Today I spoke with Clark Sneed, the national sales manager from Dirxion, LLC, a major eBook publisher. I’d contacted them after receiving a link to an online tourism guide they publish, the 2009 Virginia Guide and being very impressed with its quality and beauty. This example really shows some of the multimedia possibilities of eBooks. [...]

Posted in Format, Software, blogs, copyright, eBooks, ePublishing 2 Comments »

We have moved to a different RV park, which has a different WISP (Wireless Internet Service Provider), one that offers unlimited bandwidth. That’s the way life ought to be! But there’s a catch.
One of the things that frustrated me most about the 360MB/48 hours limitations imposed by NomadISP at Beaudry RV was that I couldn’t [...]

Posted in Format, MacOS X, Operating System, Software, Virtual Machines, WiFi, WiMax, WindowsXP, eBooks, ePublishing, wireless 2 Comments »

OK, I confess. I’m having way too much fun with the iTunes iPhone App Store. So far I have no fewer than 85 apps (mini applications that are free or cost just a few dollars) on my phone. That does not include the four or five I’ve decided are simply lame and have deleted.
Here’s my [...]

Posted in Format, MacOS X, Software, iPhone No Comments »

Since my last post here, a lot has been accomplished.
Last time I wrote, I was downloading the OpenSim server software to my external hard disk via SVN. That went well, but I have to admit that the instructions for compiling and running it on MacOS 1.5 were so daunting that I deferred that until after [...]

Posted in 3D, Archives, Avatar, Format, LSL, MacOS X, OSGrid, Open Source, OpenLife, OpenSIM, SecondLife, Software, Virtual Machine, Virtual Worlds, WindowsXP 1 Comment »

Someone in the SecondLife audience at the Stanford Metaverse U conference, listening to the presentation by Jon Brouchard about Wikitecture said Jon has blogged about this at http://archsl.wordpress.com.
One of the points in Brouchard’s talk was something about people always asking if they can import their content from other 3D worlds into SecondLife. He said, not [...]

Posted in 3D, Blended Reality, Conference, Design, Format, Metaverse, SecondLife, Software No Comments »

The current speaker at the Stanford Metaverse U conference, Toni Parisi, is one of the principals in the X3D format development. I’ve written a bit about that in this blog, since Sun Microsystem’s Project Wonderland specifies that for creating content in their virtual world, which I’m presently researching and hope to implement on my desktop [...]

Posted in 3D, Conference, Format, Metaverse, Software, Wonderland No Comments »

One step forward, two steps back. Both iClone2 and 3DXchange are easy to use, and have lots of useful features. But their export formats are pretty limited, at least they don’t export into x3d which is what I am looking for right now. iClone2 uses 2D formats, while 3DXchange only outputs to .vns format, [...]

Posted in 3D, Format, Models, Software No Comments »

Before starting on Project Wonderland, I thought I’d boot up WindowsXP (on my Mac’s Parallels virtual machine) to look at iClone2 and see if I can find out what kinds of formats it exports things to. Here’s what I’ve discovered so far.
Export Formats
bmp

24 bit
32 bit

jpg

sliding scale 0-100% quality

tga

24 bit
32 bit

gif

transparency

Obviously, these are 2D formats, [...]

Posted in 3D, Avatar, Design, Format, Machinima, Models, Software, Wonderland No Comments »

While I’m at it, here’s a link to a tool for creating and testing x3d files, from the Web3D Consortium. It’s free.
Click the logo at the left to go to the page about it.

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It appears that iClone2 doesn’t export to x3d. Rats! I could be wrong, though. I’ll look more closely. But first, what exactly is x3d? I’m doing a Web search on the subject now.
Wolfram Mathematica’s page says x3d is:

Web3D geometry format
Used for distributing 3D models on the web and in media applications.
XML format.
Can store multiple geometries.
Introduced [...]

Posted in 3D, Format, Software No Comments »