceptions, such as vizualisating an object for the viewer, there is little or no point in having a 3d interface. And all the 3D that I've seen on the web has been dog slow, with horrible plug-ins for equally horrible browsers.
I would rather see a successor to HTML that is leaner and more in line for what the web wants to be. It is no longer documents with some links, but some form of presentations with links.
So I follow the link to the article. And see Intel's website - doesn't even attempt to scale to my browser (looks like it's about 320x200), and has the article chopped up into little javascript bitlets with a fake "next page" icon that doesn't alter the URL so you can't link to it.
And these guys want to participate in a web standard?
The thing is, if the applications are limited only to the web, the problem is still manageable.
But we are talking about 3D, where the are TONS and TONS of DIFFERENT USES.
One-size-fits-all approach isn't really going to work in this case.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
It'll never happen - no room for banner ads and pop-up windows, see?
-MT.
This Claimer: I have worked part-time as a consultant for ZoomON, a producer of webified 3D Java-based software and purveyor of 3D file format converters. Lately, they have migrated towards vectorized content as a way to get lighter-weight graphics into mobile phones. They are cool dudes, check 'em out.
Money for nothing, pix for free
I'd love to be able to deliver 3D content for one of my products but there's no standard right now, and in corporate environments, it's not just a matter of asking the user to install a plug-in. Half the time IS (Mordak) just won't allow it in their "standard-build". A standard built-in 3D viewer in a browser would be manna for me.
So, just because the applications aren't obvious and currently mass-market doesn't mean that gaming is the only audience.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Several online clothing retailers offer the ability to try clothes on a model that you build yourself (presumably to look like whoever you're buying it for.) I know several times my wife and I have used this to evaluate online clothes purchases. It's amazing how accurate even a crude model can be about giving you an idea how clothes will look on a specific person. It's certainly a lot better than just looking at the models.
Then again, since people are doing this already, a 3D image format probably wouldn't improve things that much, although it would allow things to be a little more fluid.
Well under 1 percent of dinner forks are used for pulling people's eyes out. Clearly we need to improve the state of dinner fork technology.
Some applications just don't need 3D. Previous experiments have shown that those applications include movies, TV, file managers, web pages, and tourist maps of London. Unfortunately people keep trying to apply 3D technology where it's not welcome. I'd like to send an open letter to the technology industry:
Dear Technology Industry,
I appreciate the many things brought to me over the years by your ceaseless drive to innovate. Things like the self-heating coffee can, the self-cleaning oven and the self-shitting fat substitute. But there are some areas of technological development that concern me. Not because I think they will transform the world into a grim dystopian warzone full of stalking insectoid cyborgs bent on the destruction of humanity, but because frankly you're wasting a lot of money on things nobody wants. Things like 3D web pages, animated paperclips, chocolate-covered pretzels and streaming video for telephones. Please, take the time to consult a 10-year-old child before spending billions of dollars on any new project. If the child's response is "what the hell use would that be?", consider moving your engineers to a different project.
Not sure..It's still downloading...
http://www.discreet.com/products/plasma/ this is 3d in Flash. Do we need more?
I've never seen it used and I don't know anything about it. It might be able to export something Max-like, I don't know. FYI conversion from one 3D format to another, or similarly a "save as" into a non-native format, is surprisingly complex and generally introduces problems - even on static scenes, let alone with animation. Even with the best conversion tools, nothing quite produces 3D Max output like 3D Max. Furthermore, it's uncommon for tools to work on the Max files themselves; they tend to use Max plugins, and you export from Max into the tool's proprietary format.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Hi All,
I'm shocked at the lack of knowledge this forum has for Web 3D. There is a standard-- it's Viewpoint. Over 55 million people have the plugin, and it comes preinstalled on any machine with AOL. We've been in business for years and have tons of large name clients. It's free for hobbyists. You simply export your content from your favorite authoring app.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
I've always thought that, with a few exceptions, all this heavyweight 'content' represents a complete mismatch between the medium and user intent. The reason I like the web is because it can facilitate fast access to information. But it's not good if you have to wade through a layer of graphic bloat. In some ways, Flash (used inappropriately, as if often is) is to the Web as Micro$oft is to software.
Go ahead, "designers" - load up your pages with a bunch of useless visual crap. See how often I visit the site.
VRML does not give you the information necessary for high polygon count rendering. It's just raw polygons. It's not held in a BSP, portals or octree-bsp. That's why 3D web never took off. SGI dumped tons of money into it ages ago and even with fast SGI 3d hardware (at the time) it couldn't eek out very complex scenes.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
This effort is nothing new and is largely an exercise in committee meetings. You can find a better overview of the current state of 3D for the web on 3dcompression.com.
Roughly there are 3 reasons 3D on the web doesn't work:
a) Bandwidth -- interesting 3D data files are often larger than interesting video, so they need even more compression and bandwidth
b) Content -- it's hard to make good 3D applications -- when better 3D cameras are available, we'll start seeing 3D movies and 3D television on the web.
c) It's too early for standards -- no standard is going to catch on until the above two problems are solved.
Disclaimer -- I created 3dcompression.com, and I work in this area. But I will happily say that the 3 objections above apply to my own work as well as to anyone else's work in the field right now.
(score:-1, flamebait :)
page bloat sucks. i can agree with that.
most sites that use whatever is 'hip' to stand out just end up driving me away. some may say "this is flamebait," but a good example of a well laid out site that gets its points across and loads quickly is msn. god did i just say that?
the worst example of wasted bandwidth use has go to be banner ads. anyone thinking about getting rid of "unecessary crap" will eventually have to ditch those. and please, stop the x10 pop-unders! someone think of the children!