Version 1.0 SpecificationGavin Bell , Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Anthony Parisi, Intervista Software
Mark Pesce , VRML List Moderator
I want to thank three people who have been absolutely instrumental in the design process: Brian Behlendorf, whose drive (and disk space) made this process happen; and Tony Parisi and Gavin Bell, the final authors of this specification, who have put in a great deal of design work, ensuring that we have a satisfactory product. My hat goes off to all of them, and to all of you who have made this process a success.
I would like to add a personal note of thanks to Jan Hardenbergh of Oki Advanced Products for his diligent efforts to keep the specification process on track, and his invaluable editing assistance. I would also like to acknowledge Chris Marrin of Silicon Graphics for his timely contributions to the final design.
IntroductionThe first version of VRML allows for the creation of virtual worlds with limited interactive behavior. These worlds can contain objects which have hyperlinks to other worlds, HTML documents or other valid MIME types. When the user selects an object with a hyperlink, the appropriate MIME viewer is launched. When the user selects a link to a VRML document from within a correctly configured WWW browser, a VRML viewer is launched. Thus VRML viewers are the perfect companion applications to standard WWW browsers for navigating and visualizing the Web. Future versions of VRML will allow for richer behaviors, including animations, motion physics and real-time multi-user interaction.
This document specifies the features and syntax of Version 1.0 of VRML.
VRML
Mission StatementNext, Tim Berners-Lee's work at CERN, where he developed the hypermedia system known as World Wide Web, added another layer of abstraction to the existing structure. This abstraction provided an "addressing" scheme, a unique identifier (the Universal Resource Locator), which could tell anyone "where to go and how to get there" for any piece of data within the Web. While useful, it lacked dimensionality; there's no there there within the web, and the only type of navigation permissible (other than surfing) is by direct reference. In other words, I can only tell you how to get to the VRML Forum home page by saying, "http://www.wired.com/", which is not human-centered data. In fact, I need to make an effort to remember it at all. So, while the World Wide Web provides a retrieval mechanism to complement the existing storage mechanism, it leaves a lot to be desired, particularly for human beings.
Finally, we move to "perceptualized" Internetworks, where the data has been sensualized, that is, rendered sensually. If something is represented sensually, it is possible to make sense of it. VRML is an attempt (how successful, only time and effort will tell) to place humans at the center of the Internet, ordering its universe to our whims. In order to do that, the most important single element is a standard that defines the particularities of perception. Virtual Reality Modeling Language is that standard, designed to be a universal description language for multi-participant simulations.
These three phases, storage, retrieval, and perceptualization are analogous to the human process of consciousness, as expressed in terms of semantics and cognitive science. Events occur and are recorded (memory); inferences are drawn from memory (associations), and from sets of related events, maps of the universe are created (cognitive perception). What is important to remember is that the map is not the territory, and we should avoid becoming trapped in any single representation or world-view. Although we need to design to avoid disorientation, we should always push the envelope in the kinds of experience we can bring into manifestation!
This document is the living proof of the success of a process that was committed to being open and flexible, responsive to the needs of a growing Web community. Rather than re-invent the wheel, we have adapted an existing specification (Open Inventor) as the basis from which our own work can grow, saving years of design work and perhaps many mistakes. Now our real work can begin; that of rendering our noospheric space.
HistoryShortly after the Geneva BOF session, the www-vrml mailing list was created to discuss the development of a specification for the first version of VRML. The response to the list invitation was overwhelming: within a week, there were over a thousand members. After an initial settling-in period, list moderator Mark Pesce of Labyrinth Group announced his intention to have a draft version of the specification ready by the WWW Fall 1994 conference, a mere five months away. There was general agreement on the list that, while this schedule was aggressive, it was achievable provided that the requirements for the first version were not too ambitious and that VRML could be adapted from an existing solution. The list quickly agreed upon a set of requirements for the first version, and began a search for technologies which could be adapted to fit the needs of VRML.
The search for existing technologies turned up a several worthwhile candidates. After much deliberation the list came to a consensus: the Open Inventor ASCII File Format from Silicon Graphics, Inc. The Inventor File Format supports complete descriptions of 3D scenes with polygonally rendered objects, lighting, materials, ambient properties and realism effects. A subset of the Inventor File Format, with extensions to support networking, forms the basis of VRML. Gavin Bell of Silicon Graphics has adapted the Inventor File Format for VRML, with design input from the mailing list. SGI has publicly stated that the file format is available for use in the open market, and have contributed a file format parser into the public domain to bootstrap VRML viewer development.
