BACKGROUND: This is an example of a VRML scene of a severe thunderstorm with inline links which go to HTML pages for further discussion and/or examples of the various structures within this dangerous storm. The representation is not meant to be as perfectly accurate or to scale as it is to be a good example of truly interactive VRML. VRML was invented as a 3-D solution for HTML pages, however since that time it has come to be a cross platform 3-d modeling language that rarely has any HTML links or interactivity.
This particular model was created using SGI's WebForce WebAuthor on my Indy at Work. WebAuthor is a 'point and click' 3-d object and text modeler which comes with a texture-maker and dozens of premade texture colors. It has special filters to attempt to reduce the number of polygons in the VRML scene as well as link creators, viewpoint creators, and publishing that includes verification of inline links and compression of the file.
Having worked with Paragraph's VRML modeler (which limits the user to rectangles) before, having the greater geometrical ability with SGI's program was a plus but was also easy to get carried away with. The size of the wrl file is what makes the usefulness of it. With the initial thunderstorm shape drawn, I at first made an attempt to add half a dozen spheres embedded in the underside of the anvil to simulate Mm Clouds. Spheres, however, if they are to look spherical at all, must be made of many polygons, and this action increased the size of the wrl file from around 60KB to 2600KB so I gave that idea up and settled for the two semicircles that you see in the final wrl. Luckily, the SGI text editor had two choices for modeling 3-D text: flat or full text. I used that flat text at all times to keep the size of the file down (the words "Coming Soon" end up to be ~300 triangles in flat text, down to ~230 after filtering, but > 3000 triangles in full text). The 'rain' under the thunderstorm was actually done using pipe symbols (|||) as flat text which was much easier than actually attempting to model the rain.
