RE: [Visualpython-users] Planned work for Fall '01

[David S. <dsc...@vy...>]

[Ari said]

> > > i haven't thought seriously about the kind of interfaces that
> > > would be nice for texturing the existing primitives, and i 

[I said]

> > I can see a few basic approaches

... but after some reflection I'm uncomfortable because I don't have a
good picture of how texturing will be used in practice.  The initial
design of VPython benefitted enormously from concrete examples drawn
from Bruce and Ruth's course.  Do we have any such concrete use cases
here?

I can definitely see people wanting to import models complete with
textures.  That can best be done by adding texture coordinates to faces.
Mapping is up to the modeling software (and file format).

I can also see that people might like to be able to make a "wood" sphere
instead of a "brown" sphere.  Frankly, it's hard to see how what we've
discussed so far is going to make this acceptably easy.  We could use
the functionality to create a library of standard materials, but there
are some big problems.  We need a different wood texture for each
standard primitive (or each mapping mode).  The user has to choose
between them.  Someone has to do the art.

I can also see some visualization applications for textures - maybe
someone wants to draw contours on a height field, or heat levels in a
sliding friction simulation.

Is anyone willing to step forward and fantasize about what they could do
with some particular kind of texturing functionality?

Dave