Version 1.0
Requirements
As with HTML, the above are absolute requirements for a network language standard; they should need little explanation here.
Early on the designers decided that VRML would not be an extension to HTML. HTML is designed for text, not graphics. Also, VRML requires even more finely tuned network optimizations than HTML; it is expected that a typical VRML scene will be composed of many more "inline" objects and served up by many more servers than a typical HTML document. Moreover, HTML is an accepted standard, with existing implementations that depend on it. To impede the HTML design process with VRML issues and constrain the VRML design process with HTML compatibility concerns would be to do both languages a disservice. As a network language, VRML will succeed or fail independent of HTML.
It was also decided that, except for the hyperlinking feature, the first version of VRML would not support interactive behaviors. This was a practical decision intended to streamline design and implementation. Design of a language for describing interactive behaviors is a big job, especially when the language needs to express behaviors of objects communicating on a network. Such languages do exist; if we had chosen one of them, we would have risked getting into a "language war." People don't get excited about the syntax of a language for describing polygonal objects; people get very excited about the syntax of real languages for writing programs. Religious wars can extend the design process by months or years. In addition, networked inter-object operation requires brokering services such as those provided by CORBA or OLE, services which don't exist yet within WWW; we would have had to invent them. Finally, by keeping behaviors out of Version 1, we have made it a much smaller task to implement a viewer. We acknowledge that support for arbitrary interactive behaviors is critical to the long-term success of VRML; they will be included in Version 2.
Language Specification
Language
BasicsNodes are arranged in hierarchical structures called scene graphs. Scene graphs are more than just a collection of nodes; the scene graph defines an ordering for the nodes. The scene graph has a notion of state -- nodes earlier in the scene can affect nodes that appear later in the scene. For example, a Rotation or Material node will affect the nodes after it in the scene. A mechanism is defined to limit the effects of properties (separator nodes), allowing parts of the scene graph to be functionally isolated from other parts.
A node has the following characteristics:
The syntax chosen to represent these pieces of information is straightforward:
DEF objectname objecttype { fields children }
Only the object type and curly braces are required; nodes may or may not have a name, fields, and children.
Node names must not begin with a digit, and must not contain spaces or control characters, single or double quote characters, backslashes, curly braces, the plus character or the period character.
For example, this file contains a simple scene defining a view of a red cone and a blue sphere, lit by a directional light:
#VRML V1.0 ascii
Separator {
DirectionalLight {
direction 0 0 -1 # Light shining from viewer into scene
}
PerspectiveCamera {
position -8.6 2.1 5.6
orientation -0.1352 -0.9831 -0.1233 1.1417
focalDistance 10.84
}
Separator { # The red sphere
Material {
diffuseColor 1 0 0 # Red
}
Translation { translation 3 0 1 }
Sphere { radius 2.3 }
}
Separator { # The blue cube
Material {
diffuseColor 0 0 1 # Blue
}
Transform {
translation -2.4 .2 1
rotation 0 1 1 .9
}
Cube {}
}
}
#VRML V1.0 ascii
Any characters after these on the same line are ignored. The line is terminated by either the ASCII newline or carriage-return characters.
The '#' character begins a comment; all characters until the next newline or carriage return are ignored. The only exception to this is within string fields, where the '#' character will be part of the string.
Note: Comments and whitespace may not be preserved; in particular, a VRML document server may strip comments and extraneous whitespace from a VRML file before transmitting it. Info nodes should be used for persistent information like copyrights or author information. Info nodes could also be used for object descriptions.
Blanks, tabs, newlines and carriage returns are whitespace characters wherever they appear outside of string fields. One or more whitespace characters separates the syntactical entities in VRML files, where necessary.
After the required header, a VRML file contains exactly one VRML node. That node may of course be a group node, containing any number of other nodes.
Coordinate SystemThe standard unit for lengths and distances specified is meters. The standard unit for angles is radians.
