Design and Implementation of 3D Studio Max Plug-In in Collaborative Systems
Tai-Sook Kwon, Sung‐Young Lee · 2001
Collaborative systems allow users, who may be far removed from each other geographically, to do collaborative work such as 3D animation, computer game, and industrial design in a single virtual space. This paper describes our experience to develop a collaborative system framework that aims at expanding the some functions of a stand-alone visual modeling tool, called 3D Studio Max, into those of the distributed collaborative working environments. The paper mainly deals with design and implementation of a 3D shared-object Plug-In with respect to the 3D Studio Max Plug-In Software Development Kit in the distributed collaborative system developed by the authors. There are two major functions of the proposed scheme; one is to write 3D object-information to the shared memory after extracting it from the 3D Studio Max, the other is to create 3D objects after retrieving them from the shared memory. Also, the proposed scheme provides a simple way of storing 3D objects that have variable size, by means of shared memory which located in between the collaborative system clients and 3D studio Max. One of the remarkable virtures of the Plug-In is to reduce a considerable amount of shared object data which in consequence can mitigate the network overhead. This can be achieved by the fact that the system is able to extract a minimum amount of 3D objects that are required to transmit. Also, using the proposed scheme, user can facilitate 3D Studio Max into distributed collaborative working environments. This, in consequence give many benefits such as saving time as well as eliminating space constraints in the course of 3D modeling when we are under industrial design process.