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<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div class="huge">
<title>No Title</title>
<div style="text-align:center">FAQ
Geomview
</div>
<span class="normalsize">
<h1>Contents </h1><a href="#tth_sEc1"
>1 General Questions</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc1.1"
>1.1 What is Geomview?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc1.2"
>1.2 How do I download Geomview?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc1.3"
>1.3 What Geomview documentation is available?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc1.4"
>1.4 How can I get in touch with other Geomview users?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2"
>2 Configuration/Installation/ Execution Problems</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.1"
>2.1 The checkboxes and certain other GUI widgets are either absent from Geomview's panels, or don't work when I compile the latest version. What's up?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.2"
>2.2 configure claims it can't find OpenGl on my system, but I'm sure that it is installed</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc2.3"
>2.3 configure claims it can't find Motif (or Lesstif or OpenMotif) on my system, but I'm sure that it is installed </a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3"
>3 Platforms</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3.1"
>3.1 What platforms have binary downloads available?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3.2"
>3.2 There isn't a binary for my workstation. Is there hope?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3.3"
>3.3 Why isn't there a Windows version?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3.4"
>3.4 How fast does Geomview run on various platforms?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3.5"
>3.5 I have access to an X11 and SGI workstation. Which version should I use?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3.6"
>3.6 What happened to the NeXT Quick Renderman version?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc3.7"
>3.7 What modules are shipped for which platforms with the current release?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc4"
>4 Using Geomview</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc4.1"
>4.1 Why don't objects appear in the right places?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc4.2"
>4.2 Why is everything centered and/or on top of each other?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc4.3"
>4.3 How can I display a collection of points?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc4.4"
>4.4 How do I make the points larger?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc4.5"
>4.5 How do I put text into a scene?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc4.6"
>4.6 Can Geomview do volume visualization?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc4.7"
>4.7 Can Geomview do texture maps?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc4.8"
>4.8 Why can't Geomview read my OFF file?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc4.9"
>4.9 How can I animate a sequence of Geomview/OOGL files?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc5"
>5 Output</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc5.1"
>5.1 How can I create a video animation (MPEG/ QuickTime/animated GIF)?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc5.2"
>5.2 How can I save a picture of exactly what I see in a camera window?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc5.3"
>5.3 How can I make a true PostScript file that looks good at multiple resolutions instead of just converting a bitmap into PostScript?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc5.4"
>5.4 Why does my PostScript snapshot look wrong?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc5.5"
>5.5 How can I make a high quality image with RenderMan?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc6"
>6 X Specific Questions</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc6.1"
>6.1 How do I speed up the X11 version?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc6.2"
>6.2 What do the Z-Buffer and Dithering controls in the Cameras panel do?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc6.3"
>6.3 What does "Not enough colors available. Using private colormap" mean?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc6.4"
>6.4 What does "Shared memory unavailable, using fallback display method" mean?</a><br />
<a href="#tth_sEc6.5"
>6.5 Why do I get compiler errors about including files Xm/*.h?</a><br />
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc1"></a><h2>
1 General Questions</h2>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc1.1"></a><h3>
1.1 What is Geomview?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
A general purpose interactive viewing program for Unix. It is used
mostly for 3D graphics but can display data in 2D and 4D as well. See
the overview <a href="http://www.geomview.org/overview"><tt>http://www.geomview.org/overview</tt></a> for more general
comments about Geomview.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc1.2"></a><h3>
1.2 How do I download Geomview?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Geomview is available for free from <a href="http://www.geomview.org/download"><tt>http://www.geomview.org/download</tt></a>.
There are binary distributions for Linux, FreeBSD, SGI, Sun SPARC,
HP-UX, IBM RS/6000, DEC Alpha, and NeXT machines, as well as a source
code distribution.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
You can also download it via anonymous ftp from
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a href="ftp://ftp.geomview.org/pub"><tt>ftp://ftp.geomview.org/pub</tt></a>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Geomview is free software, but we like to hear from people using it.