FieldsMultiple-valued fields are written as a series of values separated by commas, all enclosed in square brackets. If the field has zero values then only the square brackets ("[]") are written. The last may optionally be followed by a comma. If the field has exactly one value, the brackets may be omitted and just the value written. For example, all of the following are valid for a multiple-valued field containing the single integer value 1:
1 [1,] [ 1 ]
( flag1 | flag2 | ... )
If only one flag is used in a mask, the parentheses are optional. These names differ among uses of this field in various node classes.
SFImages are written to file as three integers representing the width, height and number of components in the image, followed by width*height hexadecimal values representing the pixels in the image, separated by whitespace. A one-component image will have one-byte hexadecimal values representing the intensity of the image. For example, 0xFF is full intensity, 0x00 is no intensity. A two-component image puts the intensity in the first (high) byte and the transparency in the second (low) byte. Pixels in a three-component image have the red component in the first (high) byte, followed by the green and blue components (so 0xFF0000 is red). Four-component images put the transparency byte after red/green/blue (so 0x0000FF80 is semi-transparent blue). A value of 1.0 is completely transparent, 0.0 is completely opaque. Note: each pixel is actually read as a single unsigned number, so a 3-component pixel with value "0x0000FF" can also be written as "0xFF" or "255" (decimal). Pixels are specified from left to right, bottom to top. The first hexadecimal value is the lower left pixel of the image, and the last value is the upper right pixel.
For example,
1 2 1 0xFF 0x00
is a 1 pixel wide by 2 pixel high greyscale image, with the bottom pixel white and the top pixel black. And:
2 4 3 0xFF0000 0xFF00 0 0 0 0 0xFFFFFF 0xFFFF00
is a 2 pixel wide by 4 pixel high RGB image, with the bottom left pixel red, the bottom right pixel green, the two middle rows of pixels black, the top left pixel white, and the top right pixel yellow.
1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 7.3 0 0 1
0 1 0 3.14159265
Testing "One, Two, Three" "He said, \"Immel did it!\""
are all valid strings.
[ 1.0 0.0 0.0, 0 1 0, 0 0 1 ]
represents the three colors red, green, and blue.
[ 17, -0xE20, -518820 ]
[ 0 0, 1.2 3.4, 98.6 -4e1 ]
[ 0 0 0, 1.2 3.4 5.6, 98.6 -4e1 212 ]
NodesNodes may contain zero or more fields. Each node type defines the type, name, and default value for each of its fields. The default value for the field is used if a value for the field is not specified in the VRML file. The order in which the fields of a node are read is not important; for example, "Cube { width 2 height 4 depth 6 }" and "Cube { height 4 depth 6 width 2 }" are equivalent.
Here are the 36 nodes grouped by type. The first group are the shape nodes. These specify geometry:
AsciiText, Cone, Cube, Cylinder, IndexedFaceSet, IndexedLineSet, PointSet, Sphere,
The second group are the properties. These can be further grouped into properties of the geometry and its appearance, matrix or transform properties, and cameras and lights: Coordinate3, FontStyle, Info, LOD, Material, MaterialBinding, Normal, NormalBinding, Texture2, Texture2Transform, TextureCoordinate2, ShapeHints
MatrixTransform, Rotation, Scale, Transform, Translation
OrthographicCamera, PerspectiveCamera
DirectionalLight, PointLight, SpotLight
These are the group nodes:
Group, Separator, Switch, TransformSeparator, WWWAnchor
Finally, the WWWInline node does not fit neatly into any category.
This node represents strings of text characters from the ASCII coded character set. The first string is rendered with its baseline at (0,0,0). All subsequent strings advance y by -(size * spacing). See FontStyle for a description of the size field. The justification field determines the placement of the strings in the x dimension. LEFT (the default) places the left edge of each string at x=0. CENTER places the center of each string at x=0. RIGHT places the right edge of each string at x=0. Text is rendered from left to right, top to bottom in the font set by FontStyle. The width field defines a suggested width constraint for each string. The default is to use the natural width of each string. Setting any value to 0 indicates the natural width should be used for that string.
The text is transformed by the current cumulative transformation and is drawn with the current material and texture.
Textures are applied to 3D text as follows. The texture origin is at the origin of the first string, as determined by the justification. The texture is scaled equally in both S and T dimensions, with the font height representing 1 unit. S increases to the right. The T origin can occur anywhere along each character, depending on how that character's outline is defined.
