Comix is an image viewer specifically designed to handle comic books. It reads ZIP, RAR and tar archives (also gzip or bzip2 compressed), as well as plain image files. It has a simple and user-friendly GUI using PyGTK.

view3dscene (version 3.11.0)

view3dscene is a VRML / X3D browser, and a viewer for other 3D model formats.

No installation is required. Just download and unpack these archives wherever you want, and run the view3dscene program inside. Included is also the tovrmlx3d program, useful for converting 3D models to VRML/X3D in batch (command-line) mode. The documentation (this web page) is also included inside, for offline viewing (open the documentation/view3dscene.html file).

This is free/open-source software. Developers can download sources of this program.

Demo scenes: our VRML/X3D demo models contains a lot of interesting models, you can open them all with view3dscene.

If you want to hear 3D sound, you should also install OpenAL and OggVorbis (VorbisFile and dependencies) libraries. For Windows, they are already included in the zip file, so you don't have to do anything. For Linux, you should install them using your package manager. For Mac OS X, OpenAL is already preinstalled and you can get VorbisFile from fink.

If you use GNOME (or other desktops following freedesktop.org specifications), you can optionally install also view3dscene menu item (will be placed in the Graphics menu category), with a nice icon, and associate it with appropriate 3D model types.

# Place view3dscene on $PATH, for example like this:
sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/view3dscene view3dscene
# Install menu items, icons, mime types:
cd desktop/
./install.sh

You may need to logout and login again to your GNOME/desktop session for all programs to catch up (alternatively, you can do killall gnome-panel && killall nautilus but this is obviously somewhat brutal method).

If you use GNOME file manager Nautilus there's one more cool thing you can do: use view3dscene to generate on-the-fly thumbnails of 3D models in the viewed directory. Assuming that view3dscene is on the $PATH and you already did previous ./install.sh, you can run:

./install_thumbnailer.sh

This will add the gconf keys to run thumbnailers on your 3D models. Enter some directory with VRML / X3D / other 3D files, and enjoy your thumbnails :) Beware that loading arbitrary 3D scene may take a lot of time, so using the thumbnailer may consume a lot of memory and CPU power. But it seems that thumbnailer is nicely run with appropriate priority, so it doesn't actually exhaust your cpu. And the author of this text is using view3dscene thumbnailer all the time, and it works flawlessly :) So give it a try!

Supported file formats:

• VRML 1.0, 2.0 and X3D. Usual extensions for VRML files are .wrl, .wrz and .wrl.gz. For X3D (we support fully both XML and classic encoding) extensions are .x3d, .x3dz, .x3d.gz and .x3dv, .x3dvz, .x3dv.gz.

  Almost complete VRML 1.0 support is done. VRML 2.0 (aka VRML 97) and X3D support is also quite advanced, a lot of nodes and features are implemented (including advanced texturing and GLSL shaders, PROTO and EXTERNPROTO support, events mechanism with routes, sensors and interpolators). See VRML/X3D implementation status for detailed list of supported features. See also VRML/X3D extensions, VRML/X3D demo models, and finally the official X3D specifications.

• Kanim (Castle Game Engine animations) format is handled, animation is played.

• Collada (.dae extension). We support a lot of Collada features — geometry with materials, textures, cameras, lights. Tested on many Collada examples, like Collada Test Model Bank and Collada models exported from various Blender versions. Animations in Collada files are not handled yet. All modern Collada versions (1.3, 1.4, 1.5) are handled.

• Also many OpenInventor's 1.0 ASCII files (.iv extension) are handled. Mainly it's because Inventor 1.0 and VRML 1.0 are very similar formats, but view3dscene handles also some additional Inventor-specific nodes.

• 3d Studio 3DS format. Not every information in 3DS is handled by view3dscene but most important things, like materials, texture coordinates and texture filenames are supported.

• MD3. This is the format used for models in Quake 3 and derivatives (Tremulous etc.). Almost everything useful is read from MD3 file: geometry with texture (coordinates, and texture filename from associated xxx_default.skin file), animation is also read and played.

