CosmoWorlds

To learn the basics of CosmoWorlds, there are some good videos you can watch by mounting the following network drive:

using the account name 'cmve' and the password given in class. This gives you access to two CD-ROM tutorials which contain a number of MPEG movies of someone showing you the basic features of Cosmo. They are well done and will get you up to speed fast. I would only bother with ones covering basic topics.

KIS - Keep It Simple!

Don't try to use Cosmo for complex jobs because you'll likely waste much time discovering all the aspects of VRML protocol that do not export directly to VRUT. If you stick to building simple geometry and applying materials (colors) or textures, you should be OK. There are features in Cosmo for modifying the geometry (called PEP tools). These modifications will carry to VRUT fine but I personally do not like the interface so I don’t recommend spending great lengths of time learning this dead-end tool.

Things to remember:

• when viewing your models in VRUT, be sure to issue the "vrut.disable(vrut.CULL_FACE)" command if you want to see both sides of polygons
• stick to the basic shapes (cones, boxes, cylinders, spheres)
• use the hierarchical viewer on the right column to modify the size properties of these objects (keep you units in meters)
• don't use transparency or attempt to modify the tiling/scaling of the textures (transparency can be done in VRUT; tiling/scaling requires a program such as 3Dmax)
• don't use animation
• don't use special VRML nodes (eg., sensors, fog, LOD, etc)
• you can use Cosmo to build a linked, hierarchical model like you did via VRUT in assignment #3
• use the "publish" command under the "file" menu to create a version of the VRML file that will work on other machines outside of the LSCF.