Please send us mail using register@geomview.org telling us what
you're doing with it.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc1.3"></a><h3>
1.3 What Geomview documentation is available?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
See the Documentation <a href="http://www.geomview.org/docs"><tt>http://www.geomview.org/docs</tt></a> part of this web site.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc1.4"></a><h3>
1.4 How can I get in touch with other Geomview users?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
There is a "geomview-users" mailing list for people using geomview that
can be used for communication between users regarding geomview problems,
questions, experiences, etc. The geomview authors are also a part of
this list and will respond to questions posted to it. We also use this
list to make announcements about new releases and other things of
interest to users. To join the list, send an empty note with 'subscribe'
in the subject line to geomview-users-request@lists.sourceforge.net
, or visit the list web page at:
<a href="http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/geomview-users"><tt>http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/geomview-users</tt></a>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
See also the list of third party software and projects:
<a href="http://www.geomview.org/thirdparty"><tt>http://www.geomview.org/thirdparty</tt></a>.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc2"></a><h2>
2 Configuration/Installation/ Execution Problems</h2>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc2.1"></a><h3>
2.1 The checkboxes and certain other GUI widgets are either
absent from Geomview's panels, or don't work when I compile
the latest version. What's up?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
This problems seems to be associated with recent versions of Lesstif
(e.g. 0.91.x), at least on GNU/Linux. I don't know if it's a problem
with Lesstif itself, or if something is wrong with the way Geomview uses
Lesstif. In the meantime, if you experience this problem, I suggest
compiling Geomview with Open Motif instead of Lesstif. There's a
lightweight binary distribution of Open Motif 2.1.30 available from the
Geomview download page <a href="http://www.geomview.org/download"><tt>http://www.geomview.org/download</tt></a>, with
instructions for using it with Geomview. Or, you can get the full Open
Motif distribution (source or binary) from either <a href="http://www.opengroup.org/motif"><tt>http://www.opengroup.org/motif</tt></a>
or <a href="http://www.openmotif.com"><tt>http://www.openmotif.com</tt></a>.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
If you're familiar with Lesstif and know what might cause this problem
(and especially if you know how to fix it!), please email me
(mbp at geomtech.com).
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc2.2"></a><h3>
2.2 configure claims it can't find OpenGl on my system, but I'm sure that it is installed</h3>
<a id="aswer:OpenGl">
</a>
<ul>
<li> Make sure you passed the argument "-with-opengl=DIR" to configure,
where DIR is the directory containing your OpenGL installation. DIR
should be the absolute path to a directory containing subdirectories
named "include" and "lib". The "include" subdir should in turn
include a subdir called "GL" that has the header file "gl.h" (as
well as other header files) in it. The "lib" directory should
contain the GL library (.so) files.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
<li> Sometimes 'configure' will incorrectly report that OpenGl is missing
when in fact OpenGl is present, but the test for it fails for some
other reason, such as some missing dependent header file or library.
For example, if your installation of X window is screwed up or
incomplete, it can confuse the tests that 'configure' does for
OpenGl. There are two places to look for clues about this:
<ul>
<li> The output from 'configure' itself - look at the lines related
to checking for X window, in particular. If X was not found, or
couldn't be linked with, then that is probably the problem.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
<li> The file 'config.log' that 'configure' writes as it runs. This
file contains all the gory details about the tests that
'configure' is doing. It'll have error messages that may
indicate why certain tests fail. IMPORTANT note about reading
'config.log': many of configure's tests involve loops which try
several possibilities - for example several possible locations
for a header file. 'configure' will write a little program and
try to compile it once for each of these locations, until it
finds one that works. For each one that doesn't work, there will
be error messages in the 'config.log' file. When reading
'config.log', be sure to look for ALL these test, not just the
first one, in trying to decide why a test is failing.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
<li> If the output from 'configure', or the contents of 'config.log',
suggest that some parts of X can't be found (for example if it can't
find certain X header files, like "X11/X.h" or "X11/Intrinsic.h"),
then the problem could be that you have not installed the X window
development package for your system. Some default Linux
distributions include the runtime X package but not the development
package(s). Make sure you've installed whatever packages are
necessary for X development work as well as the runtime X package(s).
