A Processing Pipeline for Virtual 3D Urban-Based Web3D Author Tools

Over the last years, a high demand for the Virtual 3D city and campus visited on the internet has evolved. At the same time, there are a lot of different ways to bring 3D on the internet: VRML, SecondLife, Vivaty, PDF 3D ... Many 2D processes can be enhanced with 3D data, and the Web3D Consortium spearheaded the ISO certified X3D. X3D is a royalty-free open standards file format, and run-time architecture to represent and communicate 3D scenes and objects using XML on the Web, between applications and across distributed networks and web services. In this paper, we present an solution for the establishing of a Virtual 3D campus using the 3ds max 2009 and the Web3D Author tools. This approach consists of a three-step process, in which 3D urban model is made, exported from the 3ds max 2009 and then edited in the Web3D Author tool-Vivaty, transformed into various scene graph formats such as X3D.The paper concludes with the experiences gathered from implementing and using this approach and provides an outlook as to how the lessons learned can be used in application and standardization.