Grafman's VR World

A Guide to VR World Demos

[ Gallery | Space | Snowman | Valentine | Bunny | Earth | Hero | Skater | Dome ]

These images are snapshots from various VR World demos, and may be freely used within publications, provided that the demos are attributed to Robert M. Free and include a reference/link to Grafman's VR World at http://www.graphcomp.com/vrml/ Please notify grafman@graphcomp.com of the publication, edition/URL and expected date of use.

11/22/95 - Grafman's Gallery -- VRML 1.0

Grafman's Gallery was initially created as a simple excersize to learn VRML. This world includes simple textures, inline images, links containing frame targets, and doors providing links to other rooms.

This was contructed using a text editor, using images from previous Grafman projects.

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12/1/95 - Space -- Animated Textures

This world demonstrates one of Live3D's earliest extensions: animated textures.  
The cube in the center of the demo is stationary; the texture rotates about the cube.


This demo requires Netscape's Live3D plugin.


The animated image took about 10 minutes to contruct; the rest of the demo took another 5 minutes.



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12/5/95 - VR Snowman -- CGI-based VRML Generation

This demo uses a CGI/PERL script to create a VRML Snowman on the fly.
It uses an HTML form to allow users to pick the number of body segments; the script then randomly creates and places
body parts, randomly proportions its hat, nose and eyes, and randomly places it's mouth parts.


This demo randomly generates hundreds of spherical snowflakes, which blew out the vm of most early VRML browsers.


It took about 2 hours to learn PERL and create the script; most of the time was spent getting the random body segments
to stay connected.



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2/14/96 - VR Valentine -- VRML Primitives

This demo uses a primitives library to build VRML shapes on the fly.  The shape of the Valentine is randomly generated.


The number of arrows are user-selectable, and are randomly placed as inline objects.


This took about 10 minutes to create.



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2/17/96 - VR Bunny -- Avatar

This avatar randomly poses its hands, feet and eyes, and uses an algorithm for randomly generating bent bunny ears.


This demo also uses another Live3D extension: background textures.


The routine for creating generalized bunny ears took about 4 hours to figure out; the rest of the model took about
an hour to complete.


I converted this to VRML 2.0 on 3/27/97, gave it animated parts and jungling Easter Eggs.




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2/20/96 - VR Earth -- SpinGroup

This demonstrates another Live3D extension: SpinGroup.  This allows various VRML objects to be spun about an axis
at different rates.  In this case, the earth is spinning about its axis, 
a transparent cloud layer is spinning a bit slower above the earth, the moon is spinning about the earth, 
and a cube with an animated texture is spinning over the poles of the earth.
A background image creates a field of stars.


This demo requires Netscape's Live3D plugin.


Creating the textures for the stars, earth and clounds took about 20 minutes; the rest of the demo about 5.



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3/5/96 - Jameraude & 5/12/96 - Hero -- Animated Avatars

The Jameraude (VR Roller Skater) avatar was first created in 3/5/96; the Hero avatar in 5/12/96.
They are examples of avatars with moveable arms, elbows, etc.


The primitives used in Hero's parts were updated to support Level-of-Detail parameters - 
by changing one global parameter, the file size and resolution of Hero could be adjusted for use in LOD handling.


Jameraude took about 4 hours to create; Hero took about 1 hour, by re-using Jameraude's parts.



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6/22/96 - Jameraude VRML 1.0

A static Jameraude avatar was first created in 3/5/96, with random posing features added in 6/22/96.
Jameraude was ported to VRML 2.0 on 2/25/97, and is represented in the next section.
All joints have a defined range of motion; each part is controlled by its parent part.


The demo allows users to select clothing color, Spin extensions, and level of detail.
While an occasional unnatural pose will be generated, most are quite natural dance/skate movements.
The lowest level of detail produces an avant-garde avatar.


The higher resolution avatar generates a 78K file; the lowest creates a 14K file (2K gzip'd).



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6/26/96 - VR Dome -- Parts Generator

This demonstrates a practical use of VRML: a parts generator.  A dome builder can select the size, symmetry 
and frequency of a dome, prevue the form, then generate a parts list with the number and type of hubs, rod lengths
and panel cutouts.


Using existing primitives, this took about 15 minutes to construct.



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2/25/97 - Animated VRML 2.0

Jameraude was ported to VRML 2.0 on 2/25/97 --
all joints have a defined range of motion; each part is controlled by its parent part.
This version of Jameraude skates in real-time, using a random, but realistic, pattern of motion.


This VRML 2.0 version requires SGI's Cosmo Player viewer.


Another example of this demo, which uses SGI's External Authoring Interface (EAI),
provides an external java applet which allows the user to pose individual parts.


Learning VRML 2.0 and porting Jameraude, with animation, to 2.0 took about a day.



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[ Gallery 
| Space 
| Snowman 
| Valentine 
| Bunny 
| Earth 
| Hero 
| Skater 
| Dome ] 













RETURN


VR World















Grafman's VR World is a Grafman production


Grafman Productions