Guide to Using QuickTimeVR on the Web
Copyright 1996, Stephen Wilson, Professor, Conceptual Design, SFSU
A special format of QuickTime movie called quicktimeVR can present interesting
interactive 3D displays on the Web. VR refers to virtual reality. "Panoramas"
simulate the user standing in the center of a scene and rotating 360 degrees.
"Inspectable Objects" simulate placement of an object on a turntable so that
it can be viewed from all angles. A special interface allows the user to
indicate rotation, tilt, and zoom by moving the mouse in the frame. More
details can be obtained at the
Apple
QuicktimeVR Tutorial
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Creating a QuickTime movie: You must prepare a special kind of QuickTime
movie that accomodates the 3-D viewing. It can be composed of systematically
digitzed shots of a scene or an object or of synthetically generated scenes
- for example, from a 3-D animation program. Details are presented below
on generating these movies.
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You must attend to all the issues of preparing a regular QuickTime movie
such as planning for bandwidth limitations and flattening the movie, Details
are available in the companion Guide to
presenting QuickTime on the Web.
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User system requirements: Think carefully about your users. They will not
be able to see QuickTime embedded in web pages unless they have downloaded
or otherwise obtained the
QuickTimeVR plug-in.
You should consider placing the download address on your web page. Also,
they will need quicktime capability in their operating system. All contemporary
Macintoshes come with QuickTime and it is freely downloadable for Windows
systems.
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Creating the Special format movies: Apple presents freely downloadable tools
called "Make QTVR Pano" and "Make QTVR Object" at their
quicktimevr site
An explanation of how to use these tools is impossible here. Documentation
is available at the site. Essentially, you provide a set of picture files
that you have systematically taken to represent the rotating views of the
scene or the object. These images can be generated through cameras or computer
graphics programs. The tools stitch them together into a quicktime movie
with the special vr interface that lets the user inspect the movie using
a 3D model. Be forewarned these are not user friendly tools. Eventually other
software will include quicktimevr output as an option. Apple offers a commercial
QuicktimeVR studio product.
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Basic EMBED tag: You can then incorporate the quicktimevr in your web page
by using the same EMBED tags which are necessary for showing regular QuickTime
movies. See the companion guide to Web quicktime if you are not familiar
with them. The example below shows the basic Quicktime tag
<![CDATA[<EMBED SRC="Myquicktime.mov" HEIGHT=240 WIDTH=180>]]>
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Special VR options within the tag: In addition to the normal quicktime options
such as LOOP and CONTROLLER, special choices are available for QuickTime
VR. You can set all of the following:
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PAN = (degree from 0 to 360): This optional tag lets you set the initial
Pan angle as the movie starts.
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TILT = (degree from -42.5 to 42.5): This optional tag lets you set the intial
Tilt view from approximately 42 degrees down to 42 degrees up.
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FOV= (degree from 5 to 85): This optional tag lets you set the intial field
of view (zoom) from approximately 5 degrees up to 85. The further away you
are from something the greater the field of view that can be seen.
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NODE = (integer): This optional tag lets you set the intial node in a multinode
movie.
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CORRECTION = (NONE, PARTIAL or FULL): See documentation for more details.
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The following example shows a quicktimevr movie that initally would start
with the virual eye positioned at 90 degrees from the start and a slight
30 degree tilt.
<![CDATA[<EMBED SRC="Myquicktime.mov" HEIGHT=240 WIDTH=180 PAN=90 TILT=30>]]>
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Check the documentation: The webmaster site offers many details, hints and
descriptions of bugs not presented here. Be sure to check it out.
-
See the related how to do Web Quicktime
(http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~infoarts/Tele/wilson.quicktime.html)