• Wavefront OBJ files. Most useful things are supported: geometry (with texture coords, normal vectors), materials (colors, opacity, texture filenames).

• Videoscape GEO (.geo extension). Very basic support for this very old 3D format.

Among many features are:

• Various navigation modes are available: Examine (easily rotate and move the whole model), Walk (walk like in FPS games, with collision detection, gravity and related features available), Fly (similar to Walk but without gravity).
• Conversion of Collada, 3DS, MD3, Wavefront OBJ and GEO files to X3D.
• You can convert between X3D classic and XML encodings (in both directions), and you can convert from VRML 2 to X3D. You can also use view3dscene as a "pretty-printer", just open and save any VRML/X3D file without any version conversion.

  Command-line options to convert in batch mode (--write) are available in view3dscene. Special minimized binary tovrmlx3d (useful to install on servers without GUI libraries available) is also included in view3dscene archive.

• A wealth of Kambi engine's rendering features are available, like GLSL shaders, bump mapping and shadows.
• Built-in ray-tracer (that is also available as a separate command-line program, rayhunter) to generate nice views of the scene (with shadows, mirrors, and transmittance). Classic ray-tracer implements exactly VRML 97 / X3D lighting equations.

• You can inspect your model (select triangles by clicking right mouse button in Walk / Fly mode, and use menu item Help -> Selected object information).

  There are also very limited editing capabilities. They are intended to be used only as post-processing of some model. We intentionally do not try to implement a full 3D authoring program here.

• Interactive animations may be played from VRML / X3D files, using sensors, scripts, interpolators and all other VRML events features.

  You can activate VRML pointing-device sensors by clicking with left mouse button (the cursor will change shape and you will get status information when your cursor is over some clickable sensor). Note that this works only when Collision detection is on (as it requires octree).

• Precalculated animations are played from Kanim or MD3 files (and you can convert any interactive VRML/X3D animation to precalculated one).

  Note that for now, for precalculated animations some features (collision checking, mouse picking, ray-tracer — everything that requires some octree) always use the first animation frame, regardless of current animation frame displayed.

• There are menu items and command-line options to catch screenshots and movies of 3D scenes and animations. GNOME users will be happy to hear that it can also be used as Nautilus thumbnailer, providing thumbnails when you view directory with VRML / X3D and other 3D models. We can also make a special "screenshot" of 3D environment as a cube map (to DDS, or six separate images).

Controls in Examine navigation mode :

Mouse:
Rotate	Left mouse dragging
Move	Middle mouse dragging (or Left mouse + Shift)
Zoom	Right mouse dragging (or Left mouse + Ctrl)
Keys:
Rotate	Arrows / PageUp / PageDown
Stop rotating	Space
Move	Ctrl + Arrows / PageUp / PageDown
Scale	+ / -
Restore default transformation	Home

Controls in Walk / Fly navigation mode :

Basic:
Forward / backward	Up / Down
Rotate	Left / Right
Raise / bow your head	PageUp / PageDown
Restore head raise to initial position (neutralize any effect of PageUp / PageDown)	Home
Fly up / down	Insert / Delete
Move left / right	Comma / Period
Jump / crouch (only when Gravity works, in Walk mode)	A / Z
Turn Mouse Look On (Ctrl+M) to comfortably look around by moving the mouse. In the "Mouse Look" mode, the keys for strafe and rotations swap their meaning: Left / Right keys move left / right Comma / Period rotate
Additional controls:
Increase / decrease moving speed (has effect on keys Up / Down, Insert / Delete, Comma / Period)	+ / -
Increase / decrease avatar height (preferred camera height above the ground)	Ctrl + Insert/Delete
Rotate slower (useful when you want to set up camera very precisely, e.g. to use this camera setting to render a scene image using ray-tracer)	Ctrl + Left / Right
Raise / bow your head slower	Ctrl + PageUp / PageDown
Pick a point, selecting triangle and object	Right mouse click

Left mouse button is also universally used for interacting with the VRML/X3D world. When the cursor turns into a grabbing hand you know you can click or drag on this object. This is realized by the VRML/X3D pointing-device sensors.

