4 Technical Manuals and Books

4.1 Manuals and standards on-line

4.1.1 VRML 2 / VRML 97

• VRML 97 Spec installed at TECFA. US readers may want to read the VRML97 Specification available in the Specifications section of the VRML Consortium
• EAI Spec (not a standard, but almost)
• OLD!!VRML 2 Language specification. However, the Overview Section is still good reading (don't think there is one for VRML 97).
• YON's Handy VRML 2.0 Cheat-Sheet (syntax at-a-glance on 2 pages, PDF format!)
• Vrml Script Spec (local copy of Cosmo/SGI's Javascript implementation). The original page is at http://vrml.sgi.com/moving-worlds/spec/vrmlscript.html
• Java and Javascript API Summaries. (Sorry, password protected files from the VRML 2 SourceBook).

4.1.2 Extensions

• GeoVRML

4.2 VRML 2 Books

• For starters: Hartman, J. et Wernecke, J. (1996). The VRML 2.0 Handbook, Building Moving Worlds on the Web. Addison Wesley, Reading (MA) + CD
• For the details (graphics): Ames, A. L., Nadeau, D. R., et Moreland, J. L. (1996a). The VRML 2.0 Sourcebook. Wiley, New York. +CD http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/vrml2sbk/cover/cover.htm. Lot's of graphics "tricks", not much on animation and scripting.
• For the details: The Annotated VRML 97 Reference Manual (the spec as as book and more)
• To move on: "Java for 3D and VRML Worlds" (New Riders ISBN: 1-56205-689-1) by lead Sony ArchLab research scientists Lea, Matsuda, and Miyashita. Teaches how to program active VRML scenes with the internal JAVA API (probably not enough).
• To move on further: "Late Night VRML 2.0 with Java" by Bernie Roehl, Justin Couch, Cindy Reed-Ballreich, Tim Rohaly, Geoff Brown. (If you want to buy just one single book and you are keen on interactive stuff, I recommend this one. Note that some EAI code is outdated, but you can recover from reading the specs).
• Question: Is there a hot book on JavaScripting VRML ?

4.3 3D File Formats (other) & APIs & Hardware

4.3.1 Indexes:

• Computer Graphic Software. Best index I am aware of.
• 3D Cafe Resource site and webring
• 3D Object File Formats. Good (a bit old?) index at Cica, part of their Graphics Page.
• JAVA 3D Home Page (it's still alive and quite popular - 2004)
• ACM's real-time rendering resource page. Good
• 10 Great 3d Java Animation Pages ( not Java3d )
• 3D Engines List (over 600 as of 6/2000)
• Atmosphere from Adobe
• 3dhtml

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