User Documentation
Extensive end-user documentation you can find in our wiki:
wiki.blender.org/index.php/Uni-Verse:Main
Uni-Verse Public Deliverables
Below is documentation of all of the public deliverables produced by the Uni-Verse Consortium throughout the course of the project. This page will be continually updated as more material becomes available.
Deliverable 1.2 - Project Presentation
This document is a presentation of the Uni-Verse project.
Deliverable 3.1 - Improved Protocol
In order to serve as the underlying transport mechanism and data model for the various parts of the Uni-Verse project, the Verse protocol itself needs to be extended. The planned changes include an extended core protocol, both with new actual functionality and with added security and a new major piece of general platform architecture called the Scripting API. This report describes only the implementation of the improvements of the core protocol.
Deliverable 3.2 - Security Implementation
This document is the description of the security features implemented in the Verse protocol in the Uni-Verse project. The work has focused around extending and upgrading the Verse protocol with network security. Such security serves three goals; it gives users a way to make sure the server they are communicating with is who it claims to be; it gives the ability to transmit user name and password without risk of third parties learning this sensitive information; and finally it protects the subsequent data traffic from snooping.
Deliverable 3.3 - Scripting Environment API (Purple)
This document describes the D3.3 deliverable in the Uni-Verse project. The title of this deliverable is “Scripting Environment API”, also known as "Purple". The purpose of the Uni-Verse scripting API (codenamed Purple during development) is to design and implement a system through which we can lower the threshold for working with Verse, for both end users (primarily 3D graphics package users) and programmers.
Deliverable 3.4 - Tested Protocol
This document is the description of the tests performed on the current implementation of the Verse protocol in the Uni-Verse project. What have been tested are the concrete implementations, in the form of the Verse standard API (for sending and receiving commands over a network connection) and the reference server (for serving as a back-end and data storage service). The results refer to these pieces of software, often in conjunction with applications that exercise the relevant commands.
Deliverable 4.1 - Simple Rendering Client
This document is the description of the “Simple Rendering Client” which is a prototype of the planned high-performance rendering client in the Uni-Verse project.
Deliverable 4.2 - High Performance Rendering Client
In the context of this project the term “rendering client” denotes an application that
connects to a Verse host with the main purpose of visualizing its data content. This is
opposite to e.g. modeling tools, which aim to give users the ability to create new
content. While such tools will need to render Verse graphics, they have different goals.
In the early start of the project it was decided to develop two rendering platforms for
the Uni-Verse System (see D2.3/2.4). The High Performance Rendering Client is one of
these two Rendering Engines developed within the project.
Deliverable 4.2.2 - High Performance Rendering Client (Quel Solaar)
This report describes the high-quality rendering client “Quel Solaar” developed by Eskil Steenberg, KTH. This rendering client is based on the rendering library "Persuade" making much of the code shareable with future projects.Quel Solaar is fully dynamic and requires no pre-processing of data. It has been designed to be used for any application demanding high quality real time visuals, such as games, simulation, visualization, education and social activities. The main difference from other engines is that Quel Solaar is designed to be fully networked. This means that all data visualized in the engine comes from a Verse server and that any part of the scene can be changed at any time
Deliverable 4.3 - Slim Rendering Client
The Slim Rendering client in this project is defined as a Verse renderer for PDAs and
Pocket PCs. The development was focused on these devices mainly because
Smartphones were only rarely available on the market at the start of the project and had (and still have) very small display sizes. Speaking of usability and ergonomic for a
visualization of 3D data such a small device is not very usable.
Deliverable 5.1.1 - 3D Geometry Modeller Plug-In
This document describes the Autodesk 3ds Max plug-in developed as Deliverable D 5.1, 3D Modeler plug-in, for the Uni-Verse project. Both how to use it and how it was implemented will be covered. The plug-in was written by Mattias Claesson of PDC, KTH, and the main reason for Uni-Verse to develop the plug-in is to lower the threshold for people working with 3d modelling to start using Verse.
Deliverable 5.1.2 - Blender-Verse
The 3D creation suite Blender is the largest open source, cross platform, and freely available 3D tool on the web. Thanks to Blender's open source nature, we can develop a fully integrated support in Blender to connect to all Uni-Verse components. This work is tightly coupled to redesign and upgrading work on Blender’s internal database and modeling/animation and rendering systems, targeted on optimal support for the Uni-Verse system and making Blender a profitable and viable choice for 3D artists, engineers, architects, and game developers. This report outlines the details of the Blender-Verse development areas, providing links to technical references and end user documentation.
