VRML animation output files
Quote:
> > I have a VRML scene hooked up to a TimeSensor/OrientationInterpolator
> > which gives me an animated display of
> > some objects in my scene. Is there any way (using VRML and/or
> > JavaScript) to output these animated frames at
> > certain timepoints to JPEG files? I would like to use the JPEG output
> > files for an animated icon in a Java app.
> The only way I've ever managed to do screen grabs
> is to do alt-Print Screen. It takes the reflexes
> of a 12-year-old Doom player.
> I haven't used Spazz3D, but I've heard raves about
> it, and the webpage claims the ability to generate
> still shots: http://www.spazz3d.com/
> --
> Rev. Bob "Bob" Crispen
> Donner, party of 12... er, 11...
Hi Anthony,
I'm using Hypercam running in NT, and it works pretty well. It's a
small program which runs in background, and captures either the active
window, the whole desktop or just an area of the screen to an AVI file
in real time.
It's fairly demanding on the system to grab this much information,
encode it in software in real time and spool it to disk, but Hypercam
does it _way_ better than any other program I've seen. As a rough guide,
I'm running a dual PII 400 with bulk memory, and I can capture 1024x768
at about 10 fps. YMMV :)
Check out http://www.hyperionics.com for a free trial version. All
movies from the trial version are watermarked with an "Unregistered"
message, but you can see if it will fit your needs before you buy.
Shareware, and good value for money.
The only other program in this mould which I'm aware of is Lotus
ScreenCam, but I stopped reading when I started to get to the part where
it needed a custom playback program, not just the standard Windows media
player. Might be worth a look if you're interested.
I was certainly suprised to find these were the only two viable programs
for this task!
As a somewhat off-topic idea, there's a VRML to POV converter under
development which may offer an alternative solution.
Home page is at http://cherubino.med.jhmi.edu/~paul/vrml2pov/index.html
I don't think it's a complete implementation of the VRML spec yet, so
some worlds may not be loaded properly. Nice idea though - render a
series of pretty POV-Ray images, convert them to a movie, and you've got
much better image quality than any screen capture utility will give!
Hope this helps,
Gil Carter.
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