home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
The Best of Windows 95.com 1996 September
/
WIN95_09962.iso
/
vrml
/
vhsbdemo.exe
/
VHSBDEMO
/
Tiptrick.txt
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1996-03-26
|
14KB
|
304 lines
TIPS AND TRICKS
Advice to Home Space(TM) Builders
-------------------
* Think Small
* Plan Ahead
* Save your work
* Leave space for the ceiling and floor
* Carving is better than adding boxes
* Building a multilevel structure
* Faces are one-sided surfaces
* Select the appropriate tile size for textures
* Use brightness to create realistic lighting effects
* Resizing pictures
* Speed up the preview of images
* Drag-and-Drop pictures
* Copy textures, pictures, and colors
* Linking to URLs
* Convert images to compressed formats
* Texture rendering in VRML browsers
* Publishing your Home Spaces on the Web
* Using on-line audio
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Virtual Home Space Builder(TM) 1.1 is the first product on the
consumer market for building 3D multimedia environments and 3D
multimedia World Wide Web pages. Its easy-to-use and powerful
user interface, together with unlimited opportunities to include your
own personal art, sound, and video, make VHSB 1.1 the ultimate
Internet creativity tool for adults and kids of all ages.
In what follows, we provide several recommendations that will make
your Home Space Building more efficient and fun.
1. Think small. Start with simple 3D Spaces. Gradually add
complexity and new features. Do not attempt to create a big city as
your first project. Instead, start by building simple rooms, varying
the size and placement of doors and windows. Then you can
surround your buildings with walls, and create multilevel
constructions. When you feel that you have mastered some simple
building skills, start decorating your 3D Spaces.
2. Plan Ahead. We recommend that you first design your 3D
Space in your mind. Then, you can decide in advance what sequence
of building steps is best. Soon, you will automatically use these
basic building patterns and start to really improvise.
3. Save your work. Don't forget to save your work periodically
in MUS format. Later, when your 3D Space is complete, use the
Copy All option. This saves your MUS file, and all the media files
that your MUS file references, to the same directory and creates a
Distribution Package for your 3D Space.
4. Leave space for the ceiling and floor. When building a
simple room, follow these three steps:
(a) Add a Box in Plane Builder
(b) Adjust the laths of the Height Scale to leave space for the
ceiling and floor
(c) Carve-out a smaller box inside the first one, using
Remove Box (Scissors)
Don't forget the step (b)! Otherwise, your "room" will have neither
floor nor ceiling.
5. Carving is better than adding boxes. Carving-out a box to
create a room is better than placing four adjacent walls. If you forget
to leave space for the floor or/and ceiling of the room, it is better to
press the Undo button on the Builder toolbox and repeat your work
than to add boxes for the floor and ceiling on the top and bottom. To
make a table in your room:
(a) Make a box of the needed height (Add Box)
(b) Adjust the Height Scale to leave space for the desktop
(c) Cut two crosswise boxes in the center (this will create
a table with its legs aligned to the corners); make sure that the
legs are thick enough
(d) Cut four narrow boxes from the edges to "shift" legs
to the center
6. Building a multilevel structure. To add a level to your
building, click on a wall. Two red marks to the left of Height Scale
will show the height of the top and bottom edges of the wall. Adjust
the laths of the Height Scale so that the lower lath touches the upper
edge of the wall, and the distance between laths fits the height of the
new level. Then, add the box of needed size to create the next-higher
level of your building.
7. Faces are one-sided surfaces. If you build your room using
faces, with the Draw Face tool, don't forget that faces are one-sided
surfaces; to make them visible from both sides, you have to draw
them two times, clockwise and counter-clockwise.
8. Select the appropriate tile size for textures. By default,
textures are tiled with the tile size 0.5 (in the same relative size units
as your walls). For some textures with geometric decor, this tile size
might be too small for your particular 3D Space. Press the Details
button ('D' in the Chooser window) and change texture width and
height in the Wallpaper Detail dialog box or suppress tiling by
clearing the Tile checkbox.
