X3D Multitexture

X3D Multitexture needs a complete review of current capabilities to ensure that proper support is required.

X3D Specification and Possible Technical Issues

Multitexture capabilities are defined in the Texturing Component of the X3D Specification.

• MultiTexture
• MultiTextureCoordinate
• MultiTextureTransform

Technical problems and issues

• Dave Arendash has posted several times on specification deficiencies and Need good multitexture example

• Michalis Kamburelis has posted a detailed list of Problems with existing X3D MultiTexture specification based on implementing these capabilities in the Castle Game Engine

• Yvonne Jung reports

    Having multiple textures for shaders is possible, but the compositing modes defined in the spec
    basically exactly map to some around >12 year old GL extensions from the pre-shader times.
    So, no, it won't supported in that way.

• Timo reports that X3DOM can use a shader approach:
  • commonSurfaceShader01.xhtml
  • commonSurfaceShader02.xhtml
  • x3dom_composedShader.xhtml is a bump mapping example with multitextures

Although it appears that good support is becoming available by different players, we do need to confirm that they are generating and rendering models consistently.

X3D Players Implementing Multitexture Capabilities

Player support for X3D components summarizes currently known capabilities for all players and all components

BS Contact

• Bitmanagement Feature Labs provides a Multitexture Lab allowing live modification of an example scene

Castle Game Engine

• VRML/X3D support does include multitexture

FreeX3D

• Multitexture support is available

Instant Reality

• Multitexture documentation

X3DOM

• MultiTextureNodes are part of the X3DOM HTML-Profile

Xj3D

• Apparently includes Multitexture support (status) reports partial support

X3D Authoring Tools Implementing Multitexture Capabilities

Tool support for X3D components summarizes currently known capabilities for all authoring (and conversion) tools and all components

X3D-Edit

• Current X3D-Edit distribution supports Multitexture node editing

X3D Tooltips

• English support provided for MultiTexture, MultiTextureCoordinate and MultiTextureTransform

Validation

• X3D DOCTYPE and X3D Schema Validation
• X3D Validator for X3D Quality Assurance (QA) include rules for MultiTexture

Example Scenes for Testing

• Castle Game Engine has posted a number of VRML / X3D demo models. Inside texturing_advanced/ subdirectory there are a number of multi-texturing examples (mostly in classic encoding) in multi_tex_* files.
• Multi Texture Design Pattern is an initial example (figure), more scenes will be added to X3D for Advanced Modeling examples

Next Steps

• Comments and additional entries for this page are welcome
• We need comparable example scenes for testing
• We need to perform a detailed review the technical comments for possible specification changes and clarifications
• If needed, any X3D specification changes will likely become part of X3D version 3.4