Introduction

    Tae Kwon Do has always been a major part of my life.  My father, who is a grand-master of the martial art, began teaching me at the age of six.  Over the many years that I have studied Tae Kwon Do, I have read several books about the subject.  These books were always very helpful for learning history and theory, however, whenever I tried to learn new techniques I usually ended up very disappointed.
    A Tae Kwon Do technique can be thought of as a combination of movements with varying speed, power, angles, and timing.  Consequently, it is very hard to describe these techniques with words alone.  Most books use a combination of pictures and text, and although this is an improvement over text alone, it is often not enough.  The problem with 2-D static pictures is that they do not help the student to see how movements are pieced together to form a technique.  For example, many books use pictures to show the starting and ending positions of a technique.  However, how one gets from the start to the end is described in text or simply left out.  This, unfortunately, constitutes roughly 99% of the technique and usually leaves the reader very confused.  Furthermore, pictures can only show one side of a person. Multiple pictures can be used to show many sides however, it is usually hard to see how these pictures fit together.  Video tapes have proven to be helpful for learning however, they are often lengthy and difficult to navigate.  For example, if one wants to review a move, the tape has to be stopped, rewound, and played again.  This can become annoying very quickly!  These types of problems are what this project attempts to address.
    This project is meant to be the prototype for an interactive, animated, 3-D Tae Kwon Do book.  It was created using the Virtual Reality Modelling Language or VRML.  VRML allows an author to create a 3-D "virtual world" that can be walked through, rotated, zoomed-in, zoomed-out, and etc.  This type of model is very useful for demonstrating Tae Kwon Do techniques and solves all the problems that were mentioned above.  So now let's continue on to our virtual Tae Kwon Do demonstration!
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