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VRML bathroom

Last modified: 31-Jan-99

3-D bathroom

In late 1997 we had our existing bathroom totally redone. The 20-year old bathtub, sink, toilet, radiator and a small closet were removed and replaced. The tiling and lighting were also refurbished. A separate shower was added (the room originally also contained a washing machine).

To help in the design of all this, I visualised the design beforehand by making a reasonably detailed 3-D model. This VRML 2.0 model included the room, the main objects as well as the tiling patterns. The tiling and some of the objects (e.g. the sink) are pretty accurate because they are based on the manufacturer's drawings or photographs.

The model turned out to be a surprisingly accurate representation of the finished room. In hindsight, the model took me about 1 month to develop in my spare time (I did all the VRML 2.0 programming using just an ASCII editor), but helped significantly in tuning the practical and visual aspects of the room. It obviously also helped in communicating the design and getting feedback from other family members. Without the VRML model, I expect we would have ended up with a less interesting design because we would have avoided certain risks.

VRML models

If your browser has a plug-in for viewing VRML 2.0, you can view the 3-D design by clicking on the various links below. The tree structure represents the objects or groups of objects used inside a particular model. You can thus study the door or the bathtub separately, if you like.

If you have a fast machine with 3-D video support, you should be able to view the largest model (containing the most details) by interactively walking through the room or rotating the design. If you have an older (e.g. non-MMX Pentium) machine, start with the smaller models to avoid excessively slow response times. Note that the file sizes themselves are relatively small (e.g. 100 kB), so download time is probably not an issue.

Some notes:

You can open and close the door by dragging the door knob using the mouse.
You will find the walls, floor and ceiling to be transparent when you are viewing the wall from the outside. This is not a limitation of VRML, but is a design decision: without this feature you could only view the room by walking around inside (this requires a lot of turning around) or by looking through the window or doorway.
Don't bother revisiting this model at odd times in order to get a glimpse of people actually using the bathroom (it isn't a WebCam).

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