[Paraview] U3D and X3D

[Chris Kees]

Hi,

Is anybody working on tools for exporting U3D from paraview? I noticed  
that we can export some information in other 3D modeling formats like  
VRML and X3D, but since our group often produces reports and  
presentations by using LaTeX to generate PDF, I thought it might be  
nice to try including U3D because it is supported by adobe reader. The  
U3D standard and an example are here:

http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-363.htm
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/pdfs/3d_pdf_demo.pdf

The results look nice. On the other hand, it looks like X3D is a much  
nicer/more open format, and I found one blog that makes  me worry that  
it would be a waste of time to pursue U3D at all:

http://my2iu.blogspot.com/2005/04/u3d-is-half-baked.html

I did find one tool called meshlab (http://meshlab.sourceforge.net)  
that can read a lot of the input and output formats of paraview and  
export U3D, but the binary I downloaded seems to have a bug in the U3D  
exporter.

Anyway, I'd be interested in any views on this, as it's out of my area  
of expertise.  I realize the focus of paraview is on massive 3D data  
sets so maybe I need to be using a different tool like meshlab when I  
want to work with simpler/smaller boundary representations once I've  
extracted them with paraview.  I suppose one could also make the  
argument that we should get away from adobe reader and focus on web  
browsers with 3D modeling plugins for these kinds of reports.

Chris