Re: [x3d-public] X3D is too complex?

[Bob Crispen - The VRMLworks <revbob@crispen.org>]

The voices are telling me Trevor Harmon said on 8/30/2005 2:09 PM:

> There is a shareware 3D scene authoring tool that I'm interested in,  
> but it doesn't import or export X3D or VRML, even though it supports  
> 3DS, FBX, LWO, DXF, and a number of other formats. I asked the tool's  
> author about this, and he said that X3D and VRML support is not  planned 
> because these formats are "very complex." Can anyone comment  on what it 
> is about these formats that makes them more complex than  others? Thanks,

I've written over a dozen tools that generate VRML, and when you leave 
animation and behavior out of the picture (which is what you'd do with 
your average authoring tool) it's perfecly simple.  The same would be 
true for X3D.  The guy either doesn't know what he's talking about, or 
his customer base isn't demanding that capability in large enough 
numbers to overcome his inertia..

The good news is that, with AccuTrans3D (cheap) you can convert almost 
any kind of 3D format to VRML.  AccuTrans3D is my current 
use-all-the-time tool, but there's lots of other tools that do something 
similar, and I list some of them on my website.

If you can get a trial, you might see which format converts most easily 
to VRML.  With most of the models I grab from archives, .3ds takes the 
least amount of cleanup work.

If you think you're going to be going back and forth to the scene 
authoring tool, you might find that a VRML and X3D specific authoring 
tool might save a lot of time and aggravation.  The only one of those 
tools I've used myself is VizX3D, and I'm very pleased with it.
--
Bob Crispen
The VRMLworks
vrmlworks at crispen dot org
http://vrmlworks.crispen.org/
Ex Cathedra Weblog: http://blog.crispen.org/

Putting angle brackets around things is not a technology by itself.
- Sergei Brin
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