Web3D Roundup 
A long-time favorite event at the Web3D Symposium and SIGGRAPH is the Roundup... Get your cow moo-ers ready!  Jiggle your squeaky-zigs! 

The contestants were strutting their stuff and we saw it all- Sexy demos!  Hilarious demos! Squeaky-squeaky content!!!
We picked most of the winners, though some hit cross-over categories from our votes... MORE

VRML ART 
Some of the most compelling new media experiences was on display at the Second Annual VRML-Art show... The second international, juried art exhibit for online 3D media demonstrated a true, innovative vitality to the medium, a maturity to the technology, and the artist's ingenuity.  READ- some COOL STUFF!!!  A number of these works were nominated for the next VirtuPortal, so watch out for Issue 2!  To find out more, see: www.vrml-art.org
 

Working Group Meetings 

We sat in on a number of WG meetings and are happy to report their current activities:

• EAI (External Authoring Interface)- The group voted to send the EAI 2 to ISO. Chair Andrew Phillips showed some of his students' great EAI work and outlined plans for the future... We'll catch up with Andrew for Issue 2 to investigate X3D and the DOM.
  
• Universal Media- has shown some great accomplishments recently with its first version Texture and Sound libraries shipped and support added in blaxxun Contact. The Universal Media Library is such a simple idea, yet of such great import that we will be looking into it for Issue 2! The library also plans to include 3D models and a variety of media types. See UML WG website
• Mac- 3D on a 'designer's platform'? Yes its true- our zealous champions, Steve Guynup and Michael Louka showed us how its possible now! Constantly pressing for software vendors to support the platform, these guys are also responsible for MacWeb3D.org and MacLookat. Happy news came when Connell Gallagher from Parallel Graphics showed up and announced plans for a Mac Cortona Version this summer! In addition, we are looking forward to Steve contributing tips, tricks, and articles to the 3DEZine.
• H-anim (Humanoid Animation)- The group's 1.1 spec is working well and there is some good work is being done with the Joint-Segment displacer model. The great tool, Skeleton Builder was shown, and goals were outlined for animation streaming as well as support for continuous Mesh-Skeleton support.
  See h-anim.org for more!

 DTD issues 
The X3D Task Group, having made major advances in the last few months, hit a political bump as a DTD needed to be ageed upon for development to continue.  The 'Fray in Monterey' as it was affectionately termed shows the dedication of the working group to continue the momentum and bring the spec through to a new level for SIGGRAPH 2000. The Compromise DTD, just approved (3/13) shows the benefits of the Web3D Consortium's leadership in due process... MORE

 Content & Code
SHOUT Interactive showed some extensions to their core profile and proposed X3D implementation- NURBS, and MultiUser components that should be released in the near future. They have posted Shout3D developer's kits for the major platforms which allow you to convert VRML 97 into plug-in-less 3D! Spazz3D's powerful new authoring software (version 2.0) can export your VRML as well and has a Shout3D wizard to make it easy... MORE

Introduction to X3D Seminar 
 Leonard Daly, chair of the Content Working Group, gave a practical introduction to X3D.  Leonard gave the history of the development thus far and demonstrated the X3D Edit authoring tool to a packed house.

Geographic Representation in VRML: GeoVRML 1.0 An excellent and pragmatic piece of work! The first deliverable from this working group has been worth the wait! Recommended Practice doc, Open Source Java implementation, Tools, and sample content! A hugely significant piece of work! GeoVrml.org

Hands-on Distributed-Java-VRML a Java-Multicast system for distributed, shared virtual worlds... a fun and convincing Capture the Flag game was demo-ed.

MPEG-4: Low bit-rate Communications Tools for Graphics and Animation

Universal Media

Introduction to the External Authoring Interface

The H-Anim Standard

Introduction to Programming with Java 3D

VRML-ART for Beginners

Media vs. 3D-hypermedia: a Modeling and Retrieval Perspective