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
<li> If 'configure' claims that it can't link with -lGL (or -lGLU) but
you are sure it's there, find the directory containing your
libGL.so.* and libGLU.so.* files; call this directory DIR. DIR will
probably contain one or more files with names like libGL.so.VERSION
and libGLU.so.VERSI ON, where VERSION is some version number,
such as "1.2.0" or "1.2.030200". It should also contain entries
named simply libGL.so and libGLU.so, with no VERSION suffix; these
are usually symbolic links to corresponding files with version
suffixes. For example, on my system I have
<pre>
libGL.so -> libGL.so.1.2.030200
libGLU.so -> libGLU.so.1.2.030200
</pre>
If the links (or files) libGL.so and libGLU.so are not present,
create them by making symbolic links to the corresponding file with
the highest version number.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
I do not understand why these links would be missing in some
installations of OpenGL, because it's my understanding that they
have to be there for programs to link properly. I admit however that
I don't understand all the .so and .so.VERSION stuff, so it could be
that these links aren't really necessary and that some change in
Geomview's configure script or Makefiles could eliminate the need
for them. If you know a way to do this, please let me
[mbp@geomtech.com] know.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc2.3"></a><h3>
2.3 configure claims it can't find Motif (or Lesstif or OpenMotif) on my system, but I'm sure that it is installed </h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Read all the suggestions above in the answer to the analogous question
about OpenGL in section <a href="#aswer:OpenGl">2.2</a>; they all apply equally well to
Motif. (The main header file to look for in the "include" directory is
"Xm/Xm.h").
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc3"></a><h2>
3 Platforms</h2>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc3.1"></a><h3>
3.1 What platforms have binary downloads available?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
SGI Irix, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, SunOS, HP, IBM RS/6000, DEC Alpha
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc3.2"></a><h3>
3.2 There isn't a binary for my workstation. Is there hope?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Certainly. If your workstation has the X Window System, OpenGL, Motif,
and an ANSI (ISO) C compiler, you can compile geomview from the source
code distribution at <a href="http://www.geomview.org/download"><tt>http://www.geomview.org/download</tt></a>.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Note that there is a free version of OpenGL called Mesa
(<a href="http://www.mesa3d.org"><tt>http://www.mesa3d.org</tt></a>)
which runs in software on most of the free
Unixes. See that page for details on the ongoing efforts to incorporate
hardware support for some of the popular graphics cards.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Note also that there is a free version of Motif called lesstif
(www.lesstif.org) <a href="http://www.lesstif.org/"><tt>http://www.lesstif.org/</tt></a>.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
The INSTALL <a href="http://www.geomview.org/docs/INSTALL"><tt>http://www.geomview.org/docs/INSTALL</tt></a> file has instructions
about how to port to new architectures. If you have problems, send mail
to software@geomview.org. If you succeed,
we would appreciate receiving a copy of your "makefile/mk.whatever" and
hearing about what source modifications were necessary. Ideally we'd
also like to include your binaries in our precompiled distribution list.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc3.3"></a><h3>
3.3 Why isn't there a Windows version?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
There is not a native version of Geomview for Microsoft Windows. The
main reason for this is that at the time when Geomview was written,
personal computers were not fast enough to make interactive 3D graphics
feasible so we focused our efforts on Unix workstations. By the time
fast-enough PCs came around, the Geometry Center, where Geomview was
developed, was in the process of being closed. The staff started work on
a port to Windows but was not able to finish it before the Center shut
down.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Geomview can run under Cygwin <a href="http://www.cygwin.com"><tt>http://www.cygwin.com</tt></a>, which provides
Windows with a Unix-alike environment. See Geomview for Windows?
<a href="http://www.geomview.org/windows/"><tt>http://www.geomview.org/windows/</tt></a> for more information.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
If you would like to see a version of Geomview for Windows, you can
contribute to its development in several ways. See Contributing to
Geomview <a href="http://www.geomview.org/contributing"><tt>http://www.geomview.org/contributing</tt></a> for details.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc3.4"></a><h3>
3.4 How fast does Geomview run on various platforms?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
The current speedtest result file <a href="http://www.geomview.org/docs/speeds"><tt>http://www.geomview.org/docs/speeds</tt></a>
is now quite out of date. You can test Geomview on your own platform
using the files found in data/speedtests. Please contribute your timings
back to us so that we can update our master file with results for modern
machines.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc3.5"></a><h3>
3.5 I have access to an X11 and SGI workstation. Which version should I use?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
The SGI version will almost always be significantly faster, due to
hardware support for 3D graphics. For example, a Sun Sparcstation 10 is
slower than an Indy (SGI's old entry level machine). In the future there
might be hardware support for certain OpenGL graphics cards available on
some of the PC Unixes.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc3.6"></a><h3>
3.6 What happened to the NeXT Quick Renderman version?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
We no longer distribute the NeXTStep/OpenStep version of Geomview, which
used the Quick Renderman graphics library. We did this just to simplify
code base maintenance after version 1.5.0. Fat binaries for Motorola,
Intel, and HP-PA architectures for version 1.5.0 are still available in
<a href="http://www.geomview.org/download/dist/geomview-1.5.0-next.tar"><tt>http://www.geomview.org/download/dist/geomview-1.5.0-next.tar</tt></a>.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc3.7"></a><h3>
3.7 What modules are shipped for which platforms with the current release?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
We release almost all external modules for all platforms. The list of
distributed modules is in the README file included in the distributions.
