An extensible VRML-based scene graph manager

time, in the margin of my research work. The project concerns a
flexible, extensible and efficient scene graph manager and file format
parser, based on VRML'97.

The original goal was to design a new file format for global
illumination, which would overcome shortcomings of other such file
format. At the time I started this project, in 1997, VRML'97 seemed to
be a good starting point because of several reasons, which will be
discussed in the talk.

As the project went on, it became clear that the project would only
succeed if a software utility were developed that would allow to easily
and efficiently design new VRML-like scene graph nodes. This could be
achieved by a clear separation of the file format parser, the scene
graph representation, and application specific functionality of scene
graph nodes. The implementation of new, custom, scene graph nodes is
facilitated by a software utility, the node code generator, which
generates a C++ class implementation from a very concise description of
the syntax of a new node.

So far, this software utility has been used in order to design and
implement about 60 new VRML-like nodes for specifying physically based
material properties for global illumination. The resulting software can
however be used for many more purposes. A recent case study will be
presented.