9. Use brightness to create realistic lighting effects. In order
to make your room or gallery look more realistic, you can put the
same texture on adjacent walls, changing only its brightness. Here is
how you can do this:
(a) Hang a texture on the wall as a picture
(b) Open the True Image window (click on the Magnifier)
(c) Click on the Change Image Attribute tool in the
toolbar of the True Image window, then change the
brightness of the texture
(d) Save the texture under the different name
Repeat these steps to prepare as many textures with altered
brightness as you need. In order to load new textures in the Chooser
window, you will have to reselect the Wallpaper directory, and then
to return to the original directory (for faster loading, textures from
the current directory are kept in memory and are not reloaded unless
the directory is changed). Put the textures with altered brightness on
the adjacent walls.
10. Resizing pictures. When resizing a picture with
Move/Resize tool (double-sided arrow in the Walker toolbox), you
have to grab it on the right upper corner and pull it diagonally. If you
are too far from the picture, your "target" might be too small, and
resizing could be difficult.
In order to quickly resize the picture, click on the picture, then click
on the View Object tool (target in the upper toolbar of the 3D Space
window) to get close to the picture, then grab it by the upper right
corner, and resize.
By default, pictures resize proportionally. If you want to change this,
clear the Keep Aspect Ratio While Resizing Pictures checkbox in the
Advanced Settings dialog box.
11. Speed up the preview of images. When there are many
textures and/or pictures in the directories you are using to decorate
your Home Space, it takes more time to display images in the
Chooser window when switching between these directories. To
speed up this process, select Settings in the 3D Space Window
Menu, and check the Fast Chooser Preview of Images checkbox.
12. Drag-and-Drop pictures. You can drag-and-drop pictures
onto the walls of your Home Spaces not only from the Chooser
window, but also directly from the File Manager or Windows 95 File
Folders.
13. Copy textures, pictures, and colors. You can easily copy
textures, pictures, and colors already present in your Home Space from
one location to another using Ctrl-Click/Shift-Click operations. Point the
cursor in the 3D Space on a wall, and press the Ctrl key. The basket
icon with an incoming arrow will appear indicating the copy mode. Holding
the Ctrl key, locate the texture/picture you need and click with the mouse.
Your texture/picture/color is copied to the clipboard. Move cursor to the surface
where you want to have a copy of the texture (picture, color), and press Shift-Left
Mouse to paste from the clipboard.
14. Linking to URLs. You can attach Web links (URLs) to any
picture, album or movie. Double click on the picture to link to the
attached URL. This attachment works only with Netscape
Navigator(TM) 1.1 and 2.0.
With Netscape 1.1, the browser window pops up on the screen and
displays the Web page with the appropriate URL. With Netscape
2.0, the browser window remains under the VHSB windows, unless
it was previously minimized.
With Windows, versions 3.1, 3.11, 95, you do not need to launch
Netscape before you link to the URL from your Home Space, this
happens automatically; with Windows NT, you need to do this.
You can even include the Link to URL function in the Multifunction
list attached to a picture. In this case, linking to the URL will occur
synchronously, and execution of the Multifunction list will be
continued whether or not the link was successful.
15. Convert images to compressed formats. When building
your 3D Web page in VRML format, keep in mind that some VRML
browsers understand only GIF and JPEG formats. Make sure that all
the textures and pictures used in your Home Space are converted to
these formats (use graphics packages such as LView or Paint Shop or
converters such as Alchemy) before you export it to VRML. Using
compressed graphics formats, such as JPEG, you can save much
space on the server and download time for your Web visitors.
16. Texture rendering in VRML browsers. Some popular
VRML browsers have problems with rendering textures. If textures
on the walls/ceilings of your VRML scene are distorted, the error is
probably not in VRML export, but, more likely, with the browser
itself.
If the height of your texture exceeds its width, some VRML browsers
consider this as an indication that the texture is animated; this may
result in the unexpected "blinking" of textures. The easiest way to
cope with this is to resize the texture (make it square) and put it on
the same walls before exporting to VRML.