JUSTIFICATION
LEFT Align left edge of text to origin
CENTER Align center of text to origin
RIGHT Align right edge of text to origin
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
AsciiText {
string "" # MFString
spacing 1 # SFFloat
justification LEFT # SFEnum
width 0 # MFFloat
}
The cone is transformed by the current cumulative transformation and is drawn with the current texture and material.
If the current material binding is PER_PART or PER_PART_INDEXED, the first current material is used for the sides of the cone, and the second is used for the bottom. Otherwise, the first material is used for the entire cone.
When a texture is applied to a cone, it is applied differently to the sides and bottom. On the sides, the texture wraps counterclockwise (from above) starting at the back of the cone. The texture has a vertical seam at the back, intersecting the yz-plane. For the bottom, a circle is cut out of the texture square and applied to the cone's base circle. The texture appears right side up when the top of the cone is rotated towards the -Z axis.
PARTS
SIDES The conical part
BOTTOM The bottom circular face
ALL All parts
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
Cone {
parts ALL # SFBitMask
bottomRadius 1 # SFFloat
height 2 # SFFloat
}
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
Coordinate3 {
point 0 0 0 # MFVec3f
}
If the current material binding is PER_PART, PER_PART_INDEXED, PER_FACE, or PER_FACE_INDEXED, materials will be bound to the faces of the cube in this order: front (+Z), back (-Z), left (-X), right (+X), top (+Y), and bottom (-Y).
Textures are applied individually to each face of the cube; the entire texture goes on each face. On the front, back, right, and left sides of the cube, the texture is applied right side up. On the top, the texture appears right side up when the top of the cube is tilted toward the camera. On the bottom, the texture appears right side up when the top of the cube is tilted towards the -Z axis.
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
Cube {
width 2 # SFFloat
height 2 # SFFloat
depth 2 # SFFloat
}
The cylinder is transformed by the current cumulative transformation and is drawn with the current material and texture.
If the current material binding is PER_PART or PER_PART_INDEXED, the first current material is used for the sides of the cylinder, the second is used for the top, and the third is used for the bottom. Otherwise, the first material is used for the entire cylinder.
When a texture is applied to a cylinder, it is applied differently to the sides, top, and bottom. On the sides, the texture wraps counterclockwise (from above) starting at the back of the cylinder. The texture has a vertical seam at the back, intersecting the yz-plane. For the top and bottom, a circle is cut out of the texture square and applied to the top or bottom circle. The top texture appears right side up when the top of the cylinder is tilted toward the +Z axis, and the bottom texture appears right side up when the top of the cylinder is tilted toward the -Z axis.
PARTS
SIDES The cylindrical part
TOP The top circular face
BOTTOM The bottom circular face
ALL All parts
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
Cylinder {
parts ALL # SFBitMask
radius 1 # SFFloat
height 2 # SFFloat
}
A light node defines an illumination source that may affect subsequent shapes in the scene graph, depending on the current lighting style. Light sources are affected by the current transformation. A light node under a separator does not affect any objects outside that separator.
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
DirectionalLight {
on TRUE # SFBool
intensity 1 # SFFloat
color 1 1 1 # SFColor
direction 0 0 -1 # SFVec3f
}
This node defines the current font style used for all subsequent AsciiText. Font attributes only are defined. It is up to the browser to assign specific fonts to the various attribute combinations. The size field specifies the height (in object space units) of glyphs rendered and determines the vertical spacing of adjacent lines of text.
FAMILY
SERIF Serif style (such as TimesRoman)
SANS Sans Serif Style (such as Helvetica)
TYPEWRITER Fixed pitch style (such as Courier)
STYLE
NONE No modifications to family
BOLD Embolden family
ITALIC Italicize or Slant family
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
FontStyle {
size 10 # SFFloat
family SERIF # SFEnum
style NONE # SFBitMask
}
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
Group {
}
The vertices of the faces are transformed by the current transformation matrix.