There are a lot of other keys that work independent of current navigation mode. You can see them all by exploring menus, and looking at the key shortcuts.

All options described below may be given in any order. They all are optional.

Command-line options:

 --screenshot TIME FILE-NAME
 --screenshot-range TIME-BEGIN TIME-STEP FRAMES-COUNT FILE-NAME

These options allow you to capture a screenshot of the loaded scene. They know about animations stored in 3D files, that's why they take parameters describing the animation time to capture. They are used to take screenshots in "batch mode". (In interactive mode, you can use comfortable menu items Display -> Screenshot....)

For a still 3D scene, you usually just want to use the simpler --screenshot option with TIME set to anything (like zero) and not worry about anything else.

For animations, more possibilities are available. You can capture any frames of the animation by using many --screenshot options. You can also capture a movie by --screenshot-range (as a series of images or, if ffmpeg is installed and available on $PATH, even directly to a single movie file). The biggest advantage of recording movie this way is that the movie is guaranteed to be captured with stable number of frames per second. This is different than using some independent programs to capture OpenGL output, like the fine GLC (nice GLC overview here), as real-time capture usually means that the program runs slower, and often you loose movie quality.

You most definitely want to pass 3D model file to load at command-line too, otherwise we'll just make a screenshot of the default empty (black) scene. So to take a simple screenshot of a scene, at it's default camera, just call

 view3dscene my_model.wrl --screenshot 0 output.png

The detailed specification how screenshot options work:

• First of all, after all the --screenshot and --screenshot-range options are processed, view3dscene exits. So they work in "batch mode".

• The --screenshot TIME FILE-NAME simply saves the screenshot at time TIME to an image file FILE-NAME.

  Image format is guessed from FILE-NAME extension, see glViewImage for detailed list of image formats that we can handle. In short, we handle many popular image formats, like PNG and JPG, and these are what usually you want to use.

• The --screenshot-range TIME-BEGIN TIME-STEP FRAMES-COUNT FILE-NAME option takes FRAMES-COUNT screenshots. The first screenshot is at time TIME-BEGIN, second screenshot is at TIME-BEGIN + TIME-STEP, next one is at TIME-BEGIN + 2 * TIME-STEP... you get the idea.

  The FILE-NAME is either

  1. A movie filename. This must have a recognized movie extension, currently this means

      .avi
      .mpg
      .dvd
      .ogg
      .mov
      .swf
     

     Availability of all these video formats may depend on installed ffmpeg codecs. If in doubt, avi seems to be most reliable and plays everywhere. If I missed some possible movie file extension, please report. ffmpeg must be installed and available on $PATH for this to work.

  2. FILE-NAME may also be a pattern to generate names of images to save, like image%d.png. Details about using filename patterns are below (although you can probably already guess how it works :) ).

• All filenames for both screenshot options may specify a pattern instead of an actual filename. A pattern is simply a filename with sequence %d inside, when capturing %d will be replaced by current screenshot number. For capturing a series of images by --screenshot-range it's even required to specify a pattern (since capturing a number of images to a single image file has no point...). But it's also allowed in all other cases, even a movie filename may also be a pattern with %d sequence, in case you want to use multiple --screenshot-range options to get multiple auto-named movies.

  The precise description how %d works: All --screenshot and --screenshot-range options are processed in order. When a filename with pattern %d is found, we replace all %d occurrences in this filename with current counter value and increment the counter. For --screenshot-range with an image pattern, we do this for every single frame. The counter starts at 1.

  You can specify a number between % and d, like %4d, to pad counter with zeros. For example, normal %d results in names like 1, 2, ..., 9, 10... But %4d results in names like 0001, 0002, ..., 0009, 0010, ...

  To allow you do specify literal % character in filename reliably, you can write it twice: %%.

Examples:

• Simply get a single screenshot at given time:

   view3dscene my_model.wrl --screenshot 0 output.png
  

• Simply get a movie of 2 seconds of animation. To calculate the numbers, note that we generate a movie with 25 frames per second:

   view3dscene my_model.kanim --screenshot-range 0 0.04 50 output.avi
  

  To get this as a sequence of images, just use output%d.png instead of output.avi.

