Develop and Deploy X3D

Let's look at the workflow for building and deploying X3D content

Building Web3D Worlds can be considered as a three-step process

  1. Collect Assets - Create, Collect, and Convert all assets needed for the final content
  2. Assemble Assets - Assemble all of the needed assets including animation and interactivity into scene
  3. Publish Scene - Optimize the collection of assets for efficient delivery and make collection available

Let's work backwards through the steps based on the target platform,

3] Publish/View Scene

The target platform is usually specified early on in the project. The platform will always require an X3D viewer. The primary choices are browser-based viewing or stand-alone application.

Browser-Based

There are a few browser based X3D viewers. All of these run based on code that is loaded or referenced from the web page. The syntax for loading the X3D scene differs slightly between them as does the necessary libraries. The primary viewers are

See Web3D's Examples Archives for thousands of X3D examples that display in either of these browser-based applications

Stand-Alone Viewers

These applications are not bound to web browsers and off additional features and flexibility at the price of not running in a web browser with access to web resources on the page. This list is intentional not complete. A complete list is available at X3D Applications.

Optimizations

It may be necessary to optimize various aspects of the 3D scene to make network delivery practical for the intended target platform.

2] Assemble Assets

This is the step where the various X3D and X3D compatible assets are integrated into a single scene, though it is not necessary to put everything in a single file. Scene builders such as X3D-Edit may be very useful for this step.

1] Collect Assets

All of the assets that will be needed for the scene need to be avaialble in forms that are directly available to X3D. X3D supports direct loading of many file formats including

  • JPEG, PNG, and GIF for images
  • Video files
  • Audio files
  • Control (JavaScript)
  • Models (X3D and glTF)

Files that are not directly importable need to be converted. Several 3D content authoring tools support importing and exporting X3D scene graphs.

My First X3D Example

Example Workflows