Deliverable 5.2 - Scripting Tool Plug-Ins
This document summarizes the work done with Deliverable D5.2, Scripting Tool Plugins (”Purple Standard Library”). The purpose of this work is to make sure the ”Purple” scripting API/environment developed in WP3.3 is accompanied by a set of generally useful plugins. These serve a dual purpose: they make the environment as a whole capable of doing something concrete directly (”out of the box”), while also illustrating to programmers how to work with the Purple API.
Deliverable 5.3 - Administration Tools
This document describes the native administrative tools that let the user interact with Verse. Compared to other tools, the native tools expose Verse functionality fully and let the user control every aspect of Verse data.
Deliverable 5.4 - Dynamic Mesh Generation
This document describes the Uni-Verse project aim to research and develop a distributed system with generative models for real-time visualization. This system utilizes and integrates with the Verse protocol and the goal is it to provide basis for fully dynamic 3D simulation software such as 3D Game-engines.
Deliverable 5.5 - Radiosity Module
In the context of this project the term module denotes an application that will be made
available as a library that can be used to integrate it into other Verse applications. This
radiosity module contains the functionality to calculate and perform necessary
operations for realistic light simulation. The input must be colored polygons and light
sources. Then, then radiosity module calculates the light distribution in the given scene
and outputs the new colored polygons. This library can be integrated into other
rendering systems to enable the computation of global illumination. The Radiosity Module was defined to be a rendering preprocessor within the High Performance Rendering Client (D4.2), allowing a more physical based lighting then the standard rendering modes.
Deliverable 6.1 - Progressive Reduction Library
This document is the description of the “Progressive Reduction Library”. The progressive reduction reduces the triangles in meshes based on an error metric for visual purposes. The process of removing triangles and the information on the triangles is saved in a list to be able to rebuild the original mesh from that information.
Deliverable 6.2 - Alternative Verse Server
A major task in work package 6 was the design and implementation of an Alternative Verse Server. The Verse server is the central data connection and storage instance of the Uni-Verse system. In the first version of the specification it was planned to integrate the reduction module into the server and make the server capable of connecting to other servers to enable proxy functionality. After recommendations of the end users in the Uni-Verse project and a reallocation of financial resources at Fraunhofer it was approved by the PCC that the server should contain a user administration and project handling system instead of the reduction and the proxy functionality.
Deliverable 7.2 - Geometry Reduction Module
This document is a description of the "Geometry Reduction Module".
Deliverable 7.3 - Audio Culling Module
The subject of this report is the work of WP 7.3 Audio Culling module or Uni-Verse Acoustic Simulation (UVAS) module as we prefer to call it. This module is a part of the auralization pipeline of the Uni-Verse project. The UVAS module is responsible for handling the geometric computation part of the auralization.
Deliverable 7.4 - Sound Rendering Module
This document describes the real-time sound rendering software made for the
Uni-Verse project. The sound renderer is a part of audio simulation framework and provides means to produce spatial audio environment in real-time using loudspeakers or headphones. This framework offers a way to create dynamic environment, where listener and sources can move and even the geometry can be changed during the rendering.
Deliverable 7.5 - Perceptual Modelling Module
The subject of this report is the work of WP 7.5 Perceptual Simulation module which is
an integrated part of the Uni-Verse Acoustic Simulation (UVAS) system and is implemented as module in the UVAS framework which is described in deliverable D 7.3. The purpose of the perceptual based acoustic simulation module is to complement the physical based simulation in UVAS.
Deliverable 7.6 - Final Report on Acoustics
This document is the final report presenting the audio system made in the Uni-Verse project. The document is a copy of the conference paper presented in the Audio Engineering Society 118th Convention held in Vienna, Austria, May 5th-8th, 2007.
Deliverable 9.3 - Journal Article
This document is the result of the theoretical work conducted in WP7 of the Uni-
Verse project. The document is a copy of the journal paper accepted for publication in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, the most prestigious journal in the field of acoustics. The title of the article is "The room acoustic rendering equation".
Deliverable 9.4 - Conference Papers and Exhibitions
The Uni-Verse project has been presented in whole or in part at several conferences and exhibitions. A paper (see appendix 1) on Verse was presented at the SIGRAD 2007conference in Skövde, Sweden; several papers on the audio part of the system have also been presented. For more information see the Dissemination Plan. Here we give a short presentation of the major conferences.
Deliverable 9.6 - Short Course for Game Developers
This is a short course for game developers, devised and organised by KTH. The coursecalled “Using Verse for Content Creation in Games” was held in conjunction with theSIGRAD (the Swedish chapter of Eurographics and SIGGRAPH) annual conference 2006 at University of Skövde in Sweden. This year’s conference had a special emphasis on the game industry. About 30 persons from the game industry followed the course.