[Clam-devel] Formats & Protocols for 3D scenes...

[Natanael Olaiz]

Hi!

For my SoC proposal, I'm wondering about the formats and protocols to 
use in the Blender/CLAM integration. So, I want to ask you for your 
opinions.

The basic idea is to import 3D Blender scene objects parameters onto 
CLAM, on RT and offline. For RT I talked to Pau to use Open Sound 
Control, but anyway I need to define some 3D Scene descriptor format to 
use over it. For the offline implementation I need to define also the 
intermediate file format.

I think a great option could be to use SpatDIF [1], since it claims to 
be a standard for this kind of data. It uses OSC for RT, and SDIF as a 
intermediate file format for non-RT purposes. The only problem that I 
see with it is that is a new proposal, and I didn't found so many 
implementations yet (so, I don't know if it would be a real standard).
I also saw that the MPEG4 standard uses BIFS [2] + VRML. As I 
understand, this option is more closed, but could be interesting to make 
a MPEG4 render system within CLAM. Plus, I saw that X3D [3] is some kind 
of sucessor of VRML (with the advantage of using an new XML format 
instead the binary of the VRML+BIFS), in which the sound is integrated 
too [4]. But as I saw, the free implementations (of browsers and 
editors) of X3D are not so good right now, and the major ones are in 
Java (language that I don't know well -and neither like...-). BTW, there 
is an available Blender X3D exporter plugin right now...

What the CLAM gurues think about it? I saw that there is some 
mpeg-spectral-descriptors code in CLAM... so, do you want to improve the 
mpeg support with X3D, or just use a new proposed open standard (SpatDIF)?

Anyway, it wouldn't be so difficult to make one using the other as a base...


Best regards,
Natanael.

[1] Spatial Sound Description Interchange Format: 
http://www.jamoma.org/wiki/SpatDIFSpatialSoundDescriptionInterchangeFormat
[2] BInary Format for Scene: 
http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/technologies/mp04-bifs/index.htm
[3] X3D specs: http://www.web3d.org/x3d/specifications/
[4] X3D and VRML Sound Components: 
http://www.tml.tkk.fi/Opinnot/Tik-111.590/2002s/Paperit/pohja_x3d_sound_OK.pdf