I’ve got a "3D" graph using surfdata which rotates about etc in Maple6.
Is there any way I can put this on the web so that users can get this to "rotate" as viewed through a browser?
There is "LiveMath"... http://www.livemath.com/ but you would have to put your graph into LiveMath Maker, and your users would have to get the free LiveMath plug-in. That may be more effort than it is worth?
Here is an attempt of mine to do something like this:
http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~edgar/H263/final.html
see Problem 9 near the bottom. The graph was exported from Maple as DXF, then rendered into a QTVR object. The advantage is that the user needs only the Quicktime plug-in, which many already have.
If you mean by surfdata: saved ("get") an animation that was made with Maple 6 (and exported as html), then you "put" it in the webdirectory next to the webpage where it is used. Otherwise, having generated the animation in a Maple-worksheet: export to html etc...
Export your worksheet as html document and manipulate the resulting gif file with an animation package (for example Paint Shop) to get (1) a decent compression rate and (2) any other extra’s you would prefer.
What about VRML?
VRML models can be viewed with plug-ins and without plug-ins (there are restrictions)
If you are interested, I can give more details later. It may not be the best option. But I think it should work.
I believe this can be done using JavaView. See http://www.cecm.sfu.ca/projects/webDemo/htm/featur.htm
According to that web page:
JavaView provides a superior viewing environment to augment and enhance the plot of geometrical objects in Maple. It provides several features that are non-existent in the Maple plotter, such as mouse controlled scaling, translation, and auto view modes. JavaView implements arc-ball rotation, making object viewing smoother and less directionally constrained than in Maple.
Furthermore, JavaView offers a point modeling feature that allows plots to be manually manipulated.
The predominant feature of the JavaviewLib is the capacity to export Maple generated models into one of two applet based viewers - one optimized for speed, the other for customizability. This greatly enhances the current state of plot object export in Maple - no longer do dynamic plots need to be converted to static images when creating html pages from Maple worksheets. One can also export plot data to a variety of other formats such as VMRL or JavaViews own XML format where data can be viewed as a markup tree or further developed upon.
Efforts were made to maintain the aesthetic presentation of Maple geometries and their corresponding axes upon export. With JavaviewLib, models created in other modeling applications such as Maya and Mathematica, can easily be imported into Maple’s viewing environment.
Though there may not be the way how to manage it with Maple, there is a non-commercial Java applet to do with Mathematica.
That is named LiveGraphics3D.
Please refer to
http://wwwvis.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/~kraus/LiveGraphics3D/