Dive Tutorials

Overview of Program

• File format/vrml conversion
• tcl commands
• DVI interface
• Code structure

Tutorial 1

The vishnu inteface is quite complex, but completely flexible in that it is defined in a TCL script that can be modified.

We looked at some simple object definitions, the fundamentals of the event mechanism , and briefly discussed importing files into DIVE. A fuller discussion of creating geometry for DIVE will be given at a later date.

Exercises

• Play with vishnu and familiarize yourself with the controls.
• Trying loading objects and editting their code

The capabilties of inter-object communication were introduced using dive_send, and we briefly reviewed possibility of one object writing the script of another object using dive_declare.

Exercises

• Explore some more worlds.

  Some worlds from the web:

  • Central UCL
  • Sics
  • Performer Village (heavy on the textures)
  • Body-U-Like
  • Strange House
  • Strange House II

  Some worlds from our installation:

  • tutorial.vr - Tutorial (click or load via vishnu worlds menu)
  • dive_town.vr - Dive Town (click or load from vishnu worlds menu)
  • /cs/research/graphics/vulcan/common/vr/dive/stk/stk.vr (you will have to add the directory to your DIVEPATH)
  • /cs/research/graphics/vulcan/common/vr/dive/diveconf/diveconf.vr (you will have to add the directory to your DIVEPATH)

  The following worlds from the standard DIVEPATH work but aren't very interesting.

  • Gateways to more interesting places (click or load from vishnu worlds menu)
  • Pool (click or load from vishnu worlds menu)
  • seven11 (click or load from vishnu worlds menu)
  • glashall (click or load from vishnu worlds menu)
  • DIVE Lab (click or load from vishnu worlds menu)
  • Corridor (click or load from vishnu worlds menu)
  • Conference World (click or load from vishnu worlds menu)

  Please mail me if you find anymore.

• Start familiarizing yourself with TCL. There are manuals for tcl in our own common area, and no doubt elsewhere. You may find it helpful to look at a solitarre program I wrote ages ago that does virtually the same things as the Dive one but with a 2D interface.
• Simple scripting. For example create two objects, one of which choses and sets a random colour for the other when it is clicked upon. You will probably need to look up and use, dive_material and dive_find_entity_byname.