Tool Bar too jacked-up for consumer level PDF

Question

Sooner or later 3D interactive will saturate our culture. And Acrobat 3D is a great step, but it is targeted toward engineers and not consumer level marketing. 
I want to produce these great PDFs for consumer level product marketing, but the Tool Bar is too feature rich for consumers. The tools are okay, let’s keep them, but the default tool, ROTATE, is just infuriating (not a good thing).
I have been on the creative end of advertising for over 30 years, working with 3D for last ten years, and I do some coding from time to time, so I am not afraid of a challenge. I know this: a picture is worth a thousand words, a moving picture is worth ten thousand words, a 3D interactive needs NO words.
Adobe has taken a giant 3D step with Acrobat, but the company now seems to be pulling away. Broad consumer level acceptance will generate the demand for Acrobat 3D, the engineering market is not big enough by itself. Here is my problem, the TOOL BAR requires an engineering degree, it is far beyond the consumer’s attention span and comprehension. Consumers are not engineers, but they do know how to use a mouse.
So here is my consumer level wish list for Adobe Acrobat 3D:
Remove the TOOL BAR and the RIGHT CLICK SUBMENU entirely from the annotation. When I say "Remove" I want it disabled, and make it not visible on a tool-by-tool basis. Keep the TOOL BAR as part of Acrobat 3D, but I need to manage it for the sake of consumers and my product. I don't want customers seeing it and wondering why they can get a tool to work, or wondering what they are missing because of a grayed-out feature. I want their attention on the product offered in the PDF. (I can NOT do this yet)
Make SPIN the default movement tool and the only tool. (I CAN do this, thanks to this forum and javascript discussions)
I need to restrict the rotation of the SPIN tool from going below the ground plane, and adjust the friction of the SPIN tool, some models move too fast in the environment. (I can NOT do this yet)
The default arrowhead cursor does nothing to promote (set apart, distinguish, or announce) the 3D environment. When a consumer has a cursor over an activated 3D annotation the cursor should communicate that fact. The right cursor for this job is the "move" cursor (looks like the PAN TOOL icon). I need to set the MOVE icon as the default 3D icon (I can NOT do this yet)
Create a 2D layer in front of the 3D scene to place stationary JPGs and TEXT in front of the 3D annotation. This can be useful for placing custom view buttons, ON/OFF buttons, transparency sliders in the scene, or toggling between one or two model render modes or different lighting schemes. (I can NOT do this yet)
As I said before, “remove the RIGHT CLICK SUBMENU entirely” because it is the can of worms as the TOOL BAR. But I do want to be able to customize the RC SUBMENU when a consumer clicks on a part of the 3D model. When they right click, they should get a submenu of features, options, properties that relate to my product offer. (I can NOT do this yet)
And finally, URL connectivity. That RIGHT CLICK SUBMENU has a feature like: make reservation, order this part, add to cart. (I can NOT do this yet)
Now that will accelerate Acrobat 3D. Anybody know how to accomplish these features?
Greg

Answer 1

OK, in order:
1 - you can disable the toolbar using the 3D annotation's properties, but you cannot disable the context (right-click) menu or edit the entries. You can add buttons to the toolbar to a very limited extent using JS, and can en/disable tools by name, but can't replace the entire thing and can't affect the other dropdowns (like the lighting or rendering menus)
2 - easy with JS, as you already know: runtime.setCurrentTool('Spin');
3 - also possible with JS, but complex to implement as you have to re-write the camera handling functions and do some polar geometry math. There are some examples from Directlight which use a ground-collision script for architectural renders inside a "sky bubble", but the script they use is copyrighted.
4 - we don't give any access to the cursor icons, period.
5 - You can do this in several ways; either with a watermark layer on the PDF, or using a SWF embedded in the 3D scene and some JS to load the SWF as a "scene foreground object". I've covered a lot of this on the Acrobatusers.com tutorials, but will be talking more about it in upcoming shows.
6 - see q1
7 - very commonly-done using JS, and probably the main thing scripts in 3D PDFs are used for. There are "3D order form" examples all over the Web, which use a script to override the default selection handler in the 3D scene, check the name of the mesh node being clicked, and then fire something out to the PDF (such as filling in a form field, opening a document, etc.) - suggest you grab one and poke about inside, as the handlers are all pretty much the same.
It's important to note that the display of a 3D annot is handled by a plugin shipped with Acrobat and Adobe Reader, and this plugin decides what toolbars, menus, etc. appear. Because plugins don't generally expose themselves to each other, you couldn't override the default 3D toolbar even if you wrote a "plugin plugin", and there are no plans to change the customization options (or lack thereof). I agree with you that some of the tools and context items are a little obscure for Joe Public, but they were indeed designed for use by engineers! 3D PDF came about so CAD/CAM data could be exchanged and reviewed, so it was realistic to expect people opening the files were savvy in how to work with 3D models. They've grown to be more public-facing, but even today the vast majority of 3D PDFs are passed from one engineer to another, who both probably use a Space Pilot instead of the toolbar commands.