Treatment of the current material and normal binding is as follows: The PER_PART and PER_FACE bindings specify a material or normal for each face. PER_VERTEX specifies a material or normal for each vertex. The corresponding _INDEXED bindings are the same, but use the materialIndex or normalIndex indices. The DEFAULT material binding is equal to OVERALL. The DEFAULT normal binding is equal to PER_VERTEX_INDEXED; if insufficient normals exist in the state, vertex normals will be generated automatically.
Explicit texture coordinates (as defined by TextureCoordinate2) may be bound to vertices of an indexed shape by using the indices in the textureCoordIndex field. As with all vertex-based shapes, if there is a current texture but no texture coordinates are specified, a default texture coordinate mapping is calculated using the bounding box of the shape. The longest dimension of the bounding box defines the S coordinates, and the next longest defines the T coordinates. The value of the S coordinate ranges from 0 to 1, from one end of the bounding box to the other. The T coordinate ranges between 0 and the ratio of the second greatest dimension of the bounding box to the greatest dimension.
Be sure that the indices contained in the coordIndex, materialIndex, normalIndex, and textureCoordIndex fields are valid with respect to the current state, or errors will occur.
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
IndexedFaceSet {
coordIndex 0 # MFLong
materialIndex -1 # MFLong
normalIndex -1 # MFLong
textureCoordIndex -1 # MFLong
}
The coordinates of the line set are transformed by the current cumulative transformation.
Treatment of the current material and normal binding is as follows: The PER_PART binding specifies a material or normal for each segment of the line. The PER_FACE binding specifies a material or normal for each polyline. PER_VERTEX specifies a material or normal for each vertex. The corresponding _INDEXED bindings are the same, but use the materialIndex or normalIndex indices. The DEFAULT material binding is equal to OVERALL. The DEFAULT normal binding is equal to PER_VERTEX_INDEXED; if insufficient normals exist in the state, the lines will be drawn unlit. The same rules for texture coordinate generation as IndexedFaceSet are used.
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
IndexedLineSet {
coordIndex 0 # MFLong
materialIndex -1 # MFLong
normalIndex -1 # MFLong
textureCoordIndex -1 # MFLong
}
Info {
string "<Undefined info>" # SFString
}
The specified center point of the LOD is transformed by the current transformation into world space, and the distance from the transformed center to the world-space eye point is calculated. If the distance is less than the first value in the ranges array, then the first child of the LOD group is drawn. If between the first and second values in the ranges array, the second child is drawn, etc. If there are N values in the ranges array, the LOD group should have N+1 children. Specifying too few children will result in the last child being used repeatedly for the lowest levels of detail; if too many children are specified, the extra children will be ignored. Each value in the ranges array should be less than the previous value, otherwise results are undefined.
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
LOD {
range [ ] # MFFloat
center 0 0 0 # SFVec3f
}
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
Material {
ambientColor 0.2 0.2 0.2 # MFColor
diffuseColor 0.8 0.8 0.8 # MFColor
specularColor 0 0 0 # MFColor
emissiveColor 0 0 0 # MFColor
shininess 0.2 # MFFloat
transparency 0 # MFFloat
}
The bindings for faces and vertices are meaningful only for shapes that are made from faces and vertices. Similarly, the indexed bindings are only used by the shapes that allow indexing.
When multiple material values are bound, the values are cycled through, based on the period of the material component with the most values. For example, the following table shows the values used when cycling through (or indexing into) a material with 2 ambient colors, 3 diffuse colors, and 1 of all other components in the current material. (The period of this material cycle is 3):
Material Ambient color Diffuse color Other 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 2 1 2 0 3 (same as 0) 0 0 0
BINDINGS
DEFAULT Use default binding
OVERALL Whole object has same material
PER_PART One material for each part of object
PER_PART_INDEXED One material for each part, indexed
PER_FACE One material for each face of object
PER_FACE_INDEXED One material for each face, indexed
PER_VERTEX One material for each vertex of object
PER_VERTEX_INDEXED One material for each vertex, indexed
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
MaterialBinding {
value DEFAULT # SFEnum
}
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
MatrixTransform {
matrix 1 0 0 0 # SFMatrix
0 1 0 0
0 0 1 0
0 0 0 1
}
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
Normal {
vector 0 0 1 # MFVec3f
}
The bindings for faces and vertices are meaningful only for shapes that are made from faces and vertices. Similarly, the indexed bindings are only used by the shapes that allow indexing. For bindings that require multiple normals, be sure to have at least as many normals defined as are necessary; otherwise, errors will occur.