• Example of more complicated use:

   view3dscene my_model.kanim \
   --screenshot-range 0 0.04 50 output%d.avi \
   --screenshot-range 10 0.04 50 output%d.avi
  

  This generates two files: output1.avi with 2 second animation from 0.0 to 2.0 time, and output2.avi with 2 second animation from 10.0 to 12.0 time.

Hints:

• To control the look of your screenshot, you often want to use VRML/X3D nodes like Viewpoint, NavigationInfo, Background. For example, take a look at this sample VRML file.

  You can use --viewpoint command-line option (see below) to choose a different viewpoint for screenshot.

• You can generate wanted Viewpoint node also by using view3dscene, just set your camera (in interactive mode) the way you like and use menu item Console -> Print Current Camera Node.

• To control the size of resulting screenshot, just use --geometry command-line parameter (documented at standard options understood by our OpenGL programs). For example, take a look at mk_screenshot_for_kambi_www.sh script.

• To make your screenshot look best, you may want to use anti-aliasing, see --anti-alias option below.

  Take a look at the example how to make a screenshot from animation in screenshot_for_kambi_www/ directory.

• To take a screenshot on a stripped-down Unix server, please bear in mind that you need to install a graphic environment (that is, X Windows and OpenGL) on your server. Even in batch mode, we still use OpenGL to grab the screenshot images (because using off-screen Mesa or our toy ray-tracer doesn't result in a really nice output; we really want OpenGL for all those GLSL effects and such).

  Normally, you also need GTK and GtkGLExt libraries installed. However, you can compile from sources a version of view3dscene that doesn't need these libraries, and directly accesses XWindows. It will miss a menu bar and some other nice GUI stuff, but that's not a problem if you only want to run it in batch mode for screenshots. To do this:

  1. Download the sources of castle_game_engine and view3dscene. Unpack them, such that castle_game_engine/ and view3dscene/ directories are siblings.
  2. In the terminal, do

     export CASTLE_FPC_OPTIONS=-dCASTLE_WINDOW_XLIB
     cd view3dscene/
     ./compile.sh
     # and copy resulting view3dscene (and tovrmlx3d) binaries wherever you want
     

  On a server, you probably want to initialize taking a screenshot from a script, and your script isn't necessarily running within the X server. There are basically two solutions to this:

  1. You can keep the X server running continuously, and keep your user logged in to the X server, and instruct view3dscene to connect to your running X server. You do this by adding --display=:0 option to the view3dscene command-line (where :0 is a common example; for details, see X manuals). Or you can set and export the DISPLAY environment variable, like export DISPLAY=:0.

     Unfortunately, this method sometimes doesn't work. On some systems, the view3dscene will get an OpenGL context without a FrameBuffer (long story short, it means that you cannot capture the screen without actually seeing the window) and the resulting screenshot will be pure black (or garbage). On other systems, there is a problem with glXChooseVisual that may hang until you actually switch the current terminal to the X server.

  2. The other approach, more reliable in my experience (please share your own experience on the forum) is to create new X server along with running view3dscene, by using xinit. See man xinit for full details, in short use something like xinit /full/path/to/view3dscene my_model.x3d --screenshot 0 /tmp/output.png -- :1. The important thing is to specify the full path of the view3dscene binary (otherwise xinit only adds the arguments to some useless default xterm command-line). Adding -- :1 at the end is only necessary if the default display (:0) may be already taken. xinit will create an X server with new display name, run view3dscene, and exit immediately when view3dscene exits (which should be as soon as a screenshot is done).

In interactive mode, you can use view3dscene menu items File -> Save As.. to save (converting if needed) all 3D model formats to VRML/X3D.

• Formats Collada, 3DS, MD3, Wavefront OBJ and GEO are always converted to X3D.

• Formats Inventor, VRML 1.0, VRML 2.0, X3D can be saved back to their original format. In this case, view3dscene is simply a "pretty-printer", exactly preserving all the information inside the file, only reformatting your content and removing the comments.

• VRML 2.0 can be also converted to X3D.

