Subscribe free to our newsletters via your
. 24/7 Space News .




TECH SPACE
Creating your own animated 3D characters and scenes for the web
by Staff Writers
Saarbrucken, Germany (SPX) Mar 05, 2013


Computer scientists from Saarland University enable web developers to shape the Internet in its third dimension in an easier way. Credit: Bellhauser - das bilderwerk.

It could be a grotto. Light is glowing up from below and gives the moving waves a glance of an opal under the sunlight. "This computer graphic was written with our new description language by a schoolboy in not more than two hours after a briefly reading of the instructions", explains Felix Klein, doctoral candidate at the chair of Computer Graphics at Saarland University.

As Klein is moving three slide switches with the mouse which are placed under the wave graphic on the display, the water is transforming. Now, the waves are spreading circularly from the center point, as if someone had thrown a pebble into the middle of the water.

"Xflow" is the name of the new description language developed by Klein and his colleagues. It makes it not only possible to describe such three-dimensional appearing animations more easily but also manages it that the required data is efficiently processed by the central processing unit and the graphics processor.

Hence, the animation is running in the browser fluidly.

"Up till now, this has not been that easy", explains Philipp Slusallek, professor for Computer Graphics at Saarland University.

"Meanwhile, even a mobile phone has enough computing power to play spatial data content from the internet. But the web technologies, necessary for using 3D content on the web, and the machine-orientated programming of graphic hardware have not found a common ground yet", so Slusallek, who also works as Scientific Director of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and as Director of Research of the Intel Visual Computing Institute in Saarbrucken.

Xflow shall help to fill this gap. It's declarative. What means in this case, that the developers rather describe which pattern synthesis effects shall get constructed, than to wrack their brains about how these can be computed in detail. In its appearance, Xflow resembles to the languages HTML and Javascript.

With Javascript, it is indeed possible to describe three-dimensional data contents; however the data, which is needed for that, cannot be computed offhand in a parallel and thus efficient way. Xflow allows the so-called parallelization automatically due to its structure.

Neither, the programmers need to worry about this, nor about the allocation of disk space. Other software systems can also accomplish this, but with them only a limited number of shifts, textures and pattern effects can be described.

Xflow offers an alternative by defining a multiplicity of small components, so-called operators, of which complex animations can be created easily. In doing so, it uses the service of the HTML-upgrading XML3D, which allows the easy embedding of spatial data contents on websites.

It was also developed by Philipp Slusallek and his team. He is confident: "After XML3D we took the next step forward to present three-dimensional contents on the internet in such an easy way as it's already the case with embedded Youtube videos." The development of Xflow has been supported by the Intel Visual Computing Institute (IVCI) of Saarland University and by the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI).

Scientific paper "Xflow - Declarative Data Processing for the Web"; See the Animation "Waves" here.

.


Related Links
Saarland University
Space Technology News - Applications and Research






Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle








TECH SPACE
Glasses.com turns heads with 3-D iPad app
Long Beach, California (AFP) Feb 27, 2013
Jonathan Coon turned heads Wednesday with iPad software that lets people try on sunglasses by manipulating 3-D images of themselves from the neck up. The founder of discount prescription lens company 1-800 Contacts used a TED Conference known for luring the technology savvy to introduce a service intended to let shoppers see themselves in eyewear using smartphones, tablets or computers with ... read more


TECH SPACE
China to use modified rocket for moon landing mission

Water On The Moon: It's Been There All Along

Building a lunar base with 3D printing

US, Europe team up for moon fly-by

TECH SPACE
Short Bump Gets Robotic Arm Closer to Rock Target

NASA fixing computer glitch on Mars Curiosity rover

Inspiration Mars to Pursue Human Mission to the Red Planet in 2018

Computer Swap on Curiosity Rover

TECH SPACE
Tech sector rides on rich list

Brazil inventor struggles to collect royalties

Stanford scientist closes in on a mystery that impedes space exploration

U.S. research to be free online

TECH SPACE
China to launch new manned spacecraft

Woman expected again to join next China crew roster

China's space station will be energy-efficient

China plans manned space mission

TECH SPACE
ESA's Columbus Biolab Facility

SpaceX set for third mission to space station

Record Number of Students Control ISS Camera

NASA briefly loses contact with space station

TECH SPACE
SpaceX's capsule arrives at ISS

Dragon Transporting Two ISS Experiments For AMES

SpaceX Optimistic Despite Dragon Capsule Mishap

'Faulty Ukrainian Parts' Blamed for Zenit Launch Failure

TECH SPACE
Scientists spot birth of giant planet

NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Tiny Planet System

Kepler helps astronomers find tiny exo planet

Searching for a Pale Blue SPHERE in the Universe

TECH SPACE
Creating your own animated 3D characters and scenes for the web

Towards more sustainable construction

Physicists demonstrate the acceleration of electrons by a laser in a vacuum

SimCity rebuilt for modern life




The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2014 - Space Media Network. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement