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<title>Graphics Muse Issue 18</title>
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<H4>
&quot;Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>&quot;
</H4>

<P> <HR> <P> 
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		(c)1997, 1998 Michael J. Hammel (mjhammel@graphics-muse.org)
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				&copy 1997 by
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	<td width=83% align=left valign=top>
		<!-- What is a Graphics Muse? -->
		<FONT size=4><B>muse:</B></FONT>
		<OL>
			<LI><I>v;</I> to become absorbed in thought
			<LI><I>n;</I> [ fr. Any of the nine sister goddesses of learning and the
				arts in Greek Mythology ]: a source of inspiration
		</OL>
		<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/w.gif ALT="W" ALIGN="left" 
			HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" WIDTH="36" HEIGHT="28">elcome 
		to the Graphics Muse!  Why a "muse"?  
		Well, except for the sisters aspect, the above definitions are
		pretty much the way I'd describe my own interest in computer graphics:  
		it keeps me deep in thought and it is a daily source of inspiration.

		<!-- Text based navigation -->
		<P>
		<CENTER>
		<FONT size=2>
		[<A HREF="#mews">Graphics Mews</A>]
		[<A HREF="#musings">Musings</A>]
		[<A HREF="#resources">Resources</A>]
		</FONT>
		<CENTER></td>

</table>

<TABLE width=560>
<tr>
	<td>
	<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/cleardot.gif ALT="indent" ALIGN="left" 
		HSPACE="8" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1">
	<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/t.gif ALT="T" ALIGN="left" 
		HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" WIDTH="26" HEIGHT="28">his 
	column is dedicated to the use, creation, distribution, and discussion of 
	computer graphics tools for Linux systems.  
	This month I'll finally get around to the article on HF-Lab, John
	Beale's wonderful tool for creating 3D Heightfields.  I've been meaning
	to do this for the past few months.  I made sure I made time for it this
	month.
	<BR clear=both>
	&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
	The other article from me this month is a quick update on the 3D modellers
	that are available for Linux.  I didn't really do a comparative review,
	it's more of a ``this is what's available, and this is where to find them''.
	A full comparative review is beyond the scope of this column.  Perhaps
	I'll do one for the Linux Journal sometime in the future.
	<BR clear=both>
	&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
	I had planned to do a preview of the Gimp 1.0 release which is coming
	out very soon.  However, I'll be doing a full article on the Gimp for
	the November graphics issue of <i>Linux Journal</i> and decided to postpone
	the introduction I had planned for the Muse.   
	At the same time I had decided to postpone my preview,
	Larry Ayers contacted me
	to see if I was still doing my Gimp article for the Muse.
	He had planned on doing one on the latest version but didn't want
	to clash with my article.  I told him to feel free and do his
	since I wasn't doing one too.  He has graciously offered to place
	the preview here in the Muse and it appears under the ``More Musings...''
	section.  

	<P>
	
	</td>
</table>


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</A>

<BR clear=both>
<TABLE width=560 border=0>
<tr>
	<td colspan=4>
	<BR clear=both>
	&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		Disclaimer:
		Before I get too far into this I should note that any of the news items I
		post in this section are just that - news.  Either I happened to run 
		across
		them via some mailing list I was on, via some Usenet newsgroup, or via
		email from someone.  I'm not necessarily endorsing these products (some of
		which may be commercial), I'm just letting you know I'd heard about 
		them in the past month.
		<P>

<tr>
	<td colspan=4 bgcolor="#000000" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 valign=top>
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			HSPACE="0" WIDTH="0" HEIGHT="0"></td>

<tr>
	<td colspan=4>
		<H4>
		Zgv v2.8
		</H4>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		Zgv is a graphic file viewer for VGA and SVGA displays
		which supports most popular formats. (It uses svgalib.)
		It provides a graphic-mode file selector to select
		file(s) to view, and allows panning and fit-to-screen
		methods of viewing, slideshows, scaling, etc.
		
		<P>
		Nothing massively special about this release, really, but some of the
		new features are useful, and there is an important bugfix.
		
		<UL>
			<LH><B>New features added</B></LH>
			<LI>PCX support. (But 24-bit PCXs aren't supported.)
		
			<LI>Much faster generation of JPEG thumbnails, thanks to Costa
				Sapuntzakis.
		
			<LI>Optionally ditch the logo to get a proper, full-screen selector,
				with `f' or `z', or with `fullsel on' in config file.
		
			<LI>Thumbnail files can be viewed like other images, and thumbnail 
				files
				are their own thumbnails - this means you can browse thumbnail
				directories even if you don't have the images they represent.
		
			<LI>`-T' option, to echo tagged files on exit.
		</UL>
		
		
		<UL>
			<LH><B>Bugfixes</B></LH>
		
			<LI>Thumbnail create/update for read-only media and DOS filesystems
				fixed. It previously created all of them each time rather than only
				doing those necessary.
		
			<LI>Fixed problem with uncleared display when switching from zoom mode
				to scaling up.
		
			<LI>The switching-from-X etc. now works with kernel 2.0.x. Previously 
				it hanged. (It should still work with 1.2.x, too.)
		
			<LI>Now resets to blocking input even when ^C'ed.
		
			<LI>Various documentation `bugs' fixed, e.g. the `c' and `n' keys
				weren't previously listed.
		</UL>
		
		
		<UL>
			<LH><B>Other changes</B></LH>
		
			<LI>ANSIfied the code. This caught a couple of (as it turned out)
				innocuous bugs. (Fortuitously, they had no ill effect in practice.)
		
			<LI>Updated PNG support to work with libpng 0.81 (and, hopefully, any
				later versions).
		
			<LI>Sped up viewing in 15/16-bit modes a little.
		
			<LI>Incorporated Adam Radulovic's patch to v2.7 allowing more files in
				the directory and reducing memory usage.
		</UL>
		
		Zgv can be found either in
		<BR>
		<A HREF="ftp://sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming">
		sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/Incoming</A> or
		<BR>
		<A HREF="ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/graphics/viewers">
		sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/graphics/viewers</A>.  
		<BR>
		The files of interest
		are zgv2.8-src.tar.gz and zgv2.8-bin.tar.gz.

		<P>
		Editor's Note:  
		I don't normally include packages that aren't X-based, but the
		number of announcements for this month were relatively small so I
		thought I'd go ahead and include this one.  I don't plan on making
		it a practice, however.

		</td>

<tr>
	<td colspan=4 bgcolor="#000000" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 valign=top>
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			HSPACE="0" WIDTH="0" HEIGHT="0"></td>

<tr>
	<td colspan=2 width="50%" valign=top>
		<H4>
		Attention: OpenGL and Direct3D programmers
		</H4>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		<A HREF="mailto:mjk@fangio.asd.sgi.com">
		Mark Kilgard</A>, author of <I>OpenGL Programming for the X Window
		System</I>, posted the following announcement on the 
		<A HREF="news:comp.graphics.api.opengl">
		comp.graphics.api.opengl</A> newsgroup.  I thought it might
		be of interest to at least a few of my readers.

		<FONT size=2>
		<P>
		The URL below explains a fast and effective technique for applying
		texture mapped text onto 3D surfaces.  The full source code for a
		tool to generate texture font files (.txf files) and an API for
		easy rendering of the .txf files using OpenGL is provided.

		<P>
		For a full explanation of the technique including sample images
		showing how the technique works, please see:

		<BR>
		<A HREF="http://reality.sgi.com/mjk_asd/tips/TexFont/TexFont.html">
		http://reality.sgi.com/mjk_asd/
		<BR>
			&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
			tips/TexFont/TexFont.html</A>

		<P>
		Direct3D programmers are invited to see how easy and powerful OpenGL
		programming is.  In fact, the technique demonstrated is not
		immediately usable on Direct3D because it uses intensity textures (I
		believe not in Direct3D), polygon offset, and requires alpha testing,
		alpha blending, and texture modulation (not required to be implemented
		by Direct3D). I mean this to be a constructive demonstration of the
		technical inadequacies of Direct3D.
		</FONT>

		</td>

	<td colspan=2 width="50%">
		<table>
		<tr>
			<td colspan=2>
			<P>
			<FONT size=2>
			I hope you find the supplied source code, texture font
			generation utility, sample .txf files, and explanation quite useful.
			</FONT>

			<P>
			Note: for those that aren't aware of it, Direct3D is Microsoft's
			answer to OpenGL.  Despite their original support of OpenGL, they
			aparently decided to go with a different 3D standard, one they
			invented (I think).  Anyway, the discussion on
			comp.graphics.api.opengl of late has been focused on which of the two
			technologies is a better solution.

			</td>

		<tr>
			<td colspan=2 bgcolor="#000000" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 valign=top>
				<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/cleardot.gif ALT="indent" ALIGN="left" 
					HSPACE="0" WIDTH="0" HEIGHT="0"></td>

		<tr>
			<td width=1 bgcolor="#000000" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 valign=top>
				<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/cleardot.gif ALT="indent" ALIGN="left" 
					WIDTH="0" HEIGHT="0"></td>

		<td>
			<H4>
			Epson PhotoPC and PhotoPC 500 digital cameras
			</H4>
			&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
			Epson PhotoPC and PhotoPC 500 are digital still cameras.  They are
			shipped with Windows and Mac based software to download the pictures
			and control the camera parameters over a serial port.

			<P>
			Eugene Crosser wrote a C library and a command-line tool to 
			perform the same tasks under UNIX.  See

			<P>
			&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
        	<A HREF="ftp://ftp.average.org/pub/photopc/">
        	ftp://ftp.average.org/pub/photopc/</A>
	
			<P>
			MD5(photopc-1.0.tar.gz)= 9f286cb3b1bf29d08f0eddf2613f02c9

			<P>
			Eugene Crosser; 2:5020/230@fidonet; 
			<A HREF="http://www.average.org/~crosser/">
			http://www.average.org/~crosser/</A>

			<P>
			</td>

		</table>
		</td>


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	<td colspan=4 bgcolor="#000000" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 valign=top>
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			HSPACE="0" WIDTH="0" HEIGHT="0"></td>

<tr>
	<td colspan=4>
		<H4>ImageMagick V3.8.5</H4>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		Alexander Zimmerman has released a new version of ImageMagick.
		The announcment, posted to comp.os.linux.announce, reads
		as follows:
		<BLOCKQUOTE>
		I just uploaded to sunsite.unc.edu
		<P>
   	ImageMagick-3.8.5-elf.lsm
		<BR>
   	ImageMagick-3.8.5-elf.tgz
		<P>
		This is the newest version of my binary distribution of ImageMagick.
		It will move to the places listed in the LSM-entry at the end of this
		message. Please remember to get the package  libIMPlugIn-1.1  too,
		to make it working.
		<P>
		This version brings together a number of minor changes made to
		accomodate PerlMagick and lots of minor bug fixes including
		multi-page TIFF decoding and writing PNG.
		<P>
		ImageMagick (TM), version 3.8.5, is a package for display and
		interactive manipulation of images for the X Window System.
		ImageMagick performs, also as command line programs, among others
		these functions:

		<UL>
			<LI>Describe the format and characteristics of an image 
			<LI>Convert an image from one format to another 
			<LI>Transform an image or sequence of images 
			<LI>Read an image from an X server and output it as an image file 
			<LI>Animate a sequence of images 
			<LI>Combine one or more images to create new images 
			<LI>Create a composite image by combining several separate images 
			<LI>Segment an image based on the color histogram 
			<LI>Retrieve, list, or print files from a remote network site 
		</UL>
		ImageMagick also supports the Drag-and-Drop protocol from the OffiX
		package and many of the more popular image formats including JPEG,
		MPEG, PNG, TIFF, Photo CD, etc.

		<table>
		<tr>
			<td rowspan=3 valign=top>
			<B>
			Primary-site:   
			</B>
			</td>
			<td>
				ftp.wizards.dupont.com /pub/ImageMagick/linux
			</td>
		<tr>
			<td>
                 986k ImageMagick-i486-linux-ELF.tar.gz
			</td>
		<tr>
			<td>
                 884k PlugIn-i486-linux-ELF.tar.gz
			</td>

		<tr>
			<td rowspan=6 valign=top>
			<B>
				Alternate-site: 
			</B>
			</td>
			<td>
			sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/apps/graphics/viewers/X
			</td>
		<tr>
			<td>
                 986k ImageMagick-3.8.5-elf.tgz
			</td>
		<tr>
			<td>
                   1k ImageMagick-3.8.5-elf.lsm
			</td>
		<tr>
			<td>
                sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/libs/graphics
			</td>
		<tr>
			<td>
                 884k libIMPlugIn-1.1-elf.tgz
			</td>
		<tr>
			<td>
                   1k libIMPlugIn-1.1-elf.lsm

		<tr>
			<td rowspan=5 valign=top>
			<B>
				Alternate-site: 
			</B>
			</td>

			<td>
			ftp.forwiss.uni-passau.de /pub/linux/local/ImageMagick
			</td>

		<tr>
			<td>
                 986k ImageMagick-3.8.5-elf.tgz
			</td>
		<tr>
			<td>
                   1k ImageMagick-3.8.5-elf.lsm
			</td>
		<tr>
			<td>
                 884k libIMPlugIn-1.1-elf.tgz
			</td>
		<tr>
			<td>
                   1k libIMPlugIn-1.1-elf.lsm
			</td>
		</table>


		</td>

<tr>
	<td colspan=4 bgcolor="#000000" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 valign=top>
		<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/cleardot.gif ALT="indent" ALIGN="left" 
			HSPACE="0" WIDTH="0" HEIGHT="0"></td>

<tr>
	<td width=50%>
		<H4>
		VARKON Version 1.15A
		</H4>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		VARKON is a high level development tool for
		parametric CAD and engineering applications
		developed by Microform, Sweden.
		1.15A includes new parametric functions for
		creation and editing of sculptured surfaces
		and rendering based on OpenGL.

		<P>
		Version 1.15A of the free version for Linux
		is now available for download at:
		<BR>
		<A HREF="http://www.microform.se">
		http://www.microform.se</A>
 
		</td>

	<td bgcolor="#000000" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 valign=top>
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			HSPACE="0" WIDTH="0" HEIGHT="0"></td>
	<td bgcolor="#ffffff" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 valign=top>
		<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/cleardot.gif ALT="indent" ALIGN="left" 
			WIDTH="0" HEIGHT="0"></td>

	<td width=49%>
		<H4>
		Shared library version of xv 3.10a
		</H4>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		xv-3.10a-shared is the familiar image viewer program with all current
		patches modified to use the shared libraries provided by libgr.
		<P>
		xv-3.10a-shared is available from 
		<A HREF="ftp://ftp.ctd.comsat.com/pub/">
		ftp://ftp.ctd.comsat.com/pub/</A>.
		libgr-2.0.12.tar.gz is available from
		<A HREF="ftp://ftp.ctd.comsat.com/pub/linux/ELF/">
		ftp://ftp.ctd.comsat.com/pub/linux/ELF/</A>.
 
		</td>

<tr>
	<td colspan=4 bgcolor="#000000" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 valign=top>
		<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/cleardot.gif ALT="indent" ALIGN="left" 
			HSPACE="0" WIDTH="0" HEIGHT="0"></td>

<tr>
	<td colspan=4>
		<H4>
		t1lib-0.2-beta - 
		A Library for generating Bitmaps from Adobe Type 1 Fonts
		</H4>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		t1lib is a library for generating character- and string-glyphs from
		Adobe Type 1 fonts under UNIX. t1lib uses most of the code of the X11
		rasterizer donated by IBM to the X11-project. But some disadvantages
		of the rasterizer being included in X11 have been eliminated. Here are
		the main features:
		
		<UL>
			<LI>t1lib is completely independent of X11 (although the program
				provided for testing the library needs X11)
			<LI>fonts are made known to library by means of a font database file at
				runtime
			<LI>searchpaths for all types of input files are configured by means
				of a configuration file at runtime
			<LI>characters are rastered as they are needed
			<LI>characters and complete strings may be rastered by a simple 
				function call
			<LI>when rastering strings, pairwise kerning information from 
				.afm-files may optionally be taken into account
			<LI>an interface to ligature-information of afm-files is provided
			<LI>rotation is supported at any angle
			<LI>there's limited support for extending and slanting fonts
			<LI>new encoding vectors may be loaded at runtime and fonts may be
				reencoded using these encoding vectors 
			<LI>antialiasing is implemented using three gray-levels between 
				black and white
			<LI>a logfile may be used for logging runtime error-, warning- and 
				other messages
			<LI>an interactive test program called "xglyph" is included in the
				distribution. This program allows to test all of the features of the
				library. It requires X11.
		</UL>
		
		Author: Rainer Menzner 
		(<A HREF="mailto:rmz@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de">
		rmz@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de</A>)
		<P>
		You can get t1lib by anonymous ftp at:
		<BR>

		<A HREF="ftp://ftp.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/pub/software/t1lib/t1lib-0.2-beta.tar.gz">
		ftp://ftp.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/
		<BR>
		&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
			pub/software/t1lib/t1lib-0.2-beta.tar.gz</A>

		<P>
		An overview of t1lib including some screenshots of xglyph can be
		found at:
		<BR>
		<A HREF="http://www.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/ini/PEOPLE/rmz/t1lib.html">
		http://www.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/
		<BR>
		&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
			ini/PEOPLE/rmz/t1lib.html</A>
		</td>
  
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<tr>
	<td colspan=4>
		<H4>
      Freetype Project - The Free TrueType Font Engine
		<BR>
		Alpha Release 4
		</H4>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		The FreeType library is a free and portable TrueType font rendering
		engine.  This package, known as `Alpha Release 4' or `AR4', contains the
		engine's source code and documentation.


		<P>
		What you'll find in this release are:
		<UL>
			<LI> better portability of the C code than in the previous release.
			<LI> font smoothing, a.k.a. gray-level rendering.
			Just like Win95, only the diagonals and curves are smoothed, while the
			vertical and horizontal stems are kept intact.
			<LI> support for all character mappings, as well as glyph indexing and
			translation functions (incomplete).
			<LI> full-featured TrueType bytecode interpreter !!
			The engine is now able to hint the glyphs, thus producing an excellent
			result at small sizes.  We now match the quality of the bitmaps
			generated by Windows and the Mac!  Check the `view' test program for a
			demonstration.
			<LI> loading of composite glyphs.
			It is now possible to load and display composite glyphs with the `zoom'
			test program.  However, composite glyph hinting is not implemented yet
			due to the great incompleteness of the available TrueType
			specifications.
		</UL>

		Also, some design changes have been made to allow the support of the
		following features, though they're not completely implemented yet:
		<UL>
      <LI> multiple opened font instances
      <LI> thread-safe library build
      <LI> re-entrant library build
      <LI> and of course, still more bug fixes ;-)
		</UL>

		Source is provided in two programming languages: C and Pascal, with some
		common documentation and several test programs.
		The Pascal source code has been successfully compiled and run with Borland
		Pascal 7 and fPrint's Virtual Pascal on DOS and OS/2, respectively.
		The C source code has been successfully compiled and run on various
		platforms including DOS, OS/2, Amiga, Linux and several other variants of
		UNIX.  It is written in ANSI C and should be very easily ported to any
		platform.
		Though development of the library is mainly performed on OS/2 and Linux, 
		the
		library does not contain system-specific code.
		However, this package contains some graphics drivers used by the test
		programs for display purposes on DOS, OS/2, Amiga and X11.

		<P>
		Finally, the FreeType Alpha Release 4 is released for informative and
		demonstration purpose only.  The authors provide it `as is', with no
		warranty.

		<P>
		The file freetype-AR4.tar.gz (about 290K)
		is available now at 
		<A HREF="ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/fonts">
		ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/fonts</A>
		or at the FTP site in:
		<A HREF="ftp://ftp.physiol.med.tu-muenchen.de/pub/freetype">
		ftp://ftp.physiol.med.tu-muenchen.de/pub/freetype</A>

		<P>
       Web page:
		<BR>
          <A HREF="http://www.physiol.med.tu-muenchen.de/~robert/freetype.html">
          http://www.physiol.med.tu-muenchen.de/~robert/freetype.html</A>
		<BR>
		The home site of the FreeType project is
		<BR>
           <A HREF="ftp://ftp.physiol.med.tu-muenchen.de/pub/freetype">
           ftp://ftp.physiol.med.tu-muenchen.de/pub/freetype</A>

		<BR>
		There is also a mailing list:
		<BR>
           <A HREF="mailto:freetype@lists.tu-muenchen.de">freetype@lists.tu-muenchen.de</A>

		<BR>
		Send the usual subscription commands to:
		<BR>
           <A HREF="mailto:majordomo@lists.tu-muenchen.de">majordomo@lists.tu-muenchen.de</A>

		<P>
		<table>
		<tr>
			<td valign=top> Copyright 1996 
				</td>
			<td valign=top>
				David Turner <turner@enst.fr>
				</td>
		<tr>
			<td valign=top rowspan=2> Copyright 1997 
				</td>
			<td valign=top>
				Robert Wilhelm  <robert@physiol.med.tu-muenchen.de>
				</td>
		<tr><td valign=top> Werner Lemberg  <a7971428@unet.univie.ac.at>
			</td>
		</table>
		</td>

	</td>


<tr>
	<td colspan=4 bgcolor="#ffffff" cellpadding=1 cellspacing=0 valign=top>
	<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/cleardot.gif ALT="indent" ALIGN="left" 
		VSPACE="5" HSPACE="10" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1"></td>
<tr>
	<td colspan=4 bgcolor="#000000" cellpadding=1 cellspacing=0 valign=top>
		<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/cleardot.gif ALT="indent" ALIGN="left" 
			HSPACE="0" WIDTH="0" HEIGHT="0"></td>
<tr>
	<td colspan=4 bgcolor="#ffffff" cellpadding=1 cellspacing=0 valign=top>
	<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/cleardot.gif ALT="indent" ALIGN="left" 
		VSPACE="5" HSPACE="10" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1"></td>

<tr>
	<td colspan=4>
		<!--
		  -- Did You Know Section
		  -->
		<H4>Did You Know?</H4>
		...the Portal web site for <B>xanim</B> has closed down.
		The new primary sites are:
		<BLOCKQUOTE>
        <A HREF="http://xanim.va.pubnix.com/home.html">
        http://xanim.va.pubnix.com/home.html</A>
			<BR>
        <A HREF="http://smurfland.cit.buffalo.edu/xanim/home.html">
        http://smurfland.cit.buffalo.edu/xanim/home.html</A>
			<BR>
        <A HREF="http://www.tm.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/xanim/">
        http://www.tm.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/xanim/</A>
			<p>
        The latest revision of xanim is 2.70.6.4.
		</BLOCKQUOTE>

		<P>
		I got the following message from a reader.  Feel free to contact
		him with your comments.  I have no association with this project.
		<BLOCKQUOTE>
		I'm currently working on an application to do image processing and
		Computer Vision tasks.
		In the stage of development, I would like to know what the
		community expects from such a product, so if you would like the status 
		of the work, please come and visit:
		<BR>
		<A HREF="http://www-vision.deis.unibo.it/~cverond/cvw">
		http://www-vision.deis.unibo.it/~cverond/cvw</A>
		<BR>
		Expecially the "sample" section, where you can see some of the
		application's functionality at work, and leave me a feedback.
		Thanks for your help.  Cristiano Verondini
		<A HREF="mailto:cverondini@deis.unibo.it|">
		cverondini@deis.unibo.it|</A>
		</BLOCKQUOTE>


		<!--
		  -- Q and A Section
		  -->
		<P><FONT size=3><B>Q and A</B></FONT>
		<P>
		<I>Q: Can someone point me to a good spot to download 
			some software to make a good height map?
		</I>
		<P>A: 
			I'd suggest you try either John Beale's hflab available at:
			<A HREF="http://shell3.ba.best.com/~beale/">
			http://shell3.ba.best.com/~beale/</A>
			Look under sources. You will find executables for Unix and
			source code for other systems. It is pretty good at manipulating
			and creating heightfields and is great at making heightfields 
			made in a paint program more realistic.

			<BR>
			&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
			For the ultimate in realism use dem2pov by Bill Kirby, also
			available at John Beale's web site 
			to convert DEM files to TGA heightfields. You can get
			DEM files trough my DEM mapping project at
			<A HREF="http://www.sn.no/~svalstad/hf/dem.html">
			http://www.sn.no/~svalstad/hf/dem.html</A>
			or directly from
			<A HREF="ftp://edcftp.cr.usgs.gov/pub/data/DEM/250/">
			ftp://edcftp.cr.usgs.gov/pub/data/DEM/250/</A>

			<BR>
			&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
			As for your next question about what the pixel values of
			heightfields mean, there are three different situations:
			<OL>
				<LI>High quality heightfields use a 24bit TGA or PNG
					file to store 16 bit values with the most significant byte 
					in the red component, the least significant byte in the green 
					component and the blue component empty.
				<LI> 8bit GIF files store a colour index where the colour with
					index number 0 becomes the lowest part of the heightfield
					and the colour
					with index number 255 becomes the highest part.
				<LI> 8bit greyscale GIF files; the darkest colours become the
					lowest part of the heightfield and the lightest colours 
					becomes the higherst part.
			</OL>
			<FONT size=2>
			From
			Stig M. Valstad via the IRTC-L mailing list
			<BR>
			<A HREF="mailto:svalstad@sn.no">
			svalstad@sn.no</A>
			<BR>
			<A HREF="http://www.sn.no/~svalstad">
			http://www.sn.no/~svalstad</A>
			</FONT>

		<P>
		<I>Q: Sorry to pester you but I've read your minihowto on
			graphics in Linux and I still haven't found what I'm
			looking for.  Is there a tool that will convert a collection
			of TGA files to one MPEG file in Linux?
		</I>
		<P>A: 
		I don't know of any offhand, but check the following pages.  They might
		have pointers to tools that could help.

		<BR>
		<CENTER>
		<A HREF="http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/multimedia/animation/mpeg/berkeley-mirror/">
		http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/multimedia/animation/mpeg/berkeley-mirror/</A>
		<A HREF="http://xanim.va.pubnix.com/home.html">
		http://xanim.va.pubnix.com/home.html</A> (this is Xanim's home page).
		</CENTER>
		You probably have to convert your TGA's to another format 
		first, then encode
		them with mpeg_encode (which can be found at the first site listed above).

		<P>
		<I>Q: Where can I find some MPEG play/encode tools?
		</I>
		<P>A: 
		<A HREF="http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/multimedia/animation/mpeg/berkeley-mirror/">
		http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/multimedia/animation/mpeg/berkeley-mirror/</A>

		<P>
		<I>Q: 
			Where can I find free textures on the net in BMP, GIF, JPEG, and 
			PNG formats?
		</I>
		<P>A: 
		Try looking at:
		<BR>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		<A HREF="http://axem2.simplenet.com/heading.htm">
		http://axem2.simplenet.com/heading.htm</A>

		<P>
		These are the textures I've started using in my OpenGL demos.
		They are very professional.  There are excellent brick and
		stone wall textures.  If you are doing a lot of modeling of
		walls and floors and roads, the web site offers a CD-ROM
		with many more textures.

		<P>
		Generally, I load them into "xv" (an X image viewer utility)
		and resample them with highest-quality filtering to be on
		even powers of two and then save them as a TIFF file.  I
		just wish they were already at powers of two so I didn't have
		to resample.

		<P>
		Then, I use Sam Leffler's very nice libtiff library to read
		them into my demo.  I've got some example code of loading TIFF
		images as textures at:
		<BR>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		<A HREF="http://reality.sgi.com/mjk_asd/tiff_and_opengl.html">
		http://reality.sgi.com/mjk_asd/tiff_and_opengl.html</A>

		<P>
		<FONT size=2>
		From: Mark Kilgard 
		&lt;<A 
			HREF="mailto:mjk@fangio.asd.sgi.com">mjk@fangio.asd.sgi.com</A>&gt;,
		author of <I>OpenGL Programming for the X Window System</I>, via the 
		<A HREF="news:comp.graphics.api.opengl">
		comp.graphics.api.opengl</A> newsgroup.
		</FONT>

		<P>
		<I>Q: Why can't I feed the RIB files exported by AMAPI directly
			into BMRT?
		</I>
		<P>A: 
		According to 
		<a HREF="mailto:shem@warehouse.net">shem@warehouse.net</A>:
		<BLOCKQUOTE>
		Thomas Burge from Apple who has both the NT and Apple versions of
		AMAPI explained to me what the situation is - AMAPI only exports
		RIB entity files; you need to add a fair chunk of data before
		a RIB WorldBegin statement to get the camera in the right place and
		facing the right way. As it were, no lights were enabled and my camera
		was positioned underneath the object, facing down! There is also a
		Z-axis negation problem in AMAPI, which this gentleman pointed out to me
		and gave me to the RIB instructions to compensate for it.
		</BLOCKQUOTE>

		<P>
		<I>Q: 
		Is there an OpenGL tutorial on-line?  The sample
		code at the OpenGl WWW center seems pretty advanced to me. 
		</I>
		<P>A: 
		There are many OpenGL tutorials on the net.  Try looking at:
		<BR>
		<A HREF="http://reality.sgi.com/mjk_asd/opengl-links.html">
		http://reality.sgi.com/mjk_asd/opengl-links.html</A>

		<P>
		Some other good ones are:
		<UL>
			<LI>OpenGL overview -
			<A HREF="http://www.sgi.com/Technology/openGL/paper.design/opengl.html">
				http://www.sgi.com/Technology/openGL/paper.design/opengl.html</A>
			<LI> OpenGL with Visual C++ -
			<A HREF="http://www.iftech.com/oltc/opengl/opengl0.stm">
			http://www.iftech.com/oltc/opengl/opengl0.stm</A>
			<LI> OpenGL and X, an intro -
			<A HREF="http://www.sgi.com/Technology/openGL/mjk.intro/intro.html">
			http://www.sgi.com/Technology/openGL/mjk.intro/intro.html</A>
		</UL>

		<FONT size=2>
		From Mark Kilgard
		</FONT>

		<P>
		<I>Q: So, like, is anyone really reading this column?
		</I>
		<P>A: 
			I have no idea.  Is anyone out there?
 
		</td>

<tr>
	<td colspan=4 bgcolor="#ffffff" cellpadding=1 cellspacing=0 valign=top>
	<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/cleardot.gif ALT="indent" ALIGN="left" 
		VSPACE="5" HSPACE="10" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1"></td>
<tr>
	<td colspan=4 bgcolor="#000000" cellpadding=1 cellspacing=0 valign=top>
		<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/cleardot.gif ALT="indent" ALIGN="left" 
			HSPACE="0" WIDTH="0" HEIGHT="0"></td>
<tr>
	<td colspan=4 bgcolor="#ffffff" cellpadding=1 cellspacing=0 valign=top>
	<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/cleardot.gif ALT="indent" ALIGN="left" 
		VSPACE="5" HSPACE="10" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1"></td>
</table>



<P>
<A NAME="musings">
<table>
<tr>
<td>
<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/musings.gif ALT="Musings" ALIGN="left" 
	HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" WIDTH="247" HEIGHT="52">
</td>
</table>
</A>
<BR clear=both>

<TABLE width=560>
<tr>
	<td valign=top>
		<H4>
		3D Modellers Update
		</H4>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		Recently there has been a minor explosion of 3D modellers.  Most of the 
		modellers I found the first time out are still around, although
		some are either no longer being developed or the developers have
		not released a new version in awhile.  Since I haven't really
		covered the range of modellers in this column since I started back
		in November 1996, I decided it was time I provided a brief overview
		of what's available and where to get them.
		<BR>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		The first thing to do is give a listing of what tools are 
		available.  The following is the list of modellers I currently
		know about, in no particular order:
		<P>
		<CENTER>
		<table>
		<tr>
			<td valign=top>
				<UL>
					<LI>AC3D
					<LI>SCED/SCEDA
					<LI>Midnight Modeller
					<LI>AMAPI
					<LI>Bentley Microstation 95
				</UL>
				</td>
			<td valign=top>
				<UL>
					<LI>Aero
					<LI>Leo3D
					<LI>MindsEye
					<LI>3DOM
				</UL>
				</td>
		</table>
		</CENTER>
		There is also the possibility that bCAD is available for Linux
		as a commercial port, but I don't have proof of this yet.  Their web
		site is very limited as to contact information, so I wasn't able to
		send them email to find out for certain.  The web pages at 3DSite
		for bCAD do not list any Unix ports for bCAD, although they appear
		to have a command line renderer for Unix.
		<BR>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		There are
		also a couple of others I'm not sure how to classify, but the
		modelling capabilities are not as obvious so I'll deal with them in
		a future update (especially if they contact me with details on their
		products).
		
		<BR>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		All of these use graphical, point-and-click style interfaces.  
		Other modellers use programming languages but no graphical
		interface, such as POV-Ray, Megahedron and BMRT (via its RenderMan
		support).  Those tools are not covered by this discussion.

		<BR>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
		The list of modellers can be broken into three categories:  stable,
		under development, and commercial.  The stable category
		includes AC3D, SCED/SCEDA, and Midnight Modeller.  Commercial 
		modellers are the AMAPI and Megahedron packages, and Bentley
		Microstation.  The latter is actually free for
		non-commercial unsupported use, or $500 with support.  Below are
		short descriptions of the packages, their current or best known status and
		contact information.  The packages in the table are listed
		alphabetically.

		<P>
		<table width=560 border=2>
		<tr>
			<th colspan=4 align=center bgcolor=#99ffff>
				Product and description</th>
		<tr>
			<th width=20% align=left bgcolor=#3399ff>
				Imports</th>
			<th width=20% align=left bgcolor=#3399ff>
				Exports</th>
			<th width=20% align=left bgcolor=#3399ff>
				Availability</th>
			<th width=20% align=left bgcolor=#3399ff>
				Contact</th>
		</table>

		<P>
		<table width=560 border=1>
		<tr>
			<td colspan=4 align=left valign=top  bgcolor=#99ffff>
				<A HREF="./gx/hammel/3dom.gif">3DOM</A> -
				<FONT size=2>
				Very early development.  I haven't tried this one yet.
				</FONT>
				</td>
		<tr>
			<td align=left valign=top>
				<FONT size=2>
				Unknown
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=left valign=top>
				<FONT size=2>
				Unknown
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=center>
				<FONT size=2>
				Freeware
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=center>
				<FONT size=2>
				<A HREF="http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/cwis/research/graphics/3DOM/">
				 http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/cwis/research/graphics/3DOM/
				</FONT>
				</td>
		</table>

		<P>
		<table width=560 border=1>
		<tr>
			<td colspan=4 align=left valign=top  bgcolor=#99ffff>
				<A HREF="../gx/hammel/ac3d.jpg">AC3D</A> -
				<FONT size=2>
				OpenGL based vertex modeller with multiple, editable views plus
				a 3D view.  Includes ability to move, rotate, resize, position,
				and extrude objects.  
				Objects can be named and hidden.  Includes support for 2D
				(line (both poly and polylines) , circle, rectangle, ellipse, 
				and disk) and 3D (box, sphere, cylinder and mesh).  Fairly nice
				3D graphical interface that looks like Motif but doesn't
				require Motif libraries.
				</FONT>
				</td>
		<tr>
			<td align=left valign=top>
				<FONT size=2>
				Imports DXF, Lightwave, Triangle, vector formatted object files.
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=left valign=top>
				<FONT size=2>
				Generates RenderMan, POV-Ray 2.2, VRML, Massive, DVS, Dive and 
				Triangle formatted object files.
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=center>
				<FONT size=2>
				Shareware
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=center>
				<A HREF="http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/users/andy/ac3dlinux.html">
				<FONT size=2>
				http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/
					<BR>computing/users/andy/ac3dlinux.html</A>
				</FONT>
				</td>
		</table>

		<P>
		<table width=560 border=1>
		<tr>
			<td colspan=4 align=left valign=top  bgcolor=#99ffff>
				Aero -  The following is taken from the documentation
				that accompanies the package:
				<FONT size=2>
				<BLOCKQUOTE>
				AERO is a tool for editing and simulating scenes with rigid body
				systems. You can use the built-in 4-view editor to create a virtual
				scene consisting of spheres, cuboids, cylinders, planes and fix
				points. You can link these objects with rods, springs, dampers and
				bolt joints and you can connect forces to the objects. Then you can
				begin the simulation and everything starts moving according to the
				laws of physics (gravitation, friction, collisions). The simulation
				can be viewed as animated wire frame graphics. In addition you can
				use POV-Ray to render photo-realistic animation sequences.
				</BLOCKQUOTE>
				This package requires the FSF Widget library, which I don't
				have.  The last time I tried to compile that library it didn't
				work for me, but maybe the build process works better now.
				Anyway, I haven't seen this modeller in action.
				</FONT>
				</td>
		<tr>
			<td align=left valign=top>
				<FONT size=2>
				Proprietary ASCII text format
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=left valign=top>
				<FONT size=2>
				POV-Ray
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=center>
				<FONT size=2>
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=center>
				<FONT size=2>
				<A HREF="http://www.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/ipvr/bv/aero/">
				http://www.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/ipvr/bv/aero/</A>
				<BR>
				<A HREF="ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pub/AERO">
				ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pub/AERO</A>
				</FONT>
				</td>
		</table>

		<P>
		<table width=560 border=1>
		<tr>
			<td colspan=4 align=left valign=top  bgcolor=#99ffff>
				<A HREF="./gx/hammel/amapi.jpg">AMAPI</A> - 
				<FONT size=2>
				Fairly sophisticated, including support for NURBS and a
				macro language.  Interface is quit unique for X applications,
				probably based on OpenGL.  
				The version available from Sunsite doesn't
				work quite right on my system.  Some windows don't get drawn
				unless a refresh is forced and the method for doing a refresh
				is kind of trial-and-error.  The trial version of 2.11 has 
				the same problem.  Perhaps this is a problem with the OpenGL
				they use, although a check with ldd doesn't show any
				dependencies on OpenGL.  I wish this worked.  I really like
				the interface.
				<P>
				Yonowat, the maker of AMAPI, 
				has a trial version, 2.11, available for download from their
				web site.  They are also porting another of their products
				AMAPI Studio 3.0, a more advanced modeling tool, to Linux.
				The web site doesn't mention when it might be ready but the
				description on the pages look *very* interesting.
				</FONT>
				</td>
		<tr>
			<td align=left valign=top>
				<FONT size=2>
				DXF, 3DS R3 and R4, IGES, Illustrator, Text,
				has its own proprietary format
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=left valign=top>
				<FONT size=2>
				DXF, CADRender, Text, AMAPI, 3DS R3 and R4, Ray Dream Designer,
				Lightwave, 3DGF, Truespace V2.0, Caliray, POV 3.0, IGES,
				Explore, VRML, STL, Illustrator, RIB
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=center>
				<FONT size=2>
				Shareware - $25US, $99US will get you a 200 page printed
				manual.  Personal use copies for Linux are free for a year,
				but commercial, government, and institutional users must
				register their copies.
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=center>
				<FONT size=2>
				<A HREF="http://www.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/ipvr/bv/aero/">
				http://www.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/ipvr/bv/aero/</A>
				<BR>
				<A HREF="ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pub/AERO">
				ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pub/AERO</A>
				</FONT>
				</td>
		</table>

		<P>
		<table width=560 border=1>
		<tr>
			<td colspan=4 align=left valign=top  bgcolor=#99ffff>
				<A HREF="./gx/hammel/leo3d.jpg">Leo3D</A> - 
				<FONT size=2>
				The following is taken from the README file in the Leo3D
				distribution:
				<BLOCKQUOTE>
				Leo 3D is a real time 3D modelling application which enables you 
				to create realistic 3D scenes using different rendering 
				applications (such as Povray or BMRT for example). It also 
				exports VRML files. 
				<P>
				What distinguishes Leo 3D from most other modelling applications 
				is that all object transformations are done directly in the 
				viewing window (no need for three seperate x, y, and z windows). 
				For example, to move an object, all you need to do is grab and 
				drag (with the mouse) one of the 'blue dots' which corresponds to 
				the 2D Plane for which you wish to move the object.  Scaling and 
				rotation is done in the same way with the yellow and magenta dots 
				respectively.
				</BLOCKQUOTE>
				This modeller has a very cool interface based on OpenGL, GLUT, TCL
				and Tix.  I had problems with it when trying to load 
				files, but just creating and shading a few objects was quite easy 
				and rather fun, actually.  This modeller certainly has some of the 
				most potential of the non-commercial modellers that I've seen.  
				However, it still has some work to do to fix a few obvious bugs.
				</FONT>
				</td>
		<tr>
			<td align=left valign=top>
				<FONT size=2>
				DXF
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=left valign=top>
				<FONT size=2>
				POV-Ray, RenderMan, VRML 1.0, JPEG
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=center>
				<FONT size=2>
				Shareware - $25US
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=center>
				<FONT size=2>
				<A HREF="ftp://s2k-ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/personal/mallekai/leo3d.html">
				ftp://s2k-ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/personal/mallekai/leo3d.html</A>
				(Yes, that's an ftp site with an HTML page.)
				</FONT>
				</td>
		</table>

		<P>
		<table width=560 border=1>
		<tr>
			<td colspan=4 align=left valign=top  bgcolor=#99ffff>
				Bentley Microstation 95 and MasterPiece -
				<FONT size=2>
				Commercial computer-aided design product
				for drafting, design, visualization, analysis, database
				management, and modeling
				with a long history on MS, Mac and other
				Unix platforms.  Includes programming support with a BASIC
				language and linkages to various commericial databases
				such as Oracle and Informix.
				The product seems quite sophisticated based
				on their web pages, but I've never seen it in action.  I have
				seen a number of texts at local bookstores relating to the
				MS products, so I have a feeling the Linux ports should be
				quite interesting.  Bentley's product line is quite large.
				This looks like the place to go for a
				commercial modeller, although I'm not certain if they'll
				sell their educational products to the general public or not.
				If anyone finds out please let me know.  Note that the Linux
				ports have not been released (to my knowledge - I'm going by
				what's on the web pages).
				</FONT>
				</td>
		<tr>
			<td align=left>
				<FONT size=2>
				DXF, DWG and IGES 
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=left>
				<FONT size=2>
				Unknown
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=center>
				<FONT size=2>
				Commercial, primarily targeted at educational markets, however
				they appear open to public distributions and ports of their
				other packages if enough interest is shown by the Linux
				community.
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=center>
				<FONT size=2>
					<A HREF="http://www.bentley.com/ema/academic/aclinux.htm">
					http://www.bentley.com/ema/academic/aclinux.htm</A>
					<BR>
					<A HREF="http://www.bentley.com/ema/academic/academic.htm">
					http://www.bentley.com/ema/academic/academic.htm</A>
				</FONT>
				</td>
		</table>

		<P>
		<table width=560 border=1>
		<tr>
			<td colspan=4 align=left valign=top  bgcolor=#99ffff>
				<A HREF="./gx/hammel/mnm.jpg">Midnight Modeller</A> -
				<FONT size=2>
				A direct port of the DOS version to Linux.  The X interface
				looks and acts just like the DOS version.  On an 8 bit 
				display the colors are horrid, but it's not so bad on 24 bit
				displays.  It seems to have a problem seeing all the
				directories in the current directory when trying to open files.
				<P>
				The DOS version is being ported to Windows but it doesn't
				appear a port of this version will be coming for Linux.
				The original Linux-port author says he's still interested in doing
				bug fixes but doesn't expect to be doing any further
				feature enhancement.
				</FONT>
				</td>
		<tr>
			<td align=left>
				<FONT size=2>
				DXF, Raw
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=left >
				<FONT size=2>
				DXF, Raw
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=center>
				<FONT size=2>
				Freeware
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=center>
				<FONT size=2>
				<A HREF="ftp://ftp.infomagic.com/pub/mirrors/.mirror1/sunsite/apps/graphics/rays/pov/mnm-linux-pl2.static.ELF.gz">
				ftp://ftp.infomagic.com/pub/mirrors/.mirror1/
				<BR>
					&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
					sunsite/apps/graphics/rays/pov/
				<BR>
					&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
					mnm-linux-pl2.static.ELF.gz</A>
				<BR>
				<A HREF="ftp://ftp.infomagic.com/pub/mirrors/.mirror1/sunsite/apps/graphics/rays/pov/mnm-linux-pl2.static.ELF.README">
				ftp://ftp.infomagic.com/pub/mirrors/.mirror1/
				<BR>
					&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
					sunsite/apps/graphics/rays/pov/
				<BR>
					&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
					mnm-linux-pl2.static.ELF.gz</A>
				<BR>
				Author: Michael Lamertz
				&lt;<A HREF="mailto:mlamertz@odars.de">mlamertz@odars.de</A>&gt;
				</FONT>
				</td>
		</table>

		<P>
		<table width=560 border=1>
		<tr>
			<td colspan=4 align=left valign=top  bgcolor=#99ffff>
			<A HREF="mindseye.html">MindsEye</A> -
				MindsEye - 
				<FONT size=2>
				A new modeller in very early development which is based
				on both OpenGL/MesaGL and QT.  Is designed to allow 
				plug-ins.  The project has a mailing list for developers
				and other interested parties and appears to have more
				detailed design specifications than most "community developed"
				projects of this nature.  It's been a while coming, but the
				modeller is starting to take shape.  Last I looked they
				were beginning to work on adding autoconf to the build
				environment, which is a very good thing to do early on
				in a project, like this one is.
				</FONT>
		<tr>
			<td align=left>
				<FONT size=2>
				DXF, others planned
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=left >
				<FONT size=2>
				Unknown
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=center>
				<FONT size=2>
				GNU GPL
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=center>
				<FONT size=2>
				<A HREF="http://www.ptf.hro.nl/free-d/">
				http://www.ptf.hro.nl/free-d/</A> - Web Site
				<BR>
				<A HREF="ftp://ftp.cs.umn.edu/users/mein/mindseye/">
				ftp://ftp.cs.umn.edu/users/mein/mindseye/</A> - source code
				</FONT>
				</td>
		</table>

		<P>
		<table width=560 border=1>
		<tr>
			<td colspan=4 align=left valign=top  bgcolor=#99ffff>
				<A HREF="./gx/hammel/sced.jpg">SCED/SCEDA</A> -
				<FONT size=2>
				The following is taken from the README file in the
				SCED distribution:
				<BLOCKQUOTE>
				Sced is a program for creating 3d scenes, then exporting them
				to a wide
				variety of rendering programs. Programs supported are:
 				POVray, Rayshade, any VRML browser, anything that reads Pixar's RIB
 				format, and Radiance. Plus a couple of local formats, for me.  
				<P>
				Sced uses constraints to allow for the accurate placement of
				objects, and provides a maintenance system for keeping this
				constraints satisfied as the scene is modified.
				</BLOCKQUOTE>
				This is a very sophisticated modeller, but the Athena interface
				makes it look less powerful than it is.  I used this modeller
				for many of the scenes I created when I first started into 3D
				and still like its constraint system better than what is 
				available in AC3D (which doesn't really have constraints in
				same sense, I don't think).  SCED's biggest limitation is
				its lack of support for importing various 3D formats.
				<P>
				SCEDA is a port of SCED that allows for keyframed animation.
				Objects are given initial and ending positions and the modeller
				creates the frames that will fill in the spaces between these 
				two points.
				</FONT>
				</td>
		<tr>
			<td align=left valign=top>
				<FONT size=2>
				Proprietary scene format and OFF (wireframe format)
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=left valign=top>
				<FONT size=2>
				POV 3.0, Radiance, RenderMan, VRML 1.0
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=center>
				<FONT size=2>
				Freeware (GPL'd)
				</FONT>
				</td>
			<td align=center>
				<FONT size=2>
				<A HREF="http://http.cs.berkeley.edu/~schenney/sced/sced.html">
  				http://http.cs.berkeley.edu/~schenney/sced/sced.html</A>
				<BR>
				<A HREF="ftp://ftp.cs.su.oz.au/stephen/sced">
  				ftp://ftp.cs.su.oz.au/stephen/sced</A>
				<BR>
				<A HREF="ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/pov/modellers/sced">
  				ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/pov/modellers/sced</A>
					</A>
				</FONT>
				</td>
		</table>

		</td>
<tr>
	<td bgcolor="#000000" cellpadding=1 cellspacing=0 valign=top>
		<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/cleardot.gif ALT="indent" ALIGN="left" 
			WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1"></td>

</table>

<TABLE width=560>
<tr>
	<td valign=top width="48%">
		<!-- Book Review -->
		<H4><I>
		HF-Lab
		</I> </H4>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 
		Height fields are convenient tools for representing terrain
		data that are supported directly by POV-Ray and through the
		use of displacement maps or patch meshes in BMRT.  With
		POV-Ray and displacement maps in BMRT, a 2D image is used 
		to specify the height of a point based on the color and/or 
		intensity level for the point in the 2D image.  The renderer
		uses this image, mapped over a 3D surface, to create mountains,
		valleys, plateaus and other geographic features.  Creating
		a representative 2D image is the trick to realistic landscapes.
		<A HREF="http://www.best.com/~beale">
		HF-Lab</A>, 
		an X-based interactive tool written by 
		<A HREF="mailto:beale@best.com">
		John Beale</A>,
		is an easy to use and extremely useful tool for creating these
		2D images.
		<BR>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 
		Once you have retrieved the source, built (instructions are 
		included and the build process is fairly straightforward, although
		it could probably benefit from the use of imake or autoconf) and
		installed it, you're ready to go.  HF-Lab is a command line oriented
		tool that provides its own shell from which commands can be entered.
		To start HF-Lab using BASH type

		<P clear=both>
		<FONT size=2>
		&nbsp;
		% export HFLHELP=$HOME/hf/hf-lab.hlp
		<BR>
		&nbsp;
		% hlx
		</FONT>

		<P clear=both>
		and in csh type
		<P clear=both>

		<FONT size=2>
		&nbsp;
		% setenv HFLHELP $HOME/hf/hf-lab.hlp 
		<BR>
		&nbsp;
		% hlx
		</FONT>

		<P clear=both>
		Note that the path you use for the HFHELP environment variable
		depends on where you installed the hf-lab.hlp file from the distribution.
		The build process does not provide a method for installing this file
		for you so you'll need to be sure to move the file to the appropriate
		directory by hand.  You definitely want to make sure this file is
		properly installed since the online help features in HF-Lab are
		quite nice.

		<BR>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 
		The first thing you notice is the 
		<A HREF="hf1.html">
		shell prompt</A>.  From the prompt you type in one or more
		commands that manipulate the current height field (there can be more
		than one, each of which occupies a place on the stack).  We've
		started by using the online help feature.  Typing <I>help</I> by itself
		brings up the list of available commands, categorized by type.  Typing
		<I>help &lt;command&gt;</I> (without the brackets, of course) gets you 
		help on a particular command.  In 
		<A HREF="hf1.html">
		Figure 1</A> the help for the <I>crater</I> command is shown.

		<BR>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 
		Now lets look at the available features.  John writes in the 
		documentation that accompanies the source:
		<BLOCKQUOTE>
		HF-Lab commands fall into several categories: those for generating
		heightfields (HFs), combining or transforming them, and viewing them are
		the
		three most important. Then there are other 'housekeeping' commands to move
		HFs around on the internal stack, load and save them on the disk, and set
		various internal variables.
		</BLOCKQUOTE>
		Generating HFs are done with one of <I>gforge, random, constant,</I>
		and <I>zero</I>.  The first of these, <I>gforge</I>, is the most 
		interesting as it will create fractal-based fields.  <I>Random</I>
		creates a field based on noise patterns (lots of spikes, perhaps
		usable as grass blades up close in a rendered scene) while
		<I>constant</I> and <I>zero</I> create level planes.  
		<I>Zero</I> is a just a special case of constant where the height 
		value is 0.

		<BR>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 
		Each HF that is generated gets placed on the <I>stack</I>.  
		The stack is empty to start.  Running one of the HF generation commands
		will add a HF to top of the stack.  By default there are 4 slots 
		in the stack that can be filled, but this number can be changed using
		the <I>set stacksize</I> command.  The HFs on the stack can be
		popped, swapped, duplicated, and named and the whole stack can be
		rotated.  Also, rotation can be between the first 3 HFs on the stack.

		<BR>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 
		The normal proces for creating
		a HF usually includes the following steps:
		<OL>
			<LI>Generate one or two HFs with gforge
			<LI>Manipulate the HFs with the <I>crater</I> or <I>pow</I> commands.
			<LI>View the HF in 3D.
			<LI>Manipulate some more.
			<LI>Check it again.
			<LI>Continue, ad infinitum.
		</OL>
		Manipulating a HF can be done in several ways.  First, there are a
		set of commands to operate on a single HF, the <I>One
		HF-Operators</I>.  A few of the more interesting of these are the
		<I>pow, zedge, crater, fillbasin,</I> and <I>flow</I> commands.
		<I>Zedge</I> flattens the edges of the HF (remember that a HF is
		really just a 3D representation of a 2D image, and those images
		are rectangular).  <I>Crater</I> adds circular craters to the HF
		of various radii and depths.  <I>Fillbasin</I> and


		<P clear=both>
		<CENTER>
		<A HREF="#next-column">-Top of next column-</A>
		</CENTER>
		</td>

	<td bgcolor="#000000" cellpadding=1 cellspacing=0 valign=top>
		<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/cleardot.gif ALT="indent" ALIGN="left" 
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	<td valign=top width="51%" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0>
	<table>
	<tr>
		<td valign=top cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0>
			<UL>
				<LH>
					<A NAME="next-column">
					<B>More Musings...</B>
					</A>
					</LH>
				<LI>
					<A HREF="gimp.html">
					Gimp 1.0
					</A> - Larry Ayers provides a preview of
					the newest version of the Unix worlds
					answer to Adobe Photoshop.