If the module you want is in that list but doesn't appear in the modules
list on main panel, Geomview probably wasn't installed properly. Note
that there are additional modules written by others
<a href="http://www.geomview.org/thirdparty"><tt>http://www.geomview.org/thirdparty</tt></a> which are not part of the main
distribution. The modules supported in the most recent GNU/Linux version of
Geomview (1.9.4) are:
<div style="text-align:center">
<table border="1">
<tr><td align="left"></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">MODULE </td><td width="316">DESCRIPTION </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Animator </td><td width="316">flip through a sequence of objects </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Antiprism models </td><td width="316">Create, transform, analyse, and visualise polyhedra </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">StageTools </td><td width="316">CenterStage, StageManager, StageStills, StageHand - lets you create Geomview objects using mathematical formulas </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Clipboard </td><td width="316">save a single OOGL object to a clipboard </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Clock </td><td width="316">an animated clock </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Draw Boundary </td><td width="316"></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Nose </td><td width="316">debugging/example for picking (see Geomview manual) </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Orrery </td><td width="316">Solar System Visualization </td></tr></table>
</div>
The following modules use tcl/tk:
<div style="text-align:center">
<table border="1">
<tr><td align="left"></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">MODULE </td><td width="316">DESCRIPTION </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">StageTools </td><td width="316">CenterStage, StageManager, StageStills, StageHand - lets you create Geomview objects using mathematical formulas </td></tr></table>
</div>
The following utility programs are also included in the distribution:
<div style="text-align:center">
<table border="1">
<tr><td align="left"></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">UTILITY </td><td width="316">DESCRIPTION </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">anytooff </td><td width="316">convert one or many OOGL files into a single OFF file </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">anytoucd </td><td width="316">convert an OOGL file to UCD (AVS) format </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">bdy </td><td width="316">compute boundary of an object (helper for drawbdy) </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">bez2mesh </td><td width="316">dice BEZ file to list of MESHes </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">clip </td><td width="316">clip objects against plane/sphere/cylinder (helper for ginsu) </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">fd2ps </td><td width="316">xforms </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">fdesign </td><td width="316">xforms </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">hvectext </td><td width="316">generate vector text object </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">math2oogl </td><td width="316">convert Mathematica graphics to OOGL (helper for OOGL.m) </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">offconsol </td><td width="316">polylist vertex consolidator </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">oogl2rib </td><td width="316">convert OOGL to Renderman RIB format </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">oogl2vrml </td><td width="316">convert OOGL to VRML 1.0 </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">oogl2vrml2 </td><td width="316"></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">polymerge </td><td width="316">merge degenerate OFF vertices/edges/faces (to Evolver or OFF) </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">remotegv </td><td width="316">remotegv -help </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">togeomview </td><td width="316">send commands to geomview </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">ucdtooff </td><td width="316">convert UCD (AVS) format to OFF format </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">vrml2oogl </td><td width="316">convert VRML 1.0 to OOGL </td></tr></table>
</div>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc4"></a><h2>
4 Using Geomview</h2>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc4.1"></a><h3>
4.1 Why don't objects appear in the right places?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
When objects aren't appearing where you think they should, it's probably
because normalization is on by default. Normalization simply scales an
object's bounding box to fit into a unit sphere, with the center of the
bounding box translated to the origin. This is useful when examining a
single object, as you can easily view the whole object without having to
worry about how big it is. However, it also means that if you're loading
multiple objects that are supposed to belong in the same coordinate
system, all the objects will be scaled and placed at the origin. To turn
off normalization, bring up the Appearance Panel. The normalization
controls are in the lower-right quadrant of the panel. Select the "None"
option. The alternate hotkey shortcut is '0N'.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
To turn off normalization by default, customize Geomview
like showed in <a href="http://www.geomview.org/docs/html/Customization.html"><tt>http://www.geomview.org/docs/html/Customization.html</tt></a>
by inserting the line (normalization allgeoms
none) into a file called .geomview in your home directory.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
When you turn off normalization your objects might seem to vanish. This
is because the unnormalized objects do not lie in the camera's viewing
cone. The easiest way to see everything is to choose the "World" object
in the Object Browser, then click on "Look At" in the Tools Panel.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc4.2"></a><h3>
4.2 Why is everything centered and/or on top of each other?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
See previous answer.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc4.3"></a><h3>
4.3 How can I display a collection of points?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
The most efficient way to display points in Geomview is to use the VECT
file format. This file format is mainly used for building shapes made
out of lines but we can also use it to specify lines that contain only
one vertex (i.e. points). Let's take a look at an example VECT file that
describes 3 points colored red, green and blue:
<span class="tiny">
<pre>
VECT
3 3 3 # num. of polylines, num. of vertices, num. of colors.