BINDINGS
DEFAULT Use default binding
OVERALL Whole object has same normal
PER_PART One normal for each part of object
PER_PART_INDEXED One normal for each part, indexed
PER_FACE One normal for each face of object
PER_FACE_INDEXED One normal for each face, indexed
PER_VERTEX One normal for each vertex of object
PER_VERTEX_INDEXED One normal for each vertex, indexed
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
NormalBinding {
value DEFAULT # SFEnum
}
By default, the camera is located at (0,0,1) and looks along the negative z-axis; the position and orientation fields can be used to change these values. The height field defines the total height of the viewing volume.
A camera can be placed in a VRML world to specify the initial location of the viewer when that world is entered. VRML browsers will typically modify the camera to allow a user to move through the virtual world.
Cameras are affected by the current transformation, so you can position a camera by placing a transformation node before it in the scene graph . The default position and orientation of a camera is at (0,0,1) looking along the negative z-axis.
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
OrthographicCamera {
position 0 0 1 # SFVec3f
orientation 0 0 1 0 # SFRotation
focalDistance 5 # SFFloat
height 2 # SFFloat
}
By default, the camera is located at (0,0,1) and looks along the negative z-axis; the position and orientation fields can be used to change these values. The heightAngle field defines the total vertical angle of the viewing volume.
See more on cameras in the OrthographicCamera description.
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
PerspectiveCamera {
position 0 0 1 # SFVec3f
orientation 0 0 1 0 # SFRotation
focalDistance 5 # SFFloat
heightAngle 0.785398 # SFFloat
}
A light node defines an illumination source that may affect subsequent shapes in the scene graph, depending on the current lighting style. Light sources are affected by the current transformation. A light node under a separator does not affect any objects outside that separator.
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
PointLight {
on TRUE # SFBool
intensity 1 # SFFloat
color 1 1 1 # SFColor
location 0 0 1 # SFVec3f
}
The coordinates of the point set are transformed by the current cumulative transformation. The points are drawn with the current material and texture.
Treatment of the current material and normal binding is as follows: PER_PART, PER_FACE, and PER_VERTEX bindings bind one material or normal to each point. The DEFAULT material binding is equal to OVERALL. The DEFAULT normal binding is equal to PER_VERTEX. The startIndex is also used for materials or normals when the binding indicates that they should be used per vertex.
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
PointSet {
startIndex 0 # SFLong
numPoints -1 # SFLong
}
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
Rotation {
rotation 0 0 1 0 # SFRotation
}
See rotation field description for more information.
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
Scale {
scaleFactor 1 1 1 # SFVec3f
}
Separators can also perform render culling. Render culling skips over traversal of the separator's children if they are not going to be rendered, based on the comparison of the separator's bounding box with the current view volume. Culling is controlled by the renderCulling field. These are set to AUTO by default, allowing the implementation to decide whether or not to cull.
CULLING ENUMS
ON Always try to cull to the view volume
OFF Never try to cull to the view volume
AUTO Implementation-defined culling behavior
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
Separator {
renderCulling AUTO # SFEnum
}
These hints allow VRML implementations to optimize certain rendering features. Optimizations that may be performed include enabling back-face culling and disabling two-sided lighting. For example, if an object is solid and has ordered vertices, an implementation may turn on backface culling and turn off two-sided lighting. If the object is not solid but has ordered vertices, it may turn off backface culling and turn on two-sided lighting.
The ShapeHints node also affects how default normals are generated. When an IndexedFaceSet has to generate default normals, it uses the creaseAngle field to determine which edges should be smoothly shaded and which ones should have a sharp crease. The crease angle is the angle between surface normals on adjacent polygons. For example, a crease angle of .5 radians (the default value) means that an edge between two adjacent polygonal faces will be smooth shaded if the normals to the two faces form an angle that is less than .5 radians (about 30 degrees). Otherwise, it will be faceted.
