[x3d-public] Planning PLY STL Enhancements to X3DJSONLD

[Don Brutzman]

Hi John, adding support for these geometric mesh formats sounds great!  8)

Wondering where source code for your conversion routines can be found?

[1]	Wikipedia: PLY (file format)
    	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLY_(file_format)

[2]	PLY - Polygon File Format
    	(Also known as the Stanford Triangle Format)
    	http://paulbourke.net/dataformats/ply

It would be good if we adapted/repeated this kind of functionality in the Java X3DJSAIL and Python X3DPSAIL libraries.

On 1/29/2021 1:38 AM, John Carlson wrote:
> 
> https://coderextreme.net/X3DJSONLD/src/main/html/index.html <https://coderextreme.net/X3DJSONLD/src/main/html/index.html>
> 
> If you want to try STL <-> JSON go to the above link.  Many JSON items are not supported, but I believe I have most of STL covered (color?).
> 
> Also the PLY -> JSON needs more PLY test cases.

If we have several PLY models that are representative cases providing pretty good coverage, we might add original source + converted versions to the unit-test collection in X3D Example Archives.  For examples:

[3]	X3D Example Archives: X3D4AM, X3D for Advanced Modeling, Conversions
    	https://x3dgraphics.com/examples/X3dForAdvancedModeling/Conversions/index.html

My long-term hope for PLY and STL each:  if conversion and use of these model formats can become commonplace for X3D, then (just like .gltf and .glb) we might list them as part of allowed url formats for X3D Inline node.

[4]	X3D4 Architecture, Networking Component, 9.4.2 Inline
    	https://www.web3d.org/specifications/X3Dv4Draft/ISO-IEC19775-1v4-WD3/Part01/components/networking.html#Inline

[5]	X3D4 Tooltips, Inline url
    	https://www.web3d.org/x3d/tooltips/X3dTooltips.html#Inline.url

"url 	[url accessType inputOutput, type MFString CDATA #IMPLIED]
	Address of X3D world to load Inline with current scene, retrieved either from local system or an online address. Browser support for X3D model support can include allowed file formats for XML .x3d, ClassicVRML .x3dv, X3D Binary .x3db, X3D JSON .json, and Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML97) .wrl.
	Hint: (X3D version 4.0 draft) support includes .gltf and .glb https://www.khronos.org/gltf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/glTF "

p.s. given that the "X" in X3D is Extensible, there is no barrier to X3D browsers offering such support for loading, converting to X3D IFS and rendering now.

all the best, Don
-- 
Don Brutzman  Naval Postgraduate School, Code USW/Br       brutzman at nps.edu
Watkins 270,  MOVES Institute, Monterey CA 93943-5000 USA   +1.831.656.2149
X3D graphics, virtual worlds, navy robotics http://faculty.nps.edu/brutzman