HTMLMaterial

The HTMLMaterial class is used to create a Material consisting of a rendered HTML page which can then be applied to an mesh like a regular Material.

To create an instance of the HTMLMaterial class use the Scene.createHTMLMaterial() method which allows you to specify the material name the URL of the HTML page to be rendered and the page size. When you have finished with the HTMLMaterial call the Scene.destroyHTMLMaterial() method.

Pages containing the following content should work (see caveat 1 below) html, dhtml, xml, .swf, .flv, .png, .jpg, .gif, .gif (animated), .wmv, .avi, .qt, .mpeg.

There are some caveats to using Web pages as materials:

1. Not all Web pages will be rendered. What makes some pages render and others not has not yet been determined, so some trial and error may be required. For testing http://www.google.com and http://www.yahoo.com are both known to work well. Note that Microsoft IE is used for the rendering and there may be differences between the way IE 6 and IE7 render a page.
2. The amount of the page that is used for the material is controlled by the Page Width and Page Height properties and by the screen resolution of the users computer. The higher the users screen resolution the less of the Web page that will be used for the Material.
3. Be aware of any web page that requires interaction from the user in order to display correctly. This is most often the case with Video that only plays when the user clicks on the Play button.
4. Most Web page plugins are supported. However, not all users will have the plugin you need.
5. Not all Flash animations are created equal. Some Flash animations on a Web page will cause a slow down in the frame rate, while other things like video will run much faster.
6. Do not use a Web page that contains another Blink 3D environment.

The Web pages are rendered in real time. This of course can put a strain on the frame rate of the environment. So by default the staticImage property is set to True. This means that the Web page is only rendered once and then used as a texture. Any subsequent changes to the Web page will not be seen. If the Web page changes infrequently you can use the forceUpdate() method to re-render the page. If the Web page contains dynamic content such as Flash animations, video Dynamic HTML or animated Gif files then you may want to set the Static Image option to False. Doing so will allow you to see the changes to the Web page in real time in the Blink environment.

If you experience jerkiness in video or animations try adjusting the updateFactor property. Lowering the number will cause the Web page to be rendered more frequently. However, this may have an even more negative effect on the frame rate. The default value of 20 seems to work well across most system. Unless you are sure that your users have a high end video card increasing this value is probably not advisable and may have a detrimental effect to the frame rate.

NOTE: In the future this functionality may not be available across all operating systems or it may work differently.

// Get the type of the object 
if ( oHTMLMaterial.type == "HTMLMaterial" )
   Chat.print(  "Object is of type HTMLMaterial" );

// Get a reference to the underlying material
oMaterial = Scene.getMaterial( oHTMLMaterial.materialName );

// Increase the frequency the HTML is rendered
oHTMLMaterial.updateFactor = 15;

// Enable static image to speed up the frame rate
oHTMLMaterial.staticImage = true;

// Change the URL
oHTMLMaterial.setURLHTML( "http://www.google.com" );

// Get the URL of the HTML page being rendered
sURL = oHTMLMaterial.getURLHTML();

// Force the HTML page to be re-rendered
oHTMLMaterial.forceUpdate();

// Display the native JavaScript alert dialog box
oHTMLMaterial.sendJS( "alert(\"Hello World!\");" );

// Send a mouse click to the Web page
oHTMLMaterial.sendMouseCLick( oHTMLMaterial.MOUSE_BUTTON1,
  215, 213 );

// Set focus to the HTML window
oHTMLMaterial.setFocus( true );