3D Demo has about 2% of the functionality that it may eventually have. Currently it is similar to Apple╒s TextureEyes, but much more advanced. The TextureEyes similarities are only because it needed this functionality as a basis for what it may eventually become (which cannot be discussed here).
3D Demo demonstrates the ability to texture map static images, and live video (and if I spend another day, QuickTime movies), onto multiple animated 3D geometries rendered by QuickDraw 3D. With an Apple QuickDraw 3D accelerator, this can perform much greater than 30 frames per second (Heavily dependent upon the size of the texture and whether it is changing. No attempt has yet been made to optimize this).
The software architecture supports
Ñ Multiple simultaneous textures
Ñ Zero or more live textures from video inputs, using a QuickTime sequence grabber
Ñ Any texture can be switched to any source (all video inputs, QuickTime movies, and a collection of static images).
Ñ Any model (cube, page fold, etc╔), can dynamically be switched to any texture
Ñ An extensible set of models (e.g. we can add a sphere model later)
Ñ The ability to use hardware accelerators
Ñ Anti-aliasing (partially implemented)
Ñ Animated model behaviors. For example the cube rotates, and the Page Fold can fold and unfold.
Ñ Setable camera ╤ the view can change such as having the camera orbit the scene
Ñ Ability to synchronize updates with frame rate of video input.
Ñ etc╔
All of the above is implemented partially or fully. The rendering speed is very impressive in Thousands or Millions of colors with an Apple QuickDraw 3D accelerator and Apple QD3D 1.0.6 or later.
Rough edges:
Ñ On a PowerMac 7100av, simply opening the default QuickTime Sequence Grabber Component, produces dark video. A work around is to first Launch and quit Apple's ╥Video Monitor╙ application. I have not begun to look into what is going on here.
Ñ I have a ╥hidden╙ user interface feature. Clicking on the 3D pane of the window will toggle model animation (e.g. the page fold will toggle between openning/closing, and being stopped).
Ñ The ╥Enable Acceleration╙ Checkbox should be dimmed if there is no hardware accelerator.
Ñ The Pause/Play control buttons are currently unimplemented, but are intended to be active and used for textures that are QuickTime movies.
Performance:
With a QD3D accelerator, the default window size draws at rates greater than 67 frames per second on a PowerMac 9500/120. There are however some ╥tricks╙ to acheiving this speed.
1) Use QD3D 1.0.6 or later. 3D Demo runs noticeably faster with version 1.0.6 of QD3D than with earlier versions. QD3D 1.5 slowed things down slightly, then QD3D 1.5.1 sped them up again.
2) Make sure the screen is set to thousands of colors. QD3D with the QD3D accelerator is optimized for thousands and millions of colors. Combined with the other optimizations mentioned below, running in thousands of colors will provide about a 13% performance improvement over millions of colors.
3) Run in the background! With QD3D 1.0.6 and a QuickDraw 3D accelerator, the rendering is significantly sped up over software rendering alone. However no attempt has been made to perform *any* optimizations on the program, yet. One place of inefficiency is related to the application framework used to develop the program. It appears that its default functionality causes it to perform extra overhead on idle events when it is in the foreground. Bringing up the System 7.5 Find File window such that it is in the foreground, and 3D Demo is in the background, and no other windows overlap the 3D Demo window, will add a significant performance improvement of about 50%.
4) If you have an AV machine such as a PowerMac 8500, one of the supported textures can be live video. If this texture is selected, the software converts each video frame to a texture, and this takes additional time. Currently this is true even if it the live video texture is not mapped to a 3D model. The pop-up menu for texture1 defaults to ╥Video╔╙. Change this to any one of the static textures to increase performance.
5) This one is a bit bizarre: *Reboot*. There appears to be some anomoly in how the QD3D accelerator is initialized, such that the first time it is used for texture mapping after a cold boot, it performs *some* acceleration. But if you cold boot, run 3D Demo, Restart, and run 3D Demo again, then 3D Demo runs noticeably faster, in fact about *twice* as fast, the second time around than it did after the cold boot. The effect is dramatic enough that this is probably a known bug, although I have yet to bring this up with Apple Developer Support, or Apple╒s QD3D team.
6) Some popular applications take up significant amounts of idle time, even if they are sitting in the background apparently doing nothing. In general, having a half dozen open applications does not have a significant effect on performance, however certain applications such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, take up significant amounts of time, and can noticeably affect performance. Quitting such applications can significantly improve performance.
Comments/Feedback:
Please send any feedback about 3D Demo to jzipnick@best.com.
Change History:
1.0b3 - 27-Jun-97: Rebuilt with CodeWarrior Pro. Changed alpha texture generation for correct anti-aliasing of edges (now that I finally saw a QD3D accelerator that implements transparency). Changed about screen.
1.0b2 - 17-Jul-96: Rebuilt with CodeWarrior 9. Fixed About Box DITL resource. No functional changes.
1.0b1 - ??-Feb-96
Special Thanks:
Special thanks to Shawn Hopwood for lending us an Apple QuickDraw 3D accelerator until our order arrived. Also to Rick Evans, Pablo Fernicola, and Nick Thompson, and others for their outstanding developer support.
