CompuServe Messages

Hi Tim, Good topic. I don't have the full picture by any means, but can add a bit here and there, broken out by format: DXF: Yup, go bye-bye, please. Better than nothing, but everyone who's used more than one tool must know its drawbacks by now. RIB: This was designed as a rendering-level scene description language. The underlying architecture can support animation, and it has particularly good support for hierarchies, surfaces, lights, cameras, higher-order geometry, and more. RIB export varies among tools, however… the limiting factor is the underlying geometry database. I haven't come across any tools other than Pixar's on Mac, Win or DOS which import RIB… few on NeXT, but that platform's waned terribly. RIB's well-documented in "The RenderMan Companion" [Addison-Wesley] and the RIB Specification (available through Pixar). OpenGL: Flexible, but implementations to date have not been widely used. NT support helps, but seems to require acceleration on Intel-based chips. Am not sure if it's in Win95. VRML is an important offshoot of OpenGL, via Inventor. I haven't picked up docs on this yet, but it seems to have momentum. Anyone have details on this? OpenGL's well-documented in the Addison-Wesley books. 3DMF: Although the 3D Metafile format of Apple's QuickDraw 3D won't be practical until it's in v1.0 release later this year, it also seems to have momentum. Like QuickTime it will go multiplatform in the rev after initial release. From what I've picked up it's got support for higher-order geometry, surfaces, lights, cameras. Am not sure about time-based information. Because of the volume of machines out there and because of Apple's reputation for quality I'd guess this has a real good shot at being an effective standard. (All the above's my personal take on things, and in no way represents any official Macromedia position, btw.) There's another way of looking at it besides formats, too… that's in terms of libraries. Although 3DMF is a format, the underlying QD3D is an API that can be supported by both software and hardware. I haven't heard word yet on what Microsoft will be doing with the RenderMorphics libraries, but would expect something similar. Besides the file formats themselves, it's the whole context of software and hardware support which will determine which formats become most prevalent. Have you read that recent article on the componentization of 3D software… think it was in the latest CGW? Touches on themes similar to your post, Tim. Interesting topic…. Regards, John Dowdell Macromedia Tech Support