VERTEX ORDERING ENUMS
UNKNOWN_ORDERING Ordering of vertices is unknown
CLOCKWISE Face vertices are ordered clockwise
(from the outside)
COUNTERCLOCKWISE Face vertices are ordered counterclockwise
(from the outside)
SHAPE TYPE ENUMS
UNKNOWN_SHAPE_TYPE Nothing is known about the shape
SOLID The shape encloses a volume
FACE TYPE ENUMS
UNKNOWN_FACE_TYPE Nothing is known about faces
CONVEX All faces are convex
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
ShapeHints {
vertexOrdering UNKNOWN_ORDERING # SFEnum
shapeType UNKNOWN_SHAPE_TYPE # SFEnum
faceType CONVEX # SFEnum
creaseAngle 0.5 # SFFloat
}
A sphere does not have faces or parts. Therefore, the sphere ignores material and normal bindings, using the first material for the entire sphere and using its own normals. When a texture is applied to a sphere, the texture covers the entire surface, wrapping counterclockwise from the back of the sphere. The texture has a seam at the back on the yz-plane.
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
Sphere {
radius 1 # SFFloat
}
A light node defines an illumination source that may affect subsequent shapes in the scene graph, depending on the current lighting style. Light sources are affected by the current transformation. A light node under a separator does not affect any objects outside that separator.
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
SpotLight {
on TRUE # SFBool
intensity 1 # SFFloat
color 1 1 1 # SFVec3f
location 0 0 1 # SFVec3f
direction 0 0 -1 # SFVec3f
dropOffRate 0 # SFFloat
cutOffAngle 0.785398 # SFFloat
}
The whichChild field specifies the index of the child to traverse, where the first child has index 0.
A value of -1 (the default) means do not traverse any children. A value of -3 traverses all children, making the switch behave exactly like a regular Group.
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
Switch {
whichChild -1 # SFLong
}
The texture can be read from the URL specified by the filename field. To turn off texturing, set the filename field to an empty string ("").
Textures can also be specified inline by setting the image field to contain the texture data. Specifying both a URL and data inline will result in undefined behavior.
WRAP ENUM
REPEAT Repeats texture outside 0-1 texture coordinate range
CLAMP Clamps texture coordinates to lie within 0-1 range
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
Texture2 {
filename "" # SFString
image 0 0 0 # SFImage
wrapS REPEAT # SFEnum
wrapT REPEAT # SFEnum
}
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
Texture2Transform {
translation 0 0 # SFVec2f
rotation 0 # SFFloat
scaleFactor 1 1 # SFVec2f
center 0 0 # SFVec2f
}
Texture coordinates range from 0 to 1 across the texture. The horizontal coordinate, called S, is specified first, followed by the vertical coordinate, T.
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
TextureCoordinate2 {
point 0 0 # MFVec2f
}
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
Transform {
translation 0 0 0 # SFVec3f
rotation 0 0 1 0 # SFRotation
scaleFactor 1 1 1 # SFVec3f
scaleOrientation 0 0 1 0 # SFRotation
center 0 0 0 # SFVec3f
}
The transform node
Transform {
translation T1
rotation R1
scaleFactor S
scaleOrientation R2
center T2
}
is equivalent to the sequence
Translation { translation T1 }
Translation { translation T2 }
Rotation { rotation R1 }
Rotation { rotation R2 }
Scale { scaleFactor S }
Rotation { rotation -R2 }
Translation { translation -T2 }
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
TransformSeparator {
}
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
Translation {
translation 0 0 0 # SFVec3f
}
WWWAnchor behaves like a Separator, pushing the traversal state before traversing its children and popping it afterwards.
The description field in the WWWAnchor allows for a friendly prompt to be displayed as an alternative to the URL in the name field. Ideally, browsers will allow the user to choose the description, the URL or both to be displayed for a candidate WWWAnchor.
The WWWAnchor's map field is an enumerated value that can be either NONE (the default) or POINT. If it is POINT then the object-space coordinates of the point on the object the user chose will be added to the URL in the name field, with the syntax "?x,y,z".
MAP ENUM
NONE Do not add information to the URL
POINT Add object-space coordinates to URL
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
WWWAnchor {
name "" # SFString
description "" # SFString
map NONE # SFEnum
}
The effect of referring to a non-VRML URL in a WWWInline node is undefined.
