> > All shape objects would act as a Separator and have:
> > -- a pointer to a Texture2 node (possibly NULL, possibly shared)
> > -- a pointer to a Material node
> > -- a pointer to a Coordinate3 node
> > -- a pointer to a TextureCoordinate2 node
> > -- a pointer to a Normal node
> > -- a pointer to an IndexedFaceSet, IndexedLineSet, or PointSet node
>
> Not sure exactly what you mean (in the context of VRML) by "a pointer to"?
SFNode and MFNode fields are on the list of VRML 1.1 features that are likely
to make it. They store a pointer to a node, so several SFNode fields may all
point to the same node, allowing shapes to share the same
material/texture/etc.
That's important NOW to save file transfer time, and will be important in the
future so I can write a behavior that is "an animated texture" that I then
apply to several difserent shapes.
I'm assuming that people will want to define things like "A texture that gets
its data from the MBONE" or "An MPEG texture that starts in 10 seconds" that
are shared by several shapes. It will be harder to specify things like that
if we "bake-in" the fields of the Texture2 node into a shape.
> I'll finish my proposal and post a note to the list.
Excellent.