Development news - more NURBS: interpolators, VRML 97 compatibility

September 7, 2009
Animating along the NURBS curve (NurbsPositionInterpolator and NurbsOrientationInterpolator)
Animating along the NURBS surface (NurbsSurfaceInterpolator)

Implementation of NURBS is progressing very nicely. In addition to previously announced nodes (rendered curves and surfaces: NurbsPatchSurface and NurbsCurve), we now also handle X3D NURBS interpolators: NurbsPositionInterpolator, NurbsSurfaceInterpolator, NurbsOrientationInterpolator. Using them you can animate movement of objects and viewpoints along the NURBS curves and surfaces.

Also basic VRML 97 NURBS nodes are implemented, for compatibility.

Up-to-date documentation about supported NURBS nodes is here. Some demo scenes are inside kambi_vrml_test_suite in SVN, see e.g. nurbs_curve_interpolators.x3dv and nurbs_surface_interpolator.x3dv.

You can try the new features by using the nightly builds of view3dscene. Or, of course, you can wait for the next stable view3dscene 3.5 release — later this month.