One of the most exciting and interesting aspects of inhabiting the VR worlds is the ability to use a custom avatar to represent yourself in the 3d environment. As the number of people finding these worlds increases, I have always thought that everyone should be able to have their own individual avatar to help establish an "identity". The avatars created by some of the companies on the web are great, but there's nothing like the feeling of taking your own creation out "for a spin" to show off to the others users.

In Cybertown, you can change your avatar by going to Options, selecting Avatar Library or filling in the complete URL of a custom avatar that has been set-up for use in Cybertown in your Personal Data section under the Avatar URL space provided.

The purpose of this article is to give you a start into creating your own avatar and some tricks for getting it ready for use in Cybertown.

Before you decide to start building your own, look to see if it already exists. There are many existing avatars out there ready to use, at my site (http://www.avatara.com/), as well as many others. But remember that just because you find a VRML file of a 3D model you like, does not mean that it is ready for use as an avatar in the worlds. The file must be set up correctly. File Size, Scale, Lighting, Origin Point, Direction & Compression all must be considered, or you could be taking a horrendous monster into the worlds that will disrupt it for all the other users. And they will be sure to let you know!

Lighting:
You must exclude all lights from your avatar prior to saving it as a world. Otherwise you will be imposing additional lighting information to the worlds you visit which often spoils it's appearance and annoys other avatars. Some VRML builder packages create default infinite lights when each world is saved. All these must be removed. The background skyColor should also be removed if your builder puts it in. The code highlighted below should be removed and the file re-saved.

#VRML V2.0 utf8
# This file is converted using vrml1to2 version 1.6
# This converter is based on Final VRML2.0 - August 4, 1996.
# This converter is provided by Sony.

Transform {
children [
	DEF LocLight PointLight {
		color    1 0.647 0.376
		location 4.83 4.09 1.12
	}
	DEF LocLight_1 PointLight {
		color    0.00784 0.698 1
		location -3.63 3.05 5.12
	}
	DEF LocLight_2 PointLight {
		color    0.8 0.8 0.8
		location 1.23 2.93 -5.39
	}
	DEF Avatar_3 Transform {
		children [
		Transform {
			rotation 1 0 0  4.71239
			children [
	DEF NoName_3 Group {
			children [
	Transform {
		rotation 1 0 0  4.71239
			children [
	Transform {
			children [

Origin Point: To ensure proper eye contact between avatars, make sure the origin point of your avatar is at eye-level (if it has eyes or even a head). This is most evident when an avatar "Beams To" another so it is face-to-face regardless of their relative size.

Direction:
Before you save your avatar you must make sure that he/she/it is facing forward. Otherwise people beaming to you could be facing the back of your head or worse. You will also appear to be walking backwards, which is only good if applying for job as "town-lush".

File Size/Compression:
One of the most important considerations in avatars is keeping the files size down. As a rule I believe the maximum file size for an avatar is 40K, but try to keep it around 20K if possible. This is the recommended size after all final editing is done & the file is compressed.

One way to reduce the file size after your avatar is complete is to eliminate all the leading "tabs" or "spaces" that most VRML builders put into the file (for some unknown reason). I do this by opening the file in a text editor that has the "Find & Replace" option. I fill in "^t" to "find" and leave it blank in the "replace" field. This will remove them all and reduce the file by up to 1/3 in some cases.

If using images on your avatar, use compressed bitmaps, e.g. jpeg. Don't use huge bitmaps, they are scaled down anyhow internally. Recommended size for bitmaps: 128x128 or 256x256 (supported formats: jpg & gif)

But the best way to reduce file size is to compress the file after complete. The DOS program Gzip is the standard for compressing VRML files. Its advantages are that it is freely available, does not use a patented algorithm and will work on most server operating systems. You can download the file here: http://www.avatara.com/avatars/gzip.exe. To use it, open a DOS prompt, go to the directory with both the VRML file and Gzip program in it and type in:

gzip filename.wrl

Gzip will put the .gz extension on the end of the file, which can then be removed so the file looks like a typical VRML file. All VR browsers that I know will automatically uncompress and display in this format. The .gz can just be added back in and the file uncompressed with Gzip, WinZip or similar program for viewing the code.

This works pretty well, but wouldn't it be much nicer to have a real Windows application that lets you gzip and gunzip files? Bob Crispen has developed a nice program that does just that.. and it's Free!. Here it is. Version 1.1 - http://home.hiwaay.net/~crispen/src/wingz.zip

The VRML editor VRMLPad by ParallelGraphics has the Gzip feature built in, as well as some builders such as 3D Studio Max. I also highly recommend the Chisel Optimization tool by Trapezium.

For way too much information about Gzip and related issues, check out this site: http//www.gzip.org/

Tools:
There are many new VRML creation packages out there today unlike the early days when the only tool you had to create VRML files was a ASCII text editor. The tools for building VRML files are getting better and better all the time, but the base code will still need to be doctored up manually, so I would suggest that if you want to learn VRML you start by reviewing the code to "see" how it all works. Much can be learned by reviewing code of other avatars.

For VRML creation I mainly use trueSpace from Caligari (http://www.caligari.com), but I also use 3DWebsite Builder from Virtus (http://www.virtus.com) and VRCreator from Platinum (http://www.platinum.com) as well as others. Here's a good list of builders and some attributes for you to compare (http://vrml.zesoi.fer.hr/builders.html). There are many text editors out there, but one that is set-up quite well for VRML editing, that I would recommend is SitePad from ModelWorks (http://www.modelworks.com).

Author Bio:
David Maloney currently works at Super Sky Products Inc. in Mequon, Wisconsin and is in charge of computer imaging and animation of 3D models created with Intergraph's Engineering Modeling System and ModelView software. He has been coming to blaxxun's worlds since February 1996 and has been creating custom avatars soon after that. Some of these can be found at his Internet domain: (http://www.avatara.com/avatars/ ).