  Conversion from VRML 2.0 to X3D is mostly trivial. There are some different keywords between VRML 2 and X3D, but generally X3D is simply a superset of everything that VRML 2 has. The only slightly more involved conversion is done for NURBS nodes (NurbsCurve, NurbsSurface in VRML 2, NurbsPatchSurface in X3D, NurbsPositionInterpolator) as these nodes are not compatible between VRML 2 and X3D.

You can also change the X3D encoding (from classic to XML or the other way around). Changing encoding is a lossless operation, as the same nodes graph can be exactly expressed in both encodings.

All these conversions can be also performed in batch mode by command-line options described below. You can either use view3dscene with --write option, or you can use separate binary tovrmlx3d. Separate tovrmlx3d may be sometimes more desirable, as it's smaller, not linked with any GUI libraries (so it will work even on a stripped-down system) and has simpler command-line options (as it's purpose is only to convert).

Examples:

# Convert Collada to X3D
view3dscene input.dae --write > output.x3dv
# Same as above, but by tovrmlx3d binary
tovrmlx3d input.dae > output.x3dv
# Convert VRML 2.0 to X3D in classic encoding.
# You could add --encoding=classic, but it's not needed
# (it is the default anyway).
view3dscene input.wrl --write --write-force-x3d > output.x3dv
# Same as above, but by tovrmlx3d binary
tovrmlx3d input.wrl --force-x3d > output.x3dv
# Convert VRML 2.0 to X3D in XML encoding.
# You could add --[write-]force-x3d, but it's not needed
# (it is implied by XML encoding anyway).
view3dscene input.wrl --write --write-encoding=xml > output.x3d
# Same as above, but by tovrmlx3d binary
tovrmlx3d input.wrl --encoding=xml > output.x3d

Detailed docs of view3dscene command-line options for converting:

--write

Do not open any window, only write the 3D model to the standard output as VRML/X3D and exit. Other --write-xxx options affect the generated output. Model will also be processed by --scene-change-* options, if specified (see their docs lower on this page).

--write-encoding classic|xml

Choose encoding of the output file. By default, we use classic encoding.

This option is meaningful only when --write option is also used.

--write-force-x3d

Force output to be an X3D file. This is really useful only when input model is VRML 2.0.

Conversion to X3D is also automatically forced (no need to specify it explicitly by this option) if the chosen encoding is XML (that is, you used --write-encoding=xml). That's because only X3D supports XML encoding.

Summarizing, you only need to use this option when you want to convert VRML 2 to X3D in classic encoding.

When this is used on VRML 1.0 or Inventor models, we'll also convert parts of them to X3D. But the result is not really useful: you will get a file encoded using X3D keywords, but using VRML 1.0/Inventor node names. Real conversion from VRML 1.0/Inventor to X3D is not implemented (yet).

This has no effect when used on 3D models that are already X3D, or that can be only output as X3D (Collada, 3DS, etc.).

This option is meaningful only when --write option is also used.

tovrmlx3d has analogous options for converting, but without the write- prefix (as tovrmlx3d is only useful for converting). More precisely:

• tovrmlx3d always reads input 3D model (from filename given on a command-line), and outputs it on standard output as VRML/X3D.
• --encoding=classic|xml instructs to use given encoding. See --write-encoding=classic|xml docs above.
• --force-x3d instructs to force X3D conversion. See --write-force-x3d docs above.

--anti-alias AMOUNT

Use full-screen anti-aliasing. You can also configure it from the menu File -> Startup Preferences -> Anti aliasing. Using this command-line option is mainly useful together with --screenshot option.

Argument AMOUNT is an integer >= 0. Exact 0 means "no anti-aliasing", this is the default. Each successive integer generally makes method one step better. But also more demanding — program may run slower (if your graphic card cannot provide context with sufficient number of samples needed for multi-sampling). See Anti aliasing in interactive mode for the meaning of AMOUNT values. Currently, highest value is 4. So AMOUNT numbers above 4 are exactly the same as 4.

