Getting ready for the 3-D Web. (3D authoring tools and browsers for Web developers)(Brief Article)(Buyers Guide)

If HTML output bores you, then maybe you're ready for the next generation of 3-D authoring tools and complementary browsers for web developers and users.

HIGHLIGHTS

3-D tools

3-D objects

VRML

After years of hype and high prices, 3-D is finally going mainstream. The plummeting prices of three-dimensional graphics hardware is moving PC 3-D support from the realm of an expensive option to a commodity. While many users are simply excited that there is a Web, some of us are impatient to move rapidly past HTML and on to interactive, dynamically-displayed 3-D information. Fortunately for us, vendors like Caligari and Virtus Software, who occupy the 3-D design and modeling markets, are creating tools that let developers add VRML integration to their current 3-D models, making them web-ready with a minimum of fuss.

Many 3-D modeling programs can translate objects created in their proprietary language into World Wide Web formats--like the geometry-only format called WebOOGL (Web Object-Oriented Graphics Library Format, from http://www.geom.umn.edu/docs/wehoogl/wehoogl/weboogl.html or into the virtual reality modeling language (VRML).

Another emerging trend is web sites where 3-D web developers can download 3-D objects that are stored in proprietary formats. These sites will become a useful resource when users begin storing their 3-D images in platform-independent VRML and …