Scene description language

A scene description language refers to any description language used to describe a scene to be rendered by a 3D renderer such as a ray tracer. The scene is written in a text editor (which may include syntax highlighting) as opposed to be modeled in a graphical way.

Some scene description language may include variables, constants, conditional statements, while loops and for loops.

3DMLW and X3D are XML-based scene description languages.

Example

POV-Ray

 #declare the_angle = 0;
 
 #while (the_angle < 360)
 	box {   <-0.5, -0.5, -0.5>
 		<0.5, 0.5, 0.5>
                texture { pigment { color Red }
                          finish  { specular 0.6 }
                          normal  { agate 0.25 scale 1/2 } }
 		rotate the_angle }
 	#declare the_angle = the_angle + 45;
 #end

3DMLW

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?>
<document>
  <content2d>
    <area width="200" height="100" color="#C0C0C0FF" texture="flower.png" />
  </content2d>
  <content3d id="content" camera="{#cam}">
    <camera id="cam" class="cam_rotation" y="10" z="40" viewy="10"/>
    <box name="ground" width="100" height="2" depth="100" color="green" class="ground" />
    <box name="dynamic" y="20" width="10" height="10" depth="10" color="blue" />
  </content3d>
</document>

X3D

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE X3D PUBLIC "ISO//Web3D//DTD X3D 3.2//EN" "http://www.web3d.org/specifications/x3d-3.2.dtd">
 
<X3D profile="Interchange" version="3.2" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsd:noNamespaceSchemaLocation=" http://www.web3d.org/specifications/x3d-3.2.xsd ">
<Scene>
  <Shape>
    <IndexedFaceSet coordIndex="0 1 2">
      <Coordinate point="0 0 0 1 0 0 0.5 1 0"/>
    </IndexedFaceSet>
  </Shape>
</Scene>
</X3D>

See also