There is no guarantee what specific values of AMOUNT exactly mean, as this depends on your graphic card capabilities. The graphic cards themselves don't provide methods to reliably set some specific FSAA method (only hints, like glHint(GL_MULTISAMPLE_FILTER_HINT_NV, ...)) since the general idea is that better GPU models may provide the same or even better results using different methods. From your (user) point of view, you can test each method and just decide which looks best and isn't too slow on your 3D model and graphic card.

--viewpoint VIEWPOINT-NAME

Specifies the name or a number of the viewpoint that will be bound (used) when the scene is loaded.

By default, when this option is not used, we follow VRML/X3D standard and use the first viewpoint found in the file (but not in the inlined files). Of course you can always add nodes to the scene to trigger binding other viewpoints at the beginning (for example, add ProximitySensor with very large size that sends the enter event to the set_bind of chosen viewpoint). Or you can just exchange the order of viewpoint nodes. But sometimes it's not comfortable to edit the scene. Especially if you want to use the --screenshot options to capture a scene, it's useful to be able to choose a viewpoint by this command-line option.

If you use this option: when the given VIEWPOINT-NAME is a number, it is treated as the index of viewpoint to be used (0 means the first viewpoint, 1 means the 2nd viewpoint and so on). Otherwise, VIEWPOINT-NAME is treated as a node name (node name is given by "DEF Xxx" in VRML/X3D, and it cannot start with a digit, so this is unambigous).

In interactive mode, remember that you don't need this option — instead you can use comfortable Navigation -> Viewpoints menu.

--scene-change-no-normals
--scene-change-no-solid-objects
--scene-change-no-convex-faces

Using one of these options changes the scene before it is displayed (or saved to VRML/X3D, if you used --write option). These options are useful when you suspect that some of the informations in scene file are incorrect.

These options change only the scene which filename was specified at command-line. Later scenes (that you open using "Open" menu item) are not affected by these options. Instead, you can use "Edit" menu commands to perform any of these scene changes at any time. Really, these command-line options are usable mostly when you're using parameter --write.

Below is the detailed description of what each scene change does. This is also a documentation what corresponding command in "Edit" menu of view3dscene does.

• --scene-change-no-normals :

  Scene change: For VRML 1.0, all Normal and NormalBinding nodes are deleted. Values of normalIndex field in IndexedFaceSet and IndexedTriangleMesh nodes are deleted. For VRML >= 2.0, all normal fields are set to NULL.

  Effect: view3dscene will always calculate by itself normal vectors. Useful when you suspect that normals recorded in scene file are incorrect (incorrectly oriented, incorrectly smoothed etc.)

• --scene-change-no-solid-objects :

  Scene change: For VRML 1.0, in all ShapeHints nodes we will set shapeType to UNKNOWN_SHAPE_TYPE. UNKNOWN_SHAPE_TYPE is the default value of this field, so the purpose of this modification is to cancel SOLID values for this field. For VRML >= 2.0, all solid fields are set to FALSE (on all geometric nodes, like IndexedFaceSet, actually all X3DComposedGeometryNode, Extrusion, etc.).

  Effect: program will not use back-face culling optimization. This optimization often saves us time because we don't have to render faces that would be seen from "inside" if these faces are part of some solid object. Unfortunately, many VRML models have objects incorrectly marked as solid. There are also some scenes that were prepared for some special viewing (e.g. as game levels) and so some amount of "cheating" to optimize these scenes was allowed, e.g. to mark some non-solid objects as solid.

  To view such models properly you have to tell view3dscene (using this command-line option) that such objects are not really solid.

• --scene-change-no-convex-faces :

  Scene change: For VRML 1.0, in all ShapeHints nodes we will set faceType to UNKNOWN_FACE_TYPE. Moreover we will wrap whole scene in Group node and we will add at the beginning node

  ShapeHints { faceType UNKNOWN_FACE_TYPE }

  For VRML >= 2.0, all convex fields are set to FALSE.

  Effect: All IndexedFaceSet and Extrusion faces will be treated as potentially non-convex. This means that we will load the scene a little longer but all faces will be correctly interpreted and displayed. It's useful when you suspect that some scene faces are non-convex but it's not correctly marked in the scene by VRML author.