1 1 1 # num. of vertices in each of the 3 polylines,
# in this case only 1 for each since we are doing points.
1 1 1 # num. of colors supplied for each polyline.
-1 -.2 0 # Here are the coordinates of each point.
1 -.2 0
0 .9 0
1 0 0 1 # Color for each vertex in RGBA format.
0 1 0 1
0 0 1 1
</pre>
<span class="normalsize">
<div class="p"><!----></div>
When loading this file into Geomview, you will probably need to turn off
the bounding box (via the appearance panel), otherwise you may not be
able to see the points.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc4.4"></a><h3>
4.4 How do I make the points larger?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
By default, the thickness of lines and points in Geomview is 1. This may
be okay for most lines, but it causes each point to occupy only one
pixel on the computer screen. You can change line and point thickness by
adding an appearance tag to the top your geometry file that looks like
this:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
appearance
linewidth 4.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
In this case, we have increased our line/point size to 4 and any points
we have in our file will now appear as small disks. You can also change
the line width using the Appearance panel. What Geomview actually does
is render each point as a many sided polygon which approximates a disk.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
If you want the points to appear as solid 3-dimensional objects, such as
tiny spheres, you can use a completely different method for representing
them: an INST object with multiple transforms. This lets you specify an
arbitrary geometric shape to be used to represent the points. For
example, the following file represents the three points (1.5, 2.0, 0.1),
(1.0, 0.5, 0.2), and (0.5, 0.3, 0.2) using small cubes:
<pre>
INST
geom {
OFF
8 6 12
-0.05 -0.05 -0.05
0.05 -0.05 -0.05
0.05 0.05 -0.05
-0.05 0.05 -0.05
-0.05 -0.05 0.05
0.05 -0.05 0.05
0.05 0.05 0.05
-0.05 0.05 0.05
4 0 1 2 3
4 4 5 6 7
4 2 3 7 6
4 0 1 5 4
4 0 4 7 3
4 1 2 6 5
}
transforms
1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1.5 2.0 0.1 1
1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1.0 0.5 0.2 1
1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0.5 0.3 0.2 1
#
# these are the matrices:
#
# 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
# 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0
# 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0
# 1.5 2.0 0.1 1 1.0 0.5 0.2 1 0.5 0.3 0.2 1
</pre>
The OFF object between "geom {" and "}" is the cube. The three lines
after the word "transforms" are 4x4 transforms, one for each point. Note
that you can use any valid OOGL expression for the geometry; for
example, if you want to use small dodecahedra to represent points, you
could repace the above OFF object with the following, which references
the dodecahedron object in the file dodec.off (distributed with
Geomview), scaling it by 0.05:
<pre>
INST
geom {
INST
geom { < dodec.off }
transform
.05 0 0 0
0 .05 0 0
0 0 .05 0
0 0 0 1
}
transforms
1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1.5 2.0 0.1 1
1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1.0 0.5 0.7 1
1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0.5 0.3 0.2 1
</pre>
Be aware that the more complicated the geometry you use for your points,
the longer it will take Geomview to refresh the window. This can be
important if you're dealing with a large number of points, in which case
you should stick to very simple point shapes or use the method of
displaying points in - VECT - format.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc4.5"></a><h3>
4.5 How do I put text into a scene?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
You have two options:
<ul>
<li> You can use the Labeler external module, which gives you a GUI for
typing text and selecting the font: either vector or a polygonalized
version of an installed font. However, you need to position the text
in the 3D scene, either by hand or with some other module like
Transformer.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
<li> You can use the hvectext command-line utility program for Hershey
vector fonts, which does let you specify a position for the text.
