Copywrite (c) 1998-2007 Chris Thorne

Open source framework and tools for translating gridded data, mainly geospatial, to different formats including images and multiresolution models for X3D or VRML web browsing. Rez was used to generate the 3D earth model for the sourceforge planet-earth project. Written in Java, licence is LGPL.

Rez aims to provide:

1. a community resource for modeling large 3D terrains and whole planets for display over the web.
2. a case study code base through which I can explore flexible software architecutres.

More documentation on Rez can be found here Rez.pdf. Up-to-date versions of Rez and a number of canned examples are maintained are on sourceforge http://sourceforge.net/projects/planet-earth/.

	Examples of Terrain Generated by Rez (move mouse pointer  over images). For X3D models, Flux Player, xj3d and  Blaxxun Contact have all been tested successfully.		For VRML models with deep (LOD)  multiresolution models Blaxxun Contact browser plugin recommended.  If the LODs are not too deep (<=7 levels) then any VRML browser is ok..
	Flat earth XML ecoded X3D models (.x3d) shown in xj3d and Flux Player.		Round earth XML ecoded X3D models (.x3d) shown in xj3d and Flux Player.
	Models converted from the veterrain.org BT grid format.			BS Contact round earth X3D xml (.x3d) example.
				Images from the http://www.planet-earth.org  project.
			Image (on left) and model converted from DTED. Canned examples can be found on sourceforge http://sourceforge.net/projects/planet-earth/
	Standard VRML example 3D model of the Earth, "flat" projection. A zip download for this example is below.	More eficient binary tree  version.
		Most efficient compact  binary tree version.
	GeoVRML round earth example.  Only runs with CosmoPlayer.  Download is below.
	A site that I really like, this is a wonderful application of Rez by Andrea Caporin, www.livedolomiti.com.   A VRML model of a mountain valley in Italy you can fly over. Blaxxun Contact browser plugin reccomended.		Also by Andrea Caporin, this is a flight over the Dolomites
			.
		From Rokit Science (http://www.rokitscience.com), a farm visualisation.		The same farm with satelite biometric overlay.

Quick Guide (please also read Rez.pdf )

Rez is a terrain file parser and translator framework.  Output can be a single file or a multiresolution tree of  tiles.  Rez will sample the input and produce output files at a resolution and size controlled by you.  Some of the main design goals of the framework are to be able to handle large terrain datasets, build models unrestricted in size that can be displayed with acceptable performance over the web; and provide a structure that is highly flexible for which implementers can easily build plugins to process different formats.

Displaying content produced by Rez:   Output can be in the form of images, X3D, VRML for displayed in X3D or VRML Browsers.  Blaxxun Contact is recommended for the standard multirezolution X3D/VRML files because other broswers try to load the whole Level of Detail (LOD) tree at once.  Rez generates a main scene file, called Display.wrl/x3d/x3dv, usually with walk/fly tours and useful viewpoints.

Design: Rez is designed as a multi-adapter with a central program (Rez.java) which allows the input parser to be plugged in and the output generator to be plugged in.  

Example parser, tiler, GUI and scene plugin implementations are provided.  See the downloadable examples for an example of a  generated model and the files used to generate it.

In the source directory (src) the plugins directory contains the parser plugin classes and a subdirectory for the different types of output formats.  These contain Tree class,  Tile class, Scene and GUI class plugins and modifiable text properties.  The latter is to allow changes without having to change code.

Image Slicer
SmoothImageSlicer is a program that takes an image and slices it into smaller parts, producing a multiresolution tree of smaller images.  It can be told to generate them at whatever resolution you want. 

1. Find an example of using SmoothImageSlicer  from the planet-earth project.
2. Modify the .bat file to generate the images you need.  You need to modify the image file path and note it has to be an "absolute path", e.g. containing C:/...whatever.
3. Change the name of your image to the same name as the source grid (e.g. "pano" for source grid pano.wrl).
4. Slice the images.
5. Copy the images directory to the terrain generation directory then proceed with the terrain generation.

Panoramas
Look here for info on generating panoramas.

Download
Files: Source and examples are on sourceforge http://sourceforge.net/projects/planet-earth/
in the files section - look for "3mapRez"

The image slicer program is also on sourceforge.

The Image Slicer takes a large jpeg or GIF file and generates smaller ones to a specified size, like 256x256 in a  multiresolution quad/binary tree corresponding to the multiresolution tree generated by Rez.

The SmoothImageSlicer should be used for most output options (not needed for jpeg output). GeoImageSlicer should be used for GeoVRML output.

NOTE: the image passed in to the slicer programs must have fully qualified pathname, SmoothImageSlicer$1.class needs to be in same directory  (or in the classpath).

For any comments/questions please contact me.