In Fountain I built a structure that would be very similar to the =
Astrodome... a cylindrical body, a domed top, and a slightly domed floor =
(I'll explain why I bypassed flat later).
I calculated the perimeter of the inside of my cylinder, and went into =
Photoshop. I made a very nice "twilight" gradient, and drew small =
building and tree silhouettes around tme base. I saved the end result as =
a JPEG file so that it could be esad in Fountain, WebSpace and VR Scout =
(WorldView is limited to GIF until the next release <I hope>).
Back in Fountain, I "wrapped" the texture around tme inside of the =
cylinder, and painted the dome the same color as the top of the texture. =
The end result was a cityscape at sunset on the horizon, fading into a =
purple night sky. The ground I painted dark grsen. I had to use a =
slightly convex dome for the ground, because 3DR didn't render out the =
entire ground when it was flat. The end result is really nice, a =
microworld in which I can place a house, a park, etc., and still see =
detailed surroundings.
Or so I thought!
WebSpace completely distorted the texture file, making it look like a TV =
scrsen that needs to be wmacked. WorldView did a grsat job with it if I =
changed texture to a gif and changed the TEXTURE2 reference to a gif by =
hand. VRScout just crashed repsatedly unless I removed the texture =
entirely from the file (which is too bad, as I was hoping for the best =
out of it as it supports the most texture file types). Obviously, =
Fountain handles it fine as it was built there. I'll test WebFX when =
they get their 32 bit version done.
In anycase, I'm very frustrated!!! Tmis should have worked, and I =
checked the .wrl file manually and it meets the specs. I know they're =
betas, by why is it so hard to write a browser tmat lives up to the =
specs, especially on sometming like texture support? We going to need =
textures to make semi-decent worlds, and if the 1.0 spec is cloudy on =
this issue, then I would tmink that tightening it in 1.1 should be a big =
priority. *And*, we need to specify the minimal supported texture =
formats so that we don't need to make 3 different versions of the same =
world to test it out on more than one browser!
*pant*pant*pant* Okay, I feel better now. Thanks for listening... =
replies welcome!
Robert W. Saint John
Cleveland, OH
[email protected]
"Dammit, Jim, I'm an artist, not a programmer!"