Tools for World-Builders
 Essential tools
|
| rotations |
by Gavin Bell (zipped C source and Win95 command line executable) - a program that condenses multiple rotations
into one rotation field. Freeware. Thanks to Gavin for permission to distribute it here. |
| orient |
by Stephen Chenney (zipped C source code and Win95 command line executable) - a program that converts a camera
location, a look at point, and an up vector into a camera orientation field. Freeware. Thanks to Steve for permission
to distribute it here. |
| Vorlon |
by Trapezium - the standard VRML 97 syntax checker. Freeware. |
| Chisel |
by Trapezium -- checks syntax, reduces polygons and edges, removes extraneous nesting levels and redundant fields,
removes duplicate points, formats, inlines and un-inlines, removes excess digits, and splits ElevationGrids --
all without messing up TextureCoordinates and without getting confused by USEd Coordinates! The ultimate VRML 97
post-production tool. Shareware. |
| Lodestar |
generates level of detail (LOD) for VRML 1.0. Objects from public repositories and objects exported by modelers
often have way too many polygons. Tell Lodestar to return just one LOD -- instant polygon reduction. Freeware. |
| Leveller |
by "Ray Gardener" -- unless you're using the real thing (DEMs) this is the only way to make terrain.
Fly around the terrain as you build it in 3D -- using a wide assortment of tools and filters, then export your
scene as a VRML 97 ElevationGrid! Save an 8-bit Targa file as well, and you can paint it up and use it for a texture.
Free non-crippled demo. |
| VRML Spec Helpfile |
by John DeCuir. The hours I've spent (in total -- my machine's not that slow) waiting for the HTML version
of the spec to load are all behind me now. If I only have time to put two VRML things on a laptop before I take
off, GLView is one, and this is the other. Free. |
| VRML Helpfile |
by "Dr. Clue". The VRML 97 reference in helpfile form for Win9x systems. A different, and very useful
format for finding information on the VRML nodes. Free. |
| Flamingo Optimizer |
by Novafex. At last, a tool that does full-up mesh decimation on VRML files, plus some other optimizing tricks,
and the current version even handles texture-mapped meshes. Favorite features: the IFS merger and "assimilator".
Free beta. |
| 3D Decimator |
by Template Graphics. TGS raises the ante in the decimator wars by offering a decimator with the ultimate user
interface: move a slider and see in near real time the effect of the decimation level you select (solid or wireframe).
Free. |
| Color & Light Toy |
by me. OK, it's self serving, but I use the color and light toy all the time, and the appearance of the models
I make, now that they're colored and lit just the way I want them, has really improved. Free. |
| Dizzy, Peek & Twister |
by James Smith of Vapour Technology. Three small Win9x/NT tools that (respectively) convert multiple rotations
to one (great for unwinding nested transforms); turn an eye position, look-at point, and up vector into a Viewpoint
node; and turn an Euler rotation about X, Y, and Z into a VRML rotation field. Terrific user interface, especially
if you hate going to DOS to get a quick answer. Free. |
| 3DEM70 |
by Richard Horne. Turns more digital elevation model formats than you can shake a stick at into ElevationGrids,
and lets you color altitudes, apply maps, and select regions and directions to view. This is the DEM tool
for VRML. |
More tools
Some of these probably belong in the list above, but I haven't used them enough to find out yet. Try them and
find out for yourself.
If the tool is for VRML 97 or exports VRML 97 I'll probably list it if I know about it. If it's for VRML
1.0, it gets a little less slack. If it generates something you have to convert to VRML like 3DS or DXF,
it gets on the list only if it's extremely cool (in my personal, quirky opinion).
While the list concentrates on free and cheap tools, I included moderate and high priced tools when those tools
were (personal opinion again) either outstanding or unique.
Modelers and Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)
These programs allow you to visually build and manipulate objects, much like the other modelers we discuss.
VRML Generators
These programs either start with some other data format and turn it into VRML, or they generate VRML through
mathematical and algorithmic operations.
- Norman Beall's online Forms for VRML Modeling generate some useful
IndexedFaceSets
- Richard Bono's DOME generates geodesic domes in VRML,
DXF and other formats.
- Tim Bray's Zuggarautomatic lets you build Babylonian-style architecture
for your VRML worlds.
- Sue Cunningham and Andrew Rowbottom's Programs
to produce evolutionary art includes FORM, an L-system generator that's as addictive as crack -- yes, some
of the VRML output and even the POVRay output is broken, but that's part of the charm.
- Good old Gnuplot (beta 3.6 and later) now exports VRML (US,
UK)
- Eric Haines' Standard Procedural Databases
-- free C programs that generate fractal mountains, teapots, etc. Now exports VRML 1 and 2.
- David vun Kannon's VRML Constructor -- an on-line
L-System generator
- Laurens Lapré's LParser generates VRML from descriptions
of L-Systems.
- MEET Factory's online avatar generator
- Frank Oellien et al's VRML
file creator for chemical structures is an online file generator complete with a Java structure editor and
loads of options including various chemical file formats.
- Matt Olsen's rocket generator
- Photomodeler is a commercial program that helps convert photographic
data to 3D models.
