The Verse data format is a very versatile format, that stores various data in nodes. Since Verse is not an application rendering technology or tool, it must have a format that is common and can be easily translated to any architecture and system. It is small, compact and yet very powerful. The core idea is that the data defines the intention of the creator and the user/application implementor is then free to use whatever technology to display the data to the best of its ability. Data that is sent out by one tool may look different for different viewers. This is because different recipients have different abilities to do the data justice. Data may be displayed on a PDA, rendered on an OpenGL graphics card, or even in a offline rendering engine. As they have vastly different hardware resources they will all get different results, but they will all do their best. This all means that the data is "future-proof", since you can apply new computing power and rendering techniques to get closer to the defined look. Verse doesn't define what the rendered image will look like, only what it should look like. | | In the Verse data format you can define, among other things: - Transforms with movements
- Quaternion rotations
- Subdivision surfaces
- One-, two- and three-dimensional HDRI bitmaps
- Shader trees
- Displacement maps
- BRDFs
- Motion curve animation data
- Lights
- Skeletons
Subdivision surfaces provides a versatile geometric primitive that is compatible with NURBS, Beziers, and polygons. The shader tree coupled with high dynamic range textures provides a powerful way of defining surface characteristics. Verse also has various places where applications can store auxiliary data. All nodes have tags where that can hold named vectors, text strings, and numerical values. Surfaces and textures can also store user data (e.g. stress, temperature, density...) that may be useful in applications. Verse also has a text node where text can be stored and edited. |