You would then need to load the resulting file into Geomview.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
</ul>
If you don't need the text to be a 3D object in the scene, you can
create an image <a href="http://www.geomview.org/FAQ/answers.shtml#images"><tt>http://www.geomview.org/FAQ/answers.shtml#images</tt></a> or postscript <a href="http://www.geomview.org/FAQ/answers.shtml#ps"><tt>http://www.geomview.org/FAQ/answers.shtml#ps</tt></a>
file of the scene and then use an image editor such as Illustrator,
Showcase, or XPaint to annotate it with text.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc4.6"></a><h3>
4.6 Can Geomview do volume visualization?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
No, Geomview is intended to do surface visualization. You can either
create an isosurface and then view it using Geomview, or use a volume
visualization package. The free vtk <a href="http://www.vtk.org/"><tt>http://www.vtk.org/</tt></a>
visualization toolkit has extensive support for volume visualization, as
do commercial packages like AVS <a href="http://www.avs.com"><tt>http://www.avs.com</tt></a>, Iris Explorer
.
<a href="http://www.nag.co.uk/Welcome\_IEC.html"><tt>http://www.nag.co.uk/Welcome\_IEC.html</tt></a>, or IBM Data Explorer
. <a href="http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/dataexpl/v8r2/index.jsp"><tt>http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/dataexpl/v8r2/index.jsp</tt></a>. Volvis
<a href="http://labs.cs.sunysb.edu/labs/vislab/volvis/"><tt>http://labs.cs.sunysb.edu/labs/vislab/volvis/</tt></a> is free software specifically for
volume visualization.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc4.7"></a><h3>
4.7 Can Geomview do texture maps?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Yes, in release 1.6 and higher, but only in the OpenGL version, not in
the X11 version.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc4.8"></a><h3>
4.8 Why can't Geomview read my OFF file?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
This is probably due to a different interpretation of how an OFF should
be written. Geomview indexes vertices starting at zero, while some other
programs are known to start at one. The following C program will convert
a plain one-indexed OFF to a zero-indexed OFF.
<pre>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main(void) {
char s[256];
int v, f, i, n, t;
gets(s);
if (strcmp(s, "OFF")) {
fprintf(stderr, "not an OFF\n");
exit(1);
}
puts(s); gets(s); puts(s);
sscanf(s, "%d %d %d", &v, &f, &i);
for (i=0; i!=v; ) {
gets(s);
if (strlen(s)) {
puts(s); i++;
}
}
for (i=0; i!=f; i++) {
scanf("%d", &n);
printf("\n%d", n);
for (v=0; v!=n; v++) {
scanf("%d", &t);
printf(" %d", t-1);
}
}
printf("\n");
return 0;
}
</pre>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc4.9"></a><h3>
4.9 How can I animate a sequence of Geomview/OOGL files?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
You might try using Animator, an external module that is distributed
with all versions of Geomview. With Animator, you can tell Geomview to
read in a sequence of OOGL files and then play through this sequence
forwards, backwards and also in single frame steps using the VCR like
interface <a href="#tthFtNtAAB" id="tthFrefAAB"><sup>1</sup></a>.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
To use Animator click on the Animator entry in Geomview's External
Modules browser. If it does not appear in the browser, then Geomview has
probably not been installed properly. For more information about
Animator read the info panel available through the program or the
man page (by typing man animate).
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc5"></a><h2>
5 Output</h2>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc5.1"></a><h3>
5.1 How can I create a video animation (MPEG/ QuickTime/animated GIF)?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
There are several variants of this question:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<ul>
<li> first variant
<span class="tiny">
<pre>
> I would like to save a sequence of ppm snapshot files of a single
> off object while it is rotating so that I can convert the sequence
> into a movie. The only method I know of is to rotate the object
> slightly with the mouse, stop the motion, and save each frame
> individually. Is there a faster more automatic method, such as a
> command script. If so, do you have a sample command script that I
> could modify?
