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1993-04-05
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From: petav@Physik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Peter Averkamp)
Subject: SOFTWARE: ANNOUNCING the vart 3D object toolbox for Khoros
Summary: Vart is a 3d visualization toolbox for Khoros
Keywords: Khoros,visualization,3d
Organization: Leibniz-Rechenzentrum, Muenchen (Germany)
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1993 13:17:43 GMT
Lines: 158
Crossposted from comp.graphics.visualization
---------------------------------------------------
Announcing the vart 3D object toolbox for Khoros 1
---------------------------------------------------
Version: 0.4, by Peter Averkamp
I finally found the time to wrap up this toolbox for public release.
Big excuses to all who have been waiting longer than planned, but lots
of other work from my real job was very pressing. In case you're
wondering why I start this with a version number 0.4, this is simply
the generation number of rewrites that vart has already undergone and
some of you may have got previous versions already.
This will be the last version for Khoros 1, as all future work will go
into K2. I am aware of the fact that this version is currently far
from complete; especially the handling of hierarchy is not satisfying
yet. But I tried to make available all basic functions needed to
create even very complex 3D visualizations. I hope that some of you
have use for what's available, even though the manpages are currently
terse at best (In any case of doubt, you can always look at the source
8=) ). Sorry to say that there is not even a short tutorial available
(yet), but I know that some more-qualified person is in charge of a
real elaborate visualization guide for K2.
I will try to collect some useful examples and hints and make them
available as a bundled tar collection within the next few weeks.
Be aware that none of the formats this release uses is guaranteed to
work with upcoming versions, as K2 offers radically different
capabilities. I will try though, to make conversion paths available.
Short Description:
=================
vart is a toolbox to create 3D object descriptions for visualisation.
It contains modules for generating objects from regular viff data files,
modules for specifying properties for the objects, and modules to create
complex combinations of objects and rendering parameters. A high-quality
(and low speed) portable renderer is included that creates regular viff
images of the objects. The current version number 0.4 is the first
public release and still by no means complete. Some modules are even
in a rather preliminary state and are likely to change dramatically over
time.
Credits:
========
vart uses quite a bit of previously written code by various people;
a_ray and a_text have been developed from the vort package.
I wish to thank Erich Echidna and David Hook from the Department of
Engineering Computer Resources, University of Melbourne, Australia
and the many people who made vort possible. From the vort thank-you list
I pulled the names: Alberto Barsella,Henry Chatroop, Ole Nielsen,
Joe Lappa,Joel Welling,Pavel Rozalski and Eric Haines.
a_iso is a direct Khoros implementation of isobuild. I wish to thank
Brian Tierney from the Imaging Technologies Group at Lawrence Berkeley
Laboratory for making this Implementation of Lorenzen & Cline's
marching cubes algorithm available.
And last but not least the Khoros group cannot be thanked enough for
their excellent system.
available modules:
==================
a_2Dfield (1) - Create a Z-field object
a_box (1) - create Box object(s)
a_colour (1) - create a colour definition
a_combine (1) - Combine scene objects
a_cylindr (1) - create Cylindrical object(s)
a_group (1) - group object(s)
a_instant (1) - instantiate a named object
a_iso (1) - create an isosurface from a viff volume
a_light (1) - create a light source
a_materl (1) - create a Material specification
a_polygon (1) - create Polygon object(s)
a_ray (1) - Raytrace a scene file
a_scene (1) - Create a scene file
a_sphere (1) - create Sperical object(s)
a_text (1) - Create a 3D text object
a_texture (1) - create a Texture specification
a_trafo (1) - create an object Transformation
a_vox (1) - Create a voxel volume dataset
cmap2viff (1) - write the colormap of a file into a VIFF image
loc2viff (1) - write the location data of a file into a VIFF image
viff2cmap (1) - Change a VIFF image into a colormap file
viff2loc (1) - convert a VIFF image into location data
la_ray (3) - Vort Raytracer for Khoros
INSTALLATION:
=============
To unpack vart, cd to the directory where your tolboxes reside and
type 'zcat <path where you ftp-ed it>/vart.0.4.tar.Z | tar xvof -'
This will create the directory 'vart', where all files pertaining
to the toolbox will reside.
I have hacked together a quick installation Makefile in the vart directory.
If all you want is install vart on a single architecture with reasonable
defaults, you should give it a try:
1.If you decided to get pre-made vart binaries:
type 'zcat <path where you ftp-ed it>/vart-decbin.0.4.tar.Z | tar xvof -'
type 'cd vart'
type 'make toolboxfile config fonts message'
To use the a_text binary, you need to set the environment variable
VFONTLIB to point to `pwd`/repos/fonts/binfonts
I recommend adding this environment variable to your shell rc file,
csh users can simply type 'make fontenv'
2.If you are building from source:
All you need to do is init your Khoros environment variables,
cd to the directory 'vart' and type make. If you get some warnings
about Toolbox files, read what make says, fix the problem accordingly
and start over by typing 'make' again. Don't panic, if at some point
you see warnings about lex rules. That's normal.
You can, of course use the khoros tools to do the installation as well.
Look in volume2,Chapter11 for details. You need to watch some points:
-type 'make fonts canren' before doing anything else.
-vart should be linked statically on the sun
For ease-of-use it is recommended to include repos/.Keywords in your
KHOROS_KEYWORDS file or ,if necessary, to create it. As the objects in
vart are currently rather primitive, the extensive use of keywords for
symbolical object definitions can greatly enhance the usefullness of vart.
To get a feeling of how the fonts from a_text look like, you can print
out the files in repos/fonts/ps by typing 'make printfonts'.
Bugs:
=====
If you find any of the many bugs please fill out the Khoros bug report
form in $KHOROS_HOME/repos/BugReport and mail it to
vart-bugs@e20.physik.tu-muenchen.de
Bugfixes, suggestions, etc, should be clearly marked as such on the
subject line and go to the same address. If you mail me directly about
vart, your mail is most likely discarded by my mail processor.
Latest copies of vart are available by anonymous ftp to:
ftp.eece.unm.edu:/pub/khoros/contrib/vart*
ftp.e20.physik.tu-muenchen.de:/khoros/contrib/vart*
Peter Averkamp, April 1993
--
Peter Averkamp, | email:
Physics Department E20 | petav@radon.e20.physik.tu-muenchen.de
Techn. Univ. of Munich | Phone: ++49 (89) 3209-2408
D-8046 Garching, Germany | Fax: ++49 (89) 3209-2338