Rendering 3-D objects through dll

Rendering 3-D objects through dll  For a few weeks, I was trying to connect original TVML viewer (written in C) and Croquet through FFI. Once I have written a code for rendering TVML object and playing simple animation in pure Smalltalk, but I took a strategy to make a hybrid system using C and Smalltak because writing all code in Smalltalk would need much time. Connecting original TVML viwer was not so easy, TVML viwer has a bunch of I/O codes, windows thread codes, and infinity loops. I trimed those issue and finally made a DLL wrapper around TVML. It could render TVML animation in Croquet space. Although using the DLL has a couple of problems. I can't see the animation through croquet network, an avator can't touch 3-D objects in TVML. These objects are like ghosts in Croquet world, we can see the objects, but these are not in a memory in Croquet. But it was still fun at least as a demonstration.

OBJ importer

OBJ importer Finally, I have finished an OBJ importer with PIC image texture. In the fact, the importer lacks some important features like smoothing and normals handling. But I can get a brief snap shot to find out next goal of TVML. Kidawara-san required me special functions on TVML, kinds of network support and interactive user interface, which is not in original TVML. So I have to pursuit how to implement such feature. Anyway, today's result is on Squeakmap; http://map1.squeakfoundation.org/sm/package/0d9b7a69-b789-4490-8c59-24fa32a67af7 (I post the announce to Croquet-list but it didn't delivered yet).

Showing TVML Object and OBJ in Croquet

TVML Stage  In TVML, OBJ file format is used for importing 3-D model. It was terrible that there are a lot of incompatible 3-D format in the world. But anyway, for playback TVML contents in Croquet, I have to make OBJ model exporter. Actually, OBJ format was not complicated. I would say it is relatively straightforward and easier than ASE format (ASE in 3dsmax was ugly), thus parsing the format and building objects were not hard job. But what I remain is texture. In OBJ, PIC file format is used to represent image file. OBJ??? I didn't know such format. In the fact, my picture viewer in windowsXP could not show the PIC image. So today's my task is learning what is PIC and building PIC file importer for Squeak.

Hakodate Workshop

Hakodate Workshop I and Abe-san conducted Squeak workshop last week in Hakodate Future University. The main part of the workshop was using World-Stethoscope; it is a small device to get external input like luminance, temperature, and voltage. Students made some devices with World-Stethoscope and simple materials like paper cups or balloons. One student developped a kind of toy that is a computer interface for babies. When a user shaked the device, the luminance sensor reacted its movement, and mon's face became glad in a computer screen. The goal of the workshop was discussing possibility of user interface. To invent original user interface, each student exchanged deep ideas of different possibilities of computer devices. That is to say, our workshop was to imagine the feeling of former computer scientists. Although I regret I couldn't tell how the works by students were exciting, that was good experience for me and Abe-san (this was the first World-Stethoscope workshop for university students). After the workshop, we have a plan to publish a booklet with the result of the workshop. It is not only for the record of the workshop, it will includes a text for advanced etoy's user.