In the course
of Internet during the third year at the Essi, we had to realise a project.
The subject we choose was the following
Imagine a
web page where you can enter a text in a dialog box, you chose some parameters
as the color, the kind of rendering (neon, 3D, etc ...) and a CGI script
on the server launches a software as PovRay, GIMP, or whatever, and returns
the image of your title calculated in ray-tracing. Imagine as well that
you can give an image URL, and you get it back glued in a sphere which
could turn in an animated gif. Or you can also imagine, as I already saw
it on the net, that you search for arrow icons, colored spheres to put
on your web pages and a generator can give you the posiibility to generate
it.
We realised an applet which allows to an user to enter some text, some spheres and manipulate it in a graphical environment. The user can choose parameter from one of those:
- the background of the image
- the color of the light
- the object ( text or sphere ) texture
The objects are represented in different zones:
- plan X - Y
- plan X - Z
- plan Z - Y
- zone 3D
Our principal aim was to allow the user to manipulate his objects an easy way and to get the approximative result in a 3D zone, instead of giving all the parameters in a basic way ( for example, give the position of his object giving explicitly the x, y and z values ).
Once the user got all the parameters he wants, once he has placed his object his own way, all that stuff is given to the server through sockets. They are taken by a CGI Script which launches the PovRay software. Once the image is calculated, its URL is given back to the user, who can see its image displayed in the interface.
But let's have a look in details on how it works Texte3D.