From: Joseph M. <mu...@le...> - 2004-02-11 11:51:12
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Dear VXL Developers, We at Brown are interested in developing more powerful 3-d GUI functionality within the VXL framework. We are strongly considering the open inventor library as a basis. I am interested in a wider set of views on 3-d programming and GUI functions in VXL. In particular: 1) What 3-d visualization mechanisms are in common use within the VXL community? Up until now we have gotten by with VRML but that approach is proving too limiting. 2) Is there broader interest in extending the 3-d functionality in VXL, e.g., 3-d surface geometry? Thanks, Joe o----o----o----o----o----o----o Professor of Engineering (Research) Barus and Holley Bldg., Room 351 Brown University Providence, RI 401-863-2655 |
From: Amitha P. <pe...@cs...> - 2004-02-11 12:50:54
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Joseph Mundy wrote: > We at Brown are interested in developing more powerful 3-d GUI > functionality within the VXL framework. We are strongly considering the > open inventor library as a basis. From the SGI website: What are the prerequisites for building the Open Inventor software? Linux (glibc 2.x) or IRIX, X11R6, Motif, C++ compiler and OpenGL. This seems rather limiting, considering the number of platforms that vxl supports. However, I know next to nothing about open inventor, so interpret my comments with this in mind. > 1) What 3-d visualization mechanisms are in common use within the VXL > community? Up until now we have gotten by with VRML but that approach > is proving too limiting. I have used VTK for 3-D visualization before. It integrates quite well with the VXL framework. For 3-D visualization, VTK provides a lot of power. For 3-D object manipulation, I'm not sure what mechanisms VTK has. Amitha. |
From: Kongbin K. <kk...@le...> - 2004-02-11 15:03:24
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> What are the prerequisites for building the Open Inventor software? It is layer build on top of the OpenGL for visualizatiion and interactive. On Linux, it prerequire GCC, OpenGL, X11R6. On Windows, it prerequire VC 6.0 plus QT I didn't try out for the other platforms > > This seems rather limiting, considering the number of platform I didn't get your point. Open Inventor could be compiled on Linux, MacOS, SunOS, Irix, Win32, HP-UX, Cygwin. It is a cross platform library. Kongbin |
From: Amitha P. <pe...@cs...> - 2004-02-11 15:30:59
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Kongbin Kang wrote: > Amitha Perera wrote: > > What are the prerequisites for building the Open Inventor > > software? This wasn't my question; this was a cut-n-paste from SGI's Open Inventor FAQ. And their answer was Linux or IRIX. > > This seems rather limiting, considering the number of platform > > I didn't get your point. Open Inventor could be compiled on Linux, > MacOS, SunOS, Irix, Win32, HP-UX, Cygwin. It is a cross platform > library. I did qualify my response with "I don't know much about Open Inventor". It is good that Open Inventor is cross-platform. > On Windows, it prerequire VC 6.0 plus QT I didn't try out for the other > platforms I thought Qt on Windows is not free. It would be a shame not to have this 3D GUI not usable on Windows because Windows users have to get licenses. If you are going to spend time and effort building a 3D GUI for vxl, it would be great if this GUI were usable on all platforms on which vxl is usable, with the same cost (free beer licensing). Of course, all my comments are informational only; the guys doing the work (you guys!) will obviously have to make the choice. Amitha. |
From: Amitha P. <pe...@cs...> - 2004-02-11 15:23:05
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A quick addition to my previous message > I have used VTK for 3-D visualization before. It integrates quite well > with the VXL framework. For 3-D visualization, VTK provides a lot of > power. For 3-D object manipulation, I'm not sure what mechanisms VTK > has. I spoke briefly with the VTK folks at GE, and they tell me that VTK has easy-to-use interaction capabilities with the rendered space. It does not have menus and such; those need to be provided in other ways. Amitha. |
From: Peter V. <Pet...@es...> - 2004-02-11 14:06:15
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> We at Brown are interested in developing more powerful 3-d GUI > functionality within the VXL framework. We are strongly considering the > open inventor library as a basis. I don't know if this would be of any use, but the "MotifInterface" package of TargetJr which we created about 6 years ago uses OpenInventor (or actually: SGI's Inventor, its predecessor) together with the Motif GUI to display and interact with TargetJr's 2D and 3D objects. Specifically, you may have a look at $IUEROOT/MotifInterface/GraphView/inventorTools.cc and $IUEROOT/MotifInterface/MultipleImage/3d.cc -- Peter. |
From: Ian S. <ian...@st...> - 2004-02-11 15:48:35
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About the 3D GUI: our spin-off companies do a lot of 3D GUI stuff. They use a hand rolled GUI, build using Qt and OpenGL. We'll ask them for more details. A few other people in the dept. use VTK (though not with VXL) and find it very good. In the mean time, something to think about: Is it that useful to build this into VXL? Our experience here is that GUI code is always very specific to the application, and trying to generalise a GUI lib to be widely useful is much more effort than it is worth. A similar argument has prevented vgui from acquiring more powerful features. If you are thinking in the longer term about importing open-inventor into v3p. Amitha's recent experience with dcmtk provides a warning that it will be a lot of effort. Ian. |
From: Ian S. <ian...@st...> - 2004-02-24 12:06:30
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> About the 3D GUI: our spin-off companies > do a lot of 3D GUI stuff. They use a hand > rolled GUI, build using Qt and OpenGL. > We'll ask them for more details. A few > other people in the dept. use VTK (though > not with VXL) and find it very good. I talked to our spin-offs (the big users/developers of 3D GUIs here) and the following points came up: They use 3D for rendering meshes and surface models. Most user interaction occurs in a 2D window, with the 3D window used for rendering the results. Picking operations do take place in the 3D window, but they are hard to write, and so used only occasionally. They need a good looking GUI, with all the widgets - so they currently use Qt