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

[Alan Hudson <giles@yumetech.com>]

Dave wrote:

> If an authoring tool is not taking animation or interactivity into 
> account, it's not an authoring tool (IMHO), it's just a modeler.
> The geometry, appearance, and lights are not that complex.
> X3D Interactivity isn't TOO difficult, although parsing and processing 
> ROUTES is more complex than other simpler
> event models I've seen. But X3D animation can be a write-only process. 
> Take simple rotation for example.
> If you want something to rotate (in other packages), you'd specify 
> axis or axes and rotational rate(s), or total number
> of degrees to rotate over so much time. Not in X3D - you set up 
> key-frame animation, which would take some sort
> of AI to grok into knowing that it was a simple rotation. Not that it 
> can't be done, just that yeah, it can be hard to take
> to other formats/tools.
The simple rotation you describe is one special case of key-frame 
animation.  I like the more general purpose answer of providing linear 
interpolation values.  Others have asked for higher-order interpolators 
as well.  If we provided an interpolator for each of the special cases 
and the more general one then it bloat the spec and implementations.  
You can always create a proto of the special cased animation and use 
that in your content. 

As for import of that data.  Most authoring tools I've seen have used 
some time based description of the animation.  Ie likely something like 
the key-frame interpolators.  So I doubt its much harder to map that 
then the easier description of rotations you describe.  I feel like its 
more of a UI issue.  Ie the authoring tool might be simplier if it just 
offered the simple case.  But under the covers I see no reason it can't 
interchange data using the key frames.  With X3D metadata nodes its also 
possible to give hints to authoring tools about the data.  ie

RotationInterpolator {
  metdata MetadataString {
     name "Type"
     reference "MyAuthoringTool"
     value "SimpleRotationType"
  }
...
}

So now when you read this in you can deduce that the interpolator 
actually describes a simple special case.  Likely you could determine it 
my mining the actual values, but this mechanism allows you to deduce 
that without spending much time reading the data. 
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