Hello,

We're looking for a developer to help us write a *NIX command-line script to convert a VRML scene to a video moving along pre-programmed waypoints. Please email me if you're interested, or if you know anyone who is available.

We don't bounce checks.


Neil

1longtime,

Can you be a bit more specific about what you want to do.

Rendering a scene to individual frames and hence to video requires a rendering package of some kind.
I don't think that Sandy is going to be the most suitable platform for this.

In a Windows enviroment, I'd suggest that use use 3D Studio Max and get someone to write a "Max Script" to do control the process.

There are number of renders that will run on *nix, e.g. Blender.

However there are a load of parameters you need to consider before choosing a rendering engine.
e.g. Do you require shadow or reflections in your final video.


BTW. I'm not the person to do this for you as I'm not a contractor.

Thanks for the comment.

The goal is getting a flythrough of a VRML world on video.

The VRML scenes are all textures, no shadows or reflection. The flythrough will be implemented by using VRML viewpoints and scripts within the WRL file to smoothly move between the viewpoints (this part is essentially already written, but output can be customized if need be). The final video will be around 15 seconds long.

Depending on the contractor's choice, the scene can be captured by recording the rendered movement (ie- straight to video, but the tools I have found that can do this are proprietary) or by taking sequential frame-by-frame snapshots (FreeWRL and view3dscene are open source tools that can do this). There would be some fun math using the second method (ie- calculating POVs in 3d space. Woohoo!)

Here's the real catch: there will be no user interaction, no video card, and no monitor. This tool needs to be automated, thus a customized open source VRML capture tool is probably the answer (unless someone wants to write some OpenGL stuff from scratch). It will run on Linux based headless worker servers.

We have a couple of people who are already interested, but our timeline is very tight so we're still open for other interested contractors to help.

NOW THEN, IF YOU'RE STILL WITH ME...

...and if THAT project doesn't seem challenging enough, the lofty goal is to get these textured VRML worlds into a FLASH PLAYER. If you can do THAT, you are truly bad. ...but that will have to wait (due to our timeline) plus frankly we haven't found anyone that can do it. Any takers on THAT??

But for now, anyone that is interested in the VRML-to-video tool, please contact me so we can talk.