Building 3D Models for the Web Creating Multiple Viewpoints

You can make your VRML world more interesting by creating multiple viewpoints. The Viewpoint node is described on pages 50-51 and 363-364 of your textbook.

An Example

1. Log into one of the SGIs, cheetah.ma.iup.edu, jaguar.ma.iup.edu, or leopard.ma.iup.edu.
2. Change to your public_html directory:
   

   leopard 1% cd public_html

3. Copy the example from the ls499 directory and give public read access to it.
   

   leopard 2% cp /usr/people/ls499/viewpoints.wrl .
   leopard 3% chmod 644 viewpoints.wrl

4. Edit the example, adding position and orientation fields to the viewpoints.
   

   leopard 1% pico viewpoints.wrl
   

   Choose positions and orientations so that the viewpoints are from the front, side, and top.
5. View the changes in your Web browser by going to the URL http://cheetah.ma.iup.edu/~username/viewpoints.wrl, where username is replaced by your own username.
6. Navigate to the various viewpoints by clicking on the "View" arrows at the bottom of the browser window or by holding down the mouse button in the browser window until a menu pops up.
7. If you finish this exercise early, try to add additional viewpoints on the left side, in the back, and underneath. If you are looking for more of a challenge, try to put in a viewpoint that orients the the axes in the other standard orientation--z up, y to the right, and x toward the viewer.

Maintained by H. Edward Donley <hedonley@grove.iup.edu>
Last Modified Monday, 13-Aug-2001 16:53:26 EDT