- Greg Seidman's VRML Extrusion Creator lets you
interactively draw cross sections for Extrusion nodes and dump the resulting file when you're happy with the results.
- Squid's Font3D generates 3D objects from text. You'll need
to convert from one of its output formats (e.g., DXF) to VRML.
- The University of British Columbia's FaceMaker lets you build a
face online and then exports VRML.
- Christ van Willigen's Triplets -- generates VRML
models of carved wood letters like on the cover of Gödel Escher Bach
- Roger Webster's VRML Conetree Generator generates a conetree
from a set of hierarchical data
- Carl West's VRML 1.0 Prism Builder - Very cool, and can
be used with very little trouble to make point sets for Extrusion nodes.
Text Editors
- Edit+ shareware text editor has a VRML
syntax highlighter
- Matthias Pfersdorff's MED shareware
text editor with VRML syntax highlighting
- If you've got the free vim (vi improved) text editor you need Greg Seidman's
vrml.vim, a syntax highlighter for VRML 97
(replaces the VRML 1 version that comes with vim).
- Paul Strauss' EMACS mode for VRML and Inventor
- Ben Wing's VRML Mode for Emacs
Office Tools
Tools for business-oriented data.
- Template Graphics LiveWork 3D lets you put VRML in PowerPoint presentations.
- Alter Vue Software's VRCharts turns Excel, Lotus and database output
into VRML
- Virtualsys's 3DGraph generates VRML graphs
and plots dynamically from data files and embedded data in web pages.
- Virtual Data's CyberGraph 3DXL is an add-on for Microsoft
Excel that displays Excel tables in VRML
Libraries
Software libraries (e.g., class libraries) for people who want to build their own VRML applications and
tools
- Justin Couch's JVerge VRML 2.0 Java class library
- Mike Fletcher's mcf/vrml
free Python tools for parsing, processing and linearising VRML
- The FreeType Project's free TrueType font libraries
- Great Hill VRaniML open source C++ class library
- Satoshi Konno's Cyber Koganei VRML tools - Cyber
Toolbox, VRML Import Library for C++ or Java3D and VRML Library for Java. His Cyber Toolbox won the 1998 Sun Java3D programming contest.
- Chris Morley's LibVRML97 is a C++ class library for
reading and viewing VRML files.
- Open Worlds C++ libraries
- Hartmut Palm's VRML Perl Modules let you construct things
like bookmarks in VRML and converters
- Vis-Net makes VISMenu, a VRML menuing program, and VISCIS, a
virtual CompuServe navigator.
- Westfaelische Wilhelms-Universitaet Muenster's MAM/VRS
is a C++ library for interactive 3D graphics that can generate VRML.
Color and Lighting Tools
- My color names chart -- with names drawn from a number of sources, mostly POV
and X
- My VRML toys -- lets you manipulate color, lighting, rotation, viewpoint in your
own VRML browser, then write down the results.
- My ColorPicker is a Win9x program inspired by
Cyrus Welgan's pal2pov for POVRay that lets you select a color using a standard Windows palette and when you click
"OK" exits and copies the corresponding VRML RGB text values to the clipboard, where you can paste them
into your VRML text file.
- Jeffrey Ellison's online HTML to VRML color converter
- Neil Millar's GyrosCoPe Unix/GTK color picker
- Donald Munro's VRML Color Picker in VRML
Terrain and Scenery Tools
- Paul Bourke's CubeRender shows a
way of generating Background images in POVRay
- Joseph Ferris's Terrascape landscape generator
- Ray Gardener's Leveller (see Essential list above)
- GASA's online IDRISI
to VRML generator
- Peter Guth's MICRODEM lets you merge
DEMs and has a variety of display features.
- Johannes Hubert's shareware Tree Designer generates
tree and plant meshes in DXF and 3DS formats
- Irony Games' MapMagical online VRML terrain generator
- Richard Horne's 3DEM70 (see Essential list above)
- Kurtz-Fernhout Software's PlantStudio
- Matt McNichols' M3D generates 3D surfaces
in DXF from equations
- Natural Graphics' Natural Scene Designer lets you design natural looking
scenes from USGS data (included on the CD-ROM). It also has rock, tree, and bush makers. Exports DXF, 3DMF and
grayscale.
- Silver Graphics' Terrain Forge generates
DXFs and other formats from bitmaps
- Roland Smeenk's RISE online terrain generator
- SRI's tsmAPI -- a library that extracts and tiles large
geodata reference sets
- Chris Thorne has two tools for ElevationGrid
slicing and dicing.
- The University of Central Florida's ZCAP
is a suite of software tools developed to address terrain database interoperability.
- Wasabi Software's SkyPaint lets you easily paint backgrounds for your
VRML world. Check their examples.
Viewpoint and Rotation Angle Calculators
Animation
- Abacus's online VRML Animator
- Athomas Goldberg's IMPROV real-time behavior animation
system at NYU
- Hartmut Keller, Horst Stoltz and Thomas Bräunl's AERO (Animation Editor for Realistic Object movement)
(Australia | Germany)
Tools for Textures and 2D Graphics
- Jesse Carneiro's Screen Ruler (shareware) lets
you drag around a ruler on your screen to measure objects in pixels.