</pre>
<span class="normalsize">
Two options:
<ul>
<li> If the motion is axis-aligned, it's pretty easy to use the
rotate and snapshot GCL commands together:
<div class="p"><!----></div>
(snapshot targetcam /tmp/foo%03d.rgb)
(transform world world world rotate .1 0 0)
(snapshot targetcam /tmp/foo%03d.rgb)
(transform world world world rotate .1 0 0)
<div class="p"><!----></div>
and so on. The snapshot commanad auto-increments the filename.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
<li> But for a more complex motion than the simple rotation around
the x axis that I have above, consider using StageTools, which
is a suite of tools designed to help people easily make
animations from Geomview. StageTools is included as a module in
recent versions, but if you need to download it is available at
<a href="http://www.geom.umn.edu/software/StageTools/"><tt>http://www.geom.umn.edu/software/StageTools/</tt></a>.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
</ul></span></span>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
<li> second variant
<span class="tiny">
<pre>
> I have used Geomview to view movies with the animation tool. How can
> I convert that movie to another animated format (e.g. an animated
> GIF) so that I can put it on display in a web page, viewable by
> someone without Geomview?
</pre>
<span class="normalsize">
<div class="p"><!----></div>
It's true that StageTools will do this and much more too. But
there's also a very easy way to do this directly inside the Animate
module: the Command function will run an arbitrary GCL command after
each frame. So to automatically take snapshots at each frame, you'd
hit the Command button and type something like
(snapshot c0 /tmp/foo%03d.rgb)
into the text field. Then when you hit play you'll see that it's now
jerky since it's saving an image off to disk each time. You might
want to turn on the "Once" radio button so that it stops after
running through each frame once. Then you can use your program of
choice to create an animated gif or quicktime movie from this bunch
of image files. For instance, on the SGIs you could do this with
"mediaconvert".</span></span>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</li>
</ul>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc5.2"></a><h3>
5.2 How can I save a picture of exactly what I see in a camera window?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Make sure that the camera window you want is the active one, then select
the "Save" item of the "File" menu on the main panel (or use the ">"
hotkey). In the panel that appears, there is a choice box that is set to
Command by default. Select one of the snapshot options, enter the
filename in the Selection input, and click "OK".
<div class="p"><!----></div>
In the SGI version, you have three image snapshot choices: SGI screen,
PPM screen, and PPM software. Both the screen choices literally save the
onscreen pixels into a file, in either SGI (aka RGB) or PPM format. The
PPM software choice will rerender the image into an offscreen buffer
using the software renderer from the vanilla X version of Geomview.
Thus, it might not be pixel by pixel identical to what you see.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
In the X11 version, you have only the PPM choices.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc5.3"></a><h3>
5.3 How can I make a true PostScript file that looks good at multiple resolutions instead of just converting a bitmap into PostScript?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
Make sure that the camera window you want is the active one, then select
the "Save" item of the "File" menu on the main panel (or use the ">"
hotkey). In the panel that appears, there is a choice box that is set to
Command by default. Select the PostScript snapshot option, enter the
filename in the Selection input, and click "OK".
<div class="p"><!----></div>
This method has advantages and disadvantages, compared to saving an
image bitmap. The advantage is that the result is resolution independent
- you can print it on a high resolution printer and not see any jagged
edges. The disadvantages are that our PostScript renderer can't do
smooth shading and uses the painter's algorithm for hidden surface
removal. The latter means that intersecting objects and some other
ill-conditioned scenes will be drawn incorrectly, or even that closer
objects will be drawn behind faraway objects. It often works, but not
always.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc5.4"></a><h3>
5.4 Why does my PostScript snapshot look wrong?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
See previous answer.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc5.5"></a><h3>
5.5 How can I make a high quality image with RenderMan?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
If you have Photorealistic Renderman (a commercial product of Pixar), or
BMRT (Blue Moon Rendering Toolkit, a public domain implementation), you
can create high quality images with transparency and more accurate
lighting in the SGI and X11 versions. To do this, bring up the Save
panel and select "RMan [->tiff]" from the save options. Enter a filename
and click "Ok". Bring up a shell window and change directory to where
you saved the file. Type "render /filename/" (where /filename/ is the
name you saved as). When this finishes, you will have an high quality
image in "/filename/.tiff". To create a higher resolution image (to
reduce jagged edges), edit the file you saved. There will be a line
about fifteen lines down from the top that begins with "Format", i.e.
