[X3D-Public] Fwd: Re: [X3D] X3D HTML5 meeting discussions: Declarative 3D interest group at W3C

[John Carlson]

I'm describing the model declaratively -- as a function (I've already described it procedurally as a mesh in the past with X3D and ECMAScript--and other technologies--including my hand written function based raytracer)--There are things I've left out like the ranges of phi and theta that are used...this is important when C and D are non-integer.  I am trying to take my model, and inject it into an environment or virtual world (say I inject it through a URL that returns the MathML)--and in that virtual world, assign stylesheet parameters (say I want to make the model reflective or refractive--or other materials).  The equation is in spherical coordinates (this is the 3D part).  I have had people use this equation in FVRML with fixed A, B, C and D (they've even done it as a function of time as well I think).  Ideally, I'd like to drag and drop this animation model (or the URL) into a world, assign style, and render and publish.  And I want this done on Mac OS X.

Obviously, I could write all the infrastructure/framework myself--I'm more of an application programmer than a framework or infrastructure programmer.

Here would be an example of the final result (minus the animation): http://coderextreme.net/roses/trans9.jpg  This was done with NVIDIA HDR code on Windows plus code which generated a mesh which I provided.  I don't have an NVIDIA card right now. I have tried the JOGL version of the HDR code, and it doesn't really have any reflectiivity or refraction, that I can tell.  Perhaps I should port the HDR code to WebGL.  I don't know the capabilities of WebGL, so I couldn't tell you if I could get the same results.

I'd like to do this in web browser so it's easily distributed...

Do you want more definition?

John

On Dec 23, 2010, at 11:05 AM, Chris Marrin wrote:

> 
> On Dec 23, 2010, at 10:52 AM, John Carlson wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Dec 22, 2010, at 7:12 PM, John Carlson wrote:
>> Say I have the equation: r = A + B * cos (C * theta) * cos (D * phi), where A, B, C and D vary over time randomly (probably described declaratively in MathML).  I want this to be rendered in a variety of environments in WebKit, Mozilla, Opera or Chrome (Mac OS X). Would the XG work with sort of declarative problem?
> 
> What you want to do here is to take any declarative 3D out of the example. How would you want to render this in any declarative form, say SVG or even plain HTML? Your problem is very undefined. The declarative form doesn't solve problems. It merely gives you a language in which to express those solutions. 
> 
> MathML doesn't understand what a problem means, even if it can express it in some visually appealing way. You can take that MathML DOM, extract the interesting parts and graph it, or animate it, or even use it as the tensors in a physical simulation.
> 
> Collada is very good at expressing physical properties and surfaces. But it's up to the user of that model to drop it on the floor and have it appear and behave as those properties specify.
> 
> -----
> ~Chris
> chris at marrin.com
>