Example: I have here some model helicopter.wrl that looks incorrectly when it is displayed because all parts of model are marked as SOLID while they are not solid. So to view this model correctly I can use command
  view3dscene --scene-change-no-solid-objects helicopter.wrl
I can also correct this model once using command
  view3dscene --scene-change-no-solid-objects helicopter.wrl --write > helicopter-corrected.wrl.

Deprecated: I don't think the --scene-change-* options are useful. Doing this operation interactively is sometimes useful (to check bad models), doing it from command-line probably not (you better fix your exporter). Please report if you have a good reason to keep this working.

--navigation EXAMINE|WALK|FLY|NONE...

Set initial navigation type. Default is EXAMINE. This can be overridden in particular VRML/X3D scene by using the NavigationInfo node. Valid values for this option are the navigation type names for VRML/X3D NavigationInfo.type, see link above.

You can always change navigation mode later, while the program is running: use the menu Navigation.

Deprecated: instead of using this option, consider adding/editing a NavigationInfo node in your scene. Editing your scene (or creating a VRML/X3D file that includes the original scene, by Inline node, and only adds some customization) is much more flexible.

--camera-radius <float>

When you move in the scene with collision detection, the "user" is treated as a colliding sphere with given radius. Default radius of this sphere is the average size of scene bounding box divided by 100. Using this command-line option, you can set the radius of this sphere to any value (greater than 0). This can be very useful, but be careful: too large radius will make moving (with collision detection turned on) impossible (because every possible move will produce a collision). Too little radius may produce precision-errors in depth-buffer (this can lead to some strange display artifacts).

Deprecated: instead of using this option, consider adding/editing a NavigationInfo node in your scene (camera radius is taken from the first float on NavigationInfo.avatarSize). Editing your scene (or creating a VRML/X3D file that includes the original scene, by Inline node, and only adds some customization) is much more flexible.

--detail-quadric-slices <integer>
--detail-quadric-stacks <integer>
--detail-rect-divisions <integer>

These options control triangulating. Two --detail-quadric-xxx options control triangulating of spheres, cones and cylinders: how many slices (like slices of a pizza) and how many stacks (like stacks of a tower) to create. The 3rd option, --detail-rect-divisions, says how we triangulate faces of cubes. It's best to test how your models look in wireframe mode to see how these options work.

Note that my programs do two different variants of triangulation, and they automatically decide which variant to use in each case:

1. Normal triangulation, that is intended to improve the approximation of quadrics as triangle meshes. This is used for collision detection and for ray-tracer.
2. The so-called over-triangulation (it's my term, used in various places in my code and documentation and printed messages), that is intended to improve the effect of Gouraud shading. This is used when rendering models with OpenGL.

   In this variant we do some more triangulation than in "normal" triangulation. E.g. in normal triangulation we don't divide cones and cylinders into stacks, and we don't divide cube faces (because this doesn't give any better approximation of an object). But when over-triangulating, we do such dividing, because it improves how objects look with OpenGL shading.

Deprecated: instead of using this option, consider adding/editing a KambiTriangulation node in your scene.

As usual all standard options understood by OpenGL programs, standard options understood by OpenAL (3D sound) programs, standard options understood by all my programs are allowed. Run with command-line --help to get full list.

• OpenGL
• Libpng, Zlib (under Windows appropriate DLL files are already included in program's archive, so you don't have to do anything)
• Under Unix (Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X): GTK+ >= 2.6 and GtkGLExt >= 1.0.6
• OpenAL and OggVorbis (VorbisFile and dependencies) libraries are strongly suggested if you want to hear sound (under Windows appropriate DLL files are already included in program's archive, so you don't have to do anything)
• Mac OS X users should look at the list of dependencies on Mac OS X

To play movies (in VRML/X3D MovieTexture nodes) and to record movies (by --screenshot-range option) you have to install ffmpeg and make sure it's available on $PATH.

Also convert program from ImageMagick package must be available on $PATH for some miscellaneous image formats to work. See glViewImage documentation for a list of image formats handled.

Here's a link to view3dscene entry on freshmeat. You can use this e.g. to subscribe to new releases, so that you will be automatically notified about new releases of view3dscene.