17. Publishing your Home Spaces on the Web. You can
publish your Home Spaces on the Web in VRML format or in MUS
format. The difference is both in features and in the way Web surfers
can download your space.
With VRML publishing, we advise that you:
(a) Create a new directory
(b) Use Copy All with the Virtual Reality Modeling
Language (*.WRL) option to save your VRML file and all its
media files into this directory.
(c) Do NOT rewrite this file when exiting VHSB
(respond "NO" to the corresponding VHSB message)
(d) Upload the whole directory to a Web site (HTTP server)
If a VRML browser is pointed to your .WRL file, it will download it
together with textures, but it will not understand any other media
files, so your albums, movies, video and sound files cannot be
accessed in VRML format (however, you can retain sound by using
RealAudio(TM), see below). Floor plans, sliding textures, walking
shows and most of attachments, including text attachments, are also
not supported by the VRML 1.0 standard.
With publishing in the MUS format, you can either
- provide a compressed file for your clients to download and view
scenes with a standalone VHSB Viewer(TM) or
- publish MUS file on the Web to view it with Virtual Space
Viewer Plug-in for Netscape 2.0.
To publish a compressed file, please do the following:
(a) Copy All your Home Space into a new directory
(b) Do NOT rewrite this file when exiting VHSB
(respond "NO" to the corresponding VHSB message)
(c) Compress all files in the directory into a single
archive file (we recommend creating a self-extracting
archive)
(d) Upload the self-extracting archive to a Web site
When a Web browser (non-VRML) is pointed to such an archive, it
downloads the archive to the user's computer. Then the user
decompresses the file simply by double-clicking it, launches a
Viewer, and loads MUS file. The VHSB Viewer is free for
unlimited redistribution: you can add the VHSB Viewer to your
archive, put it separately on your Web page or link to ParaGraph's or
any other Web site that mirrors this viewer for free distribution.
To publish MUS files to view them with Virtual Space Viewer Plug-
in for Netscape 2.0, you need to:
(a) Create a new directory
(b) Copy All your MUS file and its media files into this
directory.
(c) Do NOT rewrite this file when exiting VHSB
(respond "NO" to the corresponding VHSB message)
(d) Upload the whole directory to a Web site (HTTP server)
(e) Contact your Web site administrator to add new MIME type
x-worlds/x-d96 with extensions d96,mus to the server (otherwise,
MUS files will come up to your clients as text)
When Netscape 2.0 is pointed to such MUS file, it launches the
Virtual Space Viewer Plug-in and loads the scene. The Virtual Space
Viewer Plug-in can be downloaded for free from ParaGraph's Web
site and is free for unlimited redistribution.
With Netscape 2.0, you can also embed Home Spaces both in VRML
and in MUS formats, inside HTML documents.
18. Using on-line audio. Unlike WAV sound files that can be
recorded and played by VHSB 1.0, on-line audio formats such as
RealAudio(TM), TrueSpeech(R), ToolVox, IWave are helpful:
(a) To decrease bandwidth requirements
(b) To add sound to VRML Home Spaces
In order to attach on-line audio files located on the Web to your pictures,
you have to use the Link to URL function with the URLs of remote audio files.
In this case, you need not transfer audio files with the Distribution Copy
of your Home Space.
To actually listen to the sound, one needs to download free audio player
from the corresponding Web site:
- http://www.realaudio.com - RealAudio(TM),
- http://www.dspg.com/allplyr.htm - TrueSpeech(R),
- http://www.voxware.com/download.htm - ToolVox
- http://www.vocaltec.com - IWave,
and to install the Player. In this case, double clicking on a picture with the
attached URL of an on-line audio file will launch the Player and play the "streamed"
sound file. Taking into account that WAV files are very big and have to be downloaded
completely, this can save a lot of downloading time.
To convert your own WAV files to on-line audio formats, you have to download and
install the corresponding audio recorder.
Note: In order for your RealAudio files to be "visible" on the Web, you have to put them
in the domain of some RealAudio Server (currently, this server is not free).