Streaming Video in Shockwave 3D

Introduction: Video in 3D

Before showing you how to use video in Shockwave 3D, I first want to discuss why you would want to include streaming video in Shockwave 3D at all. You could argue that in real-time Shockwave 3D, there is little room for video; You either choose prerendered Shockwave 3D graphics (such as movies, like Toy Story), or you use real-time rendered geometry (such as Shockwave 3D, VRML, and so forth). In games, you often see animated textures on real-time geometry—for example, an animated terminal on a desk in an office environment. But this hardly justifies the use of streaming video. Even though a television screen with an actual television show on it may seem like a "neat trick," the effect soon wears off.

Having said all this, let's have a look at the demo. Please note that since it includes a streaming video, you need a decent internet connection (256 Kbit or faster recommended).

Open the demo in a pop-up window.

If all went well, you saw a lecture about Rich Internet Applications by Al Ramadan, Executive Vice President of Marketing for Macromedia. You may have noticed, however, that after Al appears on stage, the camera pans a little and the mouse cursor changes into a cross hair. You can now interactively navigate the scene by clicking the Shockwave scene and dragging in the direction you want to view. You can look up at the slides for Al's presentation or you can look around to see the lecture room and the audience.

Note that you can find the original presentation that includes the video stream here.

How It's Done: The Panorama

The type of scene you viewed is commonly referred to as a panorama. You may know them as QuickTime VR or another brand name. It would take too long to explain all the details of panoramas, but if you want to know more about panoramas and how to make them, this site is a nice starting point.

Figure 1. The cubic panorama

The lecture demo includes a cubic panorama. The scene is wrapped in a cube and a camera is placed inside the cube. By clicking and dragging the movie, you rotate the camera to reveal other areas of the inside of the cube (see the "outside view" above). Other panorama viewer use the same method; however, using Shockwave 3D has one great advantage: While most other viewers render the panorama using software, Shockwave 3D gives you hardware acceleration. This provides ultra-smooth display and navigation, comparable almost to the smooth graphics you see in modern games.

With the graphics card handling most of the panorama display, Director has time to spare to add more to the panorama, such as our Al "avatar." To add Al to the panoramic scene, place a texture with his image on a piece of "cardboard" geometry (a plane) that you place inside the panorama cube. As the camera rotates, the piece of cardboard pans in and out of view along with the rest of the panorama and since you don't see the edges of the plane, it looks as if Al is really in the scene.

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