			</UL>
			<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/cleardot.gif ALT="indent" ALIGN="left" 
				VSPACE="5" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1">
		</td>

	<tr>
		<td bgcolor="#000000" cellpadding=1 cellspacing=0 valign=top>
		<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/cleardot.gif ALT="indent" ALIGN="left" 
			WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1"></td>

	<tr>
		<td valign=top cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0>
		<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/cleardot.gif ALT="indent" ALIGN="left" 
			HSPACE="8" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1">
		<BR clear=both>
		<I>flow</I> can be used together to etch out river valleys.  There
		are examples, <A HREF="hf1.html#erosion">erosion1.scr</A> and
		<A HREF="hf1.html#erosion">erosion2.jpg</A>
		in the distribution which show this.
		

		<BR clear=both>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 
		There are two ways to view the images you create with HF-Lab
		from within the application.  One is to view 
		the 2D greyscale image that will be saved to file.  Viewing the
		2D image is done with the <I>show</I> command.
		The other method is as an representative
		rendering of the HF in 3D, so that you'll get a better idea
		of what the final rendering will be with POV or BMRT.  Viewing
		the 3D images is done in a secondary shell (although it is
		also possible to simply ask that shell to display the image
		and return immediately to the command shell - this is probably
		what you'll do once you've gotten more experienced with HF-Lab).
		The <I>view</I> command enters the user into the 3D viewing
		shell.  From here you can set the level of detail to show,
		the position of a lightsource or the cameras eye, lighten,
		darken, tile and change the scale of the display. 
		To exit the secondary shell, simply type <I>quit</I>.

		<BR>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 
		HF-Lab supports a number of different file formats for
		reading and writing:  PNG, GIF, POT, TGA, PGM, MAT, OCT, and RAW.
		Most of these formats have special purposes, but for use with
		POV-Ray and BMRT you should save files in TGA format.  POV-Ray
		can use this format directly, but for use with BMRT you will
		need to convert the TGA image to TIFF format.  Using TGA allows
		you to save the image information without data loss and 
		conversion from TGA to TIFF is relatively easy using XV, NetPBM,
		or ImageMagick.

		<BR>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 
		Since creating a reasonably realistic HF can be a long session
		of trial and error you may find it useful to use the builtin scripting
		capability.  John provides a very good set of sample scripts
		along with the source.  A quick glance at one of these, 
		<A HREF="erosion1.scr">erosion1.scr</A>,
		shows that multiple commands can be run at a time.  This is also
		possible from the <B>HF&gt;</B> prompt, so you can try these
		commands one at a time to see what effect each has.  Once you have
		a rough guess as the to process you need to create the scene you
		want, you should place this in a script and then edit the script
		to get the detail level desired.

		<BR>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 
		HF-Lab creates its images through the use of lots of mathematical
		tricks that are far beyond the scope of this column.  I'd love
		to say I understand all of them, but I only have a limited
		understanding of fractals and their use in creating terrain maps
		and I have no real understanding of Fast Fourier Transforms or
		Inverse Fast Fourier Transforms.  These latter two are methods
		of filtering a HF in order to smooth or sharpen features.  Filters
		include a high pass filter (<I>hpfilter</I>), low pass filter
		(<I>lpfilter</I>), band pass filter (<I>bpfilter</I>) and
		band reject filter (<I>brfilter</I>).  Although
		I don't understand the math behind them, I was able to use 
		a High Pass Filter to take a simple gforge-created HF and turn
		it into a very nice heightfield that simulates a 
		<A HREF="hf1.html#leather">leathery surface</A>.  This HF was created 
		in only two steps:
		<OL>
			<LI>gforge 400 2.2
			<LI>hpfilter 0.095 30
		</OL>
		So, you can see how powerful this tool can be.  Using height fields
		in BMRT, or as bump maps in POV, can produce some very interesting
		textures!

		<BR>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 
		There are many other features of HF-Lab which I have not covered.
		And in truth, I really didn't give much detail on the features I
		did discuss.  John gives much better descriptions of some of the
		features in the README file that accompanies the source and I
		highly recommend you read this file while you experiment with
		HF-Lab for the first few times.  He has gone to great lengths
		to provide very useful online help and sample scripts.  The
		interface may not be point-and-click, but it certainly is not 
		difficult to learn.

		<BR>
		&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 
		When I first came across John Beale and HF-Lab I was quite 
		impressed with its ease of use for creating interesting landscapes.
		I haven't really used it much since the early days of my 3D
		rendering lifetime, but since writing this article I've rediscovered
		how powerful this tool can be.  Originally I viewed the tool only
		as a tool for creating landscapes, ie as a tool for modelling 
		a world.  Now I see how it can be used to create surface features
		of all kinds that can be used as textures and not just models.
		I think I'll be making more use of this tool in the future.

		</td>
	</table>
	</td>



</table>


<P>
<A NAME="resources">
<table>
<tr>
<td>
<IMG SRC=../gx/hammel/resources.gif ALT="Resources" ALIGN="left" 
	HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" WIDTH="246" HEIGHT="57">
</td>
</table>
</A>

<BR clear=both>
The following links are just starting points for finding more information
about computer graphics and multimedia in general for Linux systems.  If
you have some application-specific information for me, I'll add them to my
other pages or you can contact the maintainer of some other web site.  I'll
consider adding other general references here, but application or 
site-specific information needs to go into one of the following general 
references and will not be listed here.

<BR clear=both>
<P>

<A HREF="http://www.csn.net/~mjhammel/linux-graphics-howto.html">
Linux Graphics mini-Howto
</A>

<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.csn.net/~mjhammel/povray/povray.html">
Unix Graphics Utilities
</A>  

<BR>
<A HREF="http://www.digiserve.com/ar/linux-snd/">
Linux Multimedia Page
</A>  

<P>
Some of the mailing lists and newsgroups I keep an eye on, where I get alot
of the information for this column:

<P> <A HREF="http://www.XCF.Berkeley.EDU/~gimp/">
		The Gimp User and Gimp Developer Mailing Lists</A>.
<BR> <A HREF="http://www.irtc.org">
		The IRTC-L discussion list</A>
<BR> <A HREF="news:comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing">
		comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing</A>
<BR> <A HREF="news:comp.graphics.rendering.renderman">
		comp.graphics.rendering.renderman</A>
<BR> <A HREF="news:comp.graphics.api.opengl">
		comp.graphics.api.opengl</A>
<BR> <A HREF="news:comp.os.linux.announce">
		comp.os.linux.announce</A>

<br>


<P>
<A NAME="future">
<H2>Future Directions</H2>
</A>
Next month:
<UL>
	<LI><I>BMRT Part 3: Advanced Topics</I> or a short tutorial on
		writing an OpenGL application.  I'm currently working on a little
		Motif/OpenGL application which I plan on using to create models for 
		use with
		BMRT.  I'd like to finish it before I return to BMRT, but I 
		have promised the third part on BMRT for July.  I'm not sure which
		I'll get to, especially since I also have an article for <i>Linux Journal</i>
		due July 1st.
	<LI>..and who knows what else
</UL>
<BR>
<A HREF="mailto:mjhammel@csn.net">
Let me know what you'd like to hear about!</A>


<!--===================================================================-->
<P> <hr> <P> 
<center><H4>Previous ``Graphics Muse'' Columns</H4></center>
<p>
<A HREF="../issue11/gm.html">Graphics Muse #1, November 1996</A><br>
<A HREF="../issue12/gm.html">Graphics Muse #2, December 1996</A><br>
<A HREF="../issue13/gm.html">Graphics Muse #3, January 1997</A><br>
<A HREF="../issue14/gm.html">Graphics Muse #4, February 1997</A><br>
<A HREF="../issue15/gm.html">Graphics Muse #5, March 1997</A><br>
<A HREF="../issue16/gm.html">Graphics Muse #6, April 1997</A><br>
<A HREF="../issue17/gm.html">Graphics Muse #7, May 1997</A>
<P><HR><P>
<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1997, Michael J. Hammel<BR> 
Published in Issue 18 of the Linux Gazette, June 1997</H5></center>

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