"Format 450 450 1". The first two numbers are the resolution of the
created image. Change these to what you like (you should keep the ratio
of the numbers the same to avoid distortion), then render the file again.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc6"></a><h2>
6 X Specific Questions</h2>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc6.1"></a><h3>
6.1 How do I speed up the X11 version?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
See the discussion of rendering options in the next question.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc6.2"></a><h3>
6.2 What do the Z-Buffer and Dithering controls in the Cameras panel do?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
These control allow you to change how the X11 version renders objects.
The dithering checkbox, which only appears when running on an eight bit
display, allows you to turn dithering on and off. Dithering is the
method by which Geomview uses a small set of colors (less than 217) to
show any color you request. This is done by placing pixels of slightly
different color next to each other and letting your eye blend them
together. Unfortunately, it takes a fair bit of computing to do this.
Turning it dithering off will speed up rendering, but colors used won't
be exactly what you want. Depending upon your scene, this may be an
acceptable tradeoff.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
The Z-Buffer popup menu allows you to select between three different
methods of hidden line/surface removal: z-buffering, depth sort, and
none. Z-buffering is the most accurate and enables the near and far
clipping planes. Depth sort uses less computing, but will be inaccurate
if objects intersect (polygons will pop in front when they should be
partially obscured) and in certain other circumstances (long, narrow
polygons close to other polygons are one example). Depending on your
scene, using this method could look just the same as z-buffering but be
much faster. The "None" option turns off all hidden line/surface
removal. This is only recommended for a scene which consists of just
lines in one color.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc6.3"></a><h3>
6.3 What does "Not enough colors available. Using private colormap" mean?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
This happens when using the X11 version on an eight bit display
(currently common on workstations). An eight bit display can only show
256 colors simultaneously. These colors are shared by all the programs
running. Once a colorcell has been allocated by an application, its
color is fixed. Geomview tries to grab many colors when it starts. If it
fails to get them, it prints this message and uses a private colormap. A
private colormap means that Geomview now has access to all 256
colorcells. Unfortunately, these colors will only be displayed when the
cursor is inside one of Geomview's windows. The switching of colormaps
when the cursor enters and leaves the windows will give a technicolor
look to the rest of the display.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
If you don't like the technicolor effect, you will have to quit the
programs which are using up colormap space. Examples of programs which
use lots of colormap space are background pictures, image viewers,
visualization software, and WWW browsers.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc6.4"></a><h3>
6.4 What does "Shared memory unavailable, using fallback display method" mean?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
The X11 version of Geomview uses the shared memory extension to move
images quickly between the program and the X server. However, this
method of communicating with the X server only works when running
Geomview on the same machine as the display. If Geomview can't use
shared memory, it prints this message and goes back to using standard X
calls. Everything will work the same, it will just run much slower,
especially if you're running over the network.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tth_sEc6.5"></a><h3>
6.5 Why do I get compiler errors about including files Xm/*.h?</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
You're trying to compile the X11 version and the compiler can't find the
Motif header files. If you have Motif but the headers are in a
nonstandard place, change the "SYSCOPTS" in your
makefiles/mk.$MACHTYPE file. If you don't have Motif, you won't be
able to compile Geomview. In this case, use one of the binary
distributions, if you can.
<div class="p"><!----></div>
</span></span></span></div><hr /><h3>Footnotes:</h3>
<div class="p"><!----></div>
<a id="tthFtNtAAB"></a><a href="#tthFrefAAB"><sup>1</sup></a>Note added by Jorge Barros de Abreu: the VCR
changes to avifile <a href="http://avifile.sourceforge.net/"><tt>http://avifile.sourceforge.net/</tt></a>. We have also kino and muan.
<br /><br /><hr /><small>File translated from
T<sub><span class="small">E</span></sub>X
by <a href="http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/">
T<sub><span class="small">T</span></sub>H</a>,
version 4.03.<br />On 7 Jun 2013, 05:20.</small>
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