Subsections

• 8.2.1 CosmoWorlds

   
8.2 VRML Tools

This short section is NOT an introduction to such tools, rather a place where we (maybe) will write down some experiences we had.

   
8.2.1 CosmoWorlds

CosmoWorlds for Irix is quite a powerful tool, but it does have its limitations. I (Daniel Schneider) would recommend to buy this tool for Irix since it's the only one available. Probably CW 2 for Windows has less limitations (but I haven't seen that yet).

VRML code produced is overally speaking rather clean. It does add a few extra useless Transforms, Groups and fields. The only major gripe I have is the placement of animation nodes.

• Documentation is only in HTML format (difficult to print) and therefore writing code while looking at the documentation on single monitor is difficult (at best)

• The Script editor will not let you do certain things, like adding ``USE xx'' or values to fields, or ``directOutput TRUE''

• The OutLine editor will not let you move or delete nodes and the general tool is VERY restrictive about moving nodes. The worst thing is that you can't move animation nodes outside of the geometry it animates (correct me if I am wrong). This leads to very unreadable code.

• The tool will not leave certain field values alone if you don't touch them (is that a bug or feature for optimized rendering if you get 0.000000something instead of a plain 0 in a translation?

• You can edit the source to clean things up, but be VERY careful. Moving around animations makes them unavailable for later editing (even if the tool does not complain when you read the file back).

• Hiding unselected objects does not work and is a pain ! (correct me if I am wrong).

• The is no support for protos, although you can hand edit the file to add them (but be careful, save a copy and make a test before you clean up all your code).

• When you import a file with an error you will not get any serious error message, it will just break and say so :(