- ImageMagick is a free X Windows image file
format converter. They claim it can be used on Win9x/NT systems from the command line if you don't have an X server.
- Ed Marek's A Square Image at TriVista lets you
easily create square images that are a power of 2 on a side (which some VRML browsers prefer for textures).
- PBMPlus and NetPBM
are the classic sets of conversion utilities. Greg Roelofs is developing some additions
for PNG.
- Fabrizio Pivari's Texture Map Makers
- Greg Roelofs' Alpha channel enhanced tools convert PNM
files to and from PNG files and more.
Tools for MovieTextures
- John Schlichther's free utilities to convert wav and avi files
to MPEG.
Postproduction and Optimization Tools
- My vwaif (numeric precision reducer), vpp (VRML pretty printer), and unnormal
(normal remover)
- Cybelius Optimizer works on reducing unnecessary characters
from VRML files
- Elasticity lets you deform and play with meshes
you've generated in another modeler
- Michael Garland's QSlim uses the Garland &
Heckbert quadratic surface simplification algorithm. There's a Unix version that uses Mesa and a Win95 version
(command line only)
- InnovMetric's IMEdit/IMCompress is a high-end
polygon editing reduction tool
- Richard Kapuaala (Kahuna)'s shrink is the
most elegant file shrinking tool
- Novafex's Flamingo Optimizer (see Essential list above)
- Radial Software's VRMLOpt VRML file optimizer
- Raindrop Geomagic's Geomagic Decimator -- mesh
decimator
- Rational Reducer -- demo version
- Roberto Scopignio's JADE mesh decimator and
ZETA multiresolution modeler for SGI
- System In Motion (SIM)'s Rational Reducer is a high end polygon reduction
tool.
- Trapezium's Chisel (see Essential list above)
- TriVista's VRML Data Trimmer (VDT)
- University of Tuwein's Lodestar (see Essential
list above)
- James Waldrop's VRML Datafat Munger takes unnecessary
bytes out of your VRML files (e.g., it turns 0.000000 into 0)
Syntax Checkers
Java Utilities
- Arno Schaefer's VRML Java Script template generator takes
a Script node declaration and generates a template (just plug in the logic) for a Java script.
- Greg Seidman has a set of JSAI Java stub classes.
Put these in your classpath when you compile, or to give (hopefully) harmless results if you're suspicious of a
browser's supplied Java classes.
Documenting VRML Files
- GNU Enscript now supports VRML files -- prettyprint your VRML
files in PostScript, RTF, or HTML
- Niclas Olofsson's VRMLdoc is a program
similar to JavaDoc that extracts documentation from VRML files.
Browser Aids
- Cosmo Software's oglpanel lets you choose
between implementation of OpenGL to see which works better on your system. Don't forget the README
file. Note: this capability is included in Cosmo Player 2.x, so this is most useful for other browsers
and applications that use OpenGL.
- Robert Lipman's VRML browser detector can be embedded
in a webpage to show VRML to people who have VRML plugins and alternate images to people who don't.
- Sony's NPChooser (Netscape plugin chooser) lets you turn VRML (and other)
plugin DLLs on and off
- Alan Taylor's VRML browser sniffer
checks to see if the visitor to a webpage has one of the popular VRML plugins, and if so, displays an embedded
VRML world; otherwise, it displays a GIF image. The ideal thing to have on webpages where you aren't sure your
visitors will have a VRML plugin.
- Chris Thorne's VRML Performance Meter
gives you a standard world and performance statistics from various browsers and platforms to measure your browser's
performance.
2D to 3D
These products, which vary widely in price and capability, all claim to generate VRML (and sometimes other formats)
from 2D photographic data.
Miscellaneous
- My numpoints -- feed it a complete Shape
node and it generates a VRML file with vertices numbered -- designed for hand-patching missing and backwards triangles.
- My wireframe -- converts IndexedFaceSets into proper IndexedLineSets
- My VRML toys -- lets you manipulate color, lighting, rotation, viewpoint in your
own VRML browser, then write down the results.
- "Dr. Clue's" VRML Helpfile (see Essential
list above)
- John DeCuir's VRML Spec Helpfile (see
Essential list above)
- Dennis Himes' Prewirl VRML preprocessor - allows
you to use C-like #defines
- Brandon Rickman's Less Than Six is a TrueType font optimized
for displaying large amounts of text in VRML.
Collections
- Cosmo Software's Developer section has converters, parsers
and links to a whole bunch of tools
- Ross Finlayson's tools
- SGI Germany's developer tools currently include an isosurface
generator, a macromolecular image format library, and a multi-pipe utility.
Meta Lists
Make sure you check these lists, because they probably contain tools I don't know about.
And don't forget...
If you're looking for VRML sites, periodicals, lists, and miscellaneous resources, we promoted them to
a page of their own.
Did I miss a good tool for 3D or VRML? Let
me know.
-- Bob Crispen
-- Saturday, March 4, 2000