Web 3.0? - or maybe web3D.0?
I think I'm pretty fortunate in my job as I get to meet loads of smart people who are brave and smart (or crazy) enough to dive into uncharted technology waters and try out things with our technology platform that beggar belief.
Alex and Mark at Shaxam must fall well and truly into the 'crazy' category because I've been working with them over the past year or so on the British Library work and they have taken their 3D conversion tools to another level. Actually, they are genuinely 'crazy' and probably need locking up but that's another story :-)
The idea is this...
1. you build a 3D model in Lightwave (or convert another 3D model into Lightwave)
2. you use the Lightwave to XAML plug-in converter to suck out the models, textures, morphs (animations), lighting, specularity, bla, bla, bla and plonk it into XAML
3. you load up the XAML in Expression Blend and press the 'make me a jolly clever application' button (either stand-alone or a browser-hosted XBAP)
4. Bob's your uncle and you have a full 3D (browser-hosted if XBAP) model which you can navigate around or add other snazzy event handlers in Blend to control the model.
Why not check out these couple of converted examples to get a real idea... remembering that this is all XAML!
and let me, Alex and Mark know what you think! I'll post some other examples next week all being well.
