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→3D in the Browser... More than just Doom
== 3D in the Browser... More than just Doom ==
This presentation was given by [http://cleung.wordpress.com/ Catherine Leung] who is a professor at Seneca College in the School of Computer Studies, where she teaches in the game development and programming areas. Cathy's talk was about a project she has been working on called [http://www.c3dl.org C3DL]. C3DL is a JavaScript library that will provide a set of classes for rendering 3D objects in the browser. Currently it requires an up to date browser such as Firefox 3.5 in order to run. Canvas 3D is available as an add-on for Firefox 3.5 or higher and can be downloaded at [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=Canvas+3d&cat=all addons.mozilla.org]. Cathy demonstrated an application called Motionview which allows previewing of down sampled motion capture data in the browser by using the C3DL library. Motionview was developed through a partnership between [http://navarra.ca/ The Navarra Group], [http://www.bedlamgames.com/ Bedlam Games], [http://www.coredp.com/ CORE], and Seneca College and was supported by the [http://www.omdc.on.ca/site11.aspx Ontario Media Development Corporation]. <br /> Motion capture is a technology that uses a special suit with reflective balls attached to key movement points on the object you want to animate, usually a human. Cameras from multiple angles capture the location of the reflective balls as they move around and the computer processes the data from the different cameras to build a skeleton of the object. Sometimes the cameras get it wrong though and the model needs to be cleaned up and corrected. The purpose of Motionview is to reduce the expensive cost of 'clean up' in motion capture animation scenes when sometimes certain points in the animation are wrong. Because of the high cost of producing motion capture video this data is never sent out in a raw format over the web, instead the C3DL library is used with the application which reads a converted format of the raw motion data and displays it in the browser for artists to preview which shots they want to use and mark which shots to be cleaned up instead of everything. This results in a huge cost savings.<br /> Cathy moved on to show a few other demos such as particle systems and a 3D Google maps road view demo that could simulate turns in a route on Google maps. She also showed a really cool animation of some 3D panels that act as links to websites with logos orbiting around a c3dl logo which were clickable to visit the website. Once a panel had been clicked it would display a sepia effect to show it had been visited before.<br />
For more information on C3DL you can visit [http://www.c3dl.org/ their website]. They have a [http://www.c3dl.org/index.php/tutorials/ section on tutorials] as well for installing the Canvas 3D addon, basic modeling, light effects, etc. Their development news can be found [http://www.c3dl.org/index.php/development-news/ here].