If the WWWInline's bboxSize field specifies a non-empty bounding box (a bounding box is non-empty if at least one of its dimensions is greater than zero), then the WWWInline's object-space bounding box is specified by its bboxSize and bboxCenter fields. This allows an implementation to view-volume cull or LOD switch the WWWInline without reading its contents.
FILE FORMAT/DEFAULTS
WWWInline {
name "" # SFString
bboxSize 0 0 0 # SFVec3f
bboxCenter 0 0 0 # SFVec3f
}
InstancingThe DEF keyword both defines a named node, and creates a single instance of it. The USE keyword indicates that the most recently defined instance should be used again. If several nodes were given the same name, then the last DEF encountered during parsing "wins". DEF/USE is limited to a single file; there is no mechanism for USE'ing nodes that are DEF'ed in other files.
A name goes into scope as soon as the DEF is encountered, and does not go out of scope until another DEF of the same name or end-of-file are encountered. Nodes cannot be shared between files (you cannot USE a node that was DEF'ed inside the file to which a WWWInline refers).
For example, rendering this scene will result in three spheres being drawn. Both of the spheres are named 'Joe'; the second (smaller) sphere is drawn twice:
Separator {
DEF Joe Sphere { }
Translation { translation 2 0 0 }
Separator {
DEF Joe Sphere { radius .2 }
Translation { translation 2 0 0 }
}
USE Joe # radius .2 sphere will be used here
}
ExtensibilityThis description is written just after the opening curly-brace for the node, and consists of the keyword 'fields' followed by a list of the types and names of fields used by that node, all enclosed in square brackets and separated by commas. For example, if Cube was not a standard VRML node, it would be written like this:
Cube {
fields [ SFFloat width, SFFloat height, SFFloat depth ]
width 10 height 4 depth 3
}
Specifying the fields for nodes that ARE part of standard VRML is not an error; VRML parsers must silently ignore the field specification.
ExtendedMaterial {
fields [ MFString isA, MFFloat indexOfRefraction,
MFColor ambientColor, MFColor diffuseColor,
MFColor specularColor, MFColor emissiveColor,
MFFloat shininess, MFFloat transparency ]
isA [ "Material" ]
indexOfRefraction .34
diffuseColor .8 .54 1
}
Multiple is-a relationships may be specified in order of preference;
implementations are expected to use the first for which there is an
implementation.
An
Example
#VRML V1.0 ascii
Separator {
Separator { # Simple track-light geometry:
Translation { translation 0 4 0 }
Separator {
Material { emissiveColor 0.1 0.3 0.3 }
Cube {
width 0.1
height 0.1
depth 4
}
}
Rotation { rotation 0 1 0 1.57079 }
Separator {
Material { emissiveColor 0.3 0.1 0.3 }
Cylinder {
radius 0.1
height .2
}
}
Rotation { rotation -1 0 0 1.57079 }
Separator {
Material { emissiveColor 0.3 0.3 0.1 }
Rotation { rotation 1 0 0 1.57079 }
Translation { translation 0 -.2 0 }
Cone {
height .4
bottomRadius .2
}
Translation { translation 0 .4 0 }
Cylinder {
radius 0.02
height .4
}
}
}
SpotLight { # Light from above
location 0 4 0
direction 0 -1 0
intensity 0.9
cutOffAngle 0.7
}
Separator { # Wall geometry; just three flat polygons
Coordinate3 {
point [
-2 0 -2, -2 0 2, 2 0 2, 2 0 -2,
-2 4 -2, -2 4 2, 2 4 2, 2 4 -2]
}
IndexedFaceSet {
coordIndex [ 0, 1, 2, 3, -1,
0, 4, 5, 1, -1,
0, 3, 7, 4, -1
]
}
}
WWWAnchor { # A hyperlinked cow:
name "http://www.foo.edu/CowProject/AboutCows.html"
Separator {
Translation { translation 0 1 0 }
WWWInline { # Reference another object
name "http://www.foo.edu/3DObjects/cow.wrl"
}
}
}
}
Browser Considerations
File
Extensions
MIME
x-world/x-vrml
The MIME major type for 3D world descriptions is x-world. The MIME minor type for VRML documents is x-vrml. Other 3D world descriptions, such as oogl for The Geometry Center's Object-Oriented Geometry Language, or iv, for SGI's Open Inventor ASCII format, can be supported by using different MIME minor types.
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