Tricon Labels (within CiteMaps)

Text is not VRML's strong suit (although things are improving). In any case, getting text sized and positioned takes a lot of "twiddling." In order to keep things simple, CiteMap Builder aims for a "one-size fits all" approach. Only one set of Tricon Label attributes is defined, applied to all Tricons in the particular scene. These parameters are accessed via the Tricon Labels Tab of the CiteMap (Scene) Attributes menu option.

Getting labels to look right takes a balance of several things, including:

length of text string
color, font, size, family of text string
position and orientation in the scene
placard properties (used mainly for contrast)

The proper combination of these to get a decent looking label is an art, and it usually has a lot to do with the specifics of the label and the Tricon to which it is applied. In some cases, the resulting VRML file must be adjusted by hand to get labels looking right. The following scenes provide a few examples of using the predefined Tricon label parameters.

Default Settings - a few objects are added to the scene, with labels of varying lengths. Use the View posts to get in a good position, then slowly move in and out to see the LOD effect (i.e., labels only appear when you get close to them). The flat book objects present something of a problem, since they occupy the whole grid space (i.e., a virtual space of 1x1x1). The default setting for the labels is Angled at Bottom --- which causes the label/placard to cut into the object itself (this is not a problem for most objects, since they don't extend all the way to the front of the grid space).

The Vertical at Bottom setting fixes this problem --- in fact, it should work well with all the objects since it places the label near the front of the grid space.

Another example places the labels Vertical at Top, and sets the placard transparency to 0.8 (almost invisible). This effects looks pretty good for some objects (like the Radio), and sort of odd for other objects (such as the flat book).

Various color (and transparency) combinations can be tried for the Tricon label and placard to see what looks best for an overall scene. The more adventuresome folks can try various combinations and cut-and-paste between scene versions. We'll close with a simple hand-editing example that modifies the previous example to bring the labels closer to the flat book objects. (There are also a few other tricks in there, such as how to add a "family" field to the triconLabel PROTO --- grab the file exLabEdit.wrl and look for the comments lines that contain the # sign).

Return to CiteMap Builder Examples.