Building a 3D Home Space: Making it Feel Like Home
By Andrea L. Ames
You wouldn't call an empty house a home, so why call an empty VRML room a home space? Last month, we built a simple room. You can spruce it up in several ways, by adding objects typically found in rooms to its inside, incorporating it into a house or some other building, and/or adding buildings around the outside.
Luckily, existing worlds can provide you with the basic structures. The VRML worlds popping up all around VRMLspace are great sources for ideas and possibly for VRML objects and scenes. VRML object libraries are becoming more common, as well. This month, we'll peek at a few interesting sites that can serve as useful resources. The VRML community is generally open and sharing, and in your personal, noncommercial home worlds, you can use nearly anything you come across in your travels through VRMLspace (anything, that is, except copyrighted objects, scenes, and worlds). A good rule of thumb is to always ask permission of the owners, if they can be found, and if possible give them credit for the objects you use. If you can't find the owners, it may be best not to use the objects.
VRML and Other File Types
The room we built last month used VRML 2.0 syntax. However, most existing objects, scenes, and worlds were authored using VRML 1.0 or non-VRML file formats. (Some VRML 1.0 files can be opened using Netscape Navigator 3.0 and SGI's Cosmo Player Beta 2, but I doubt this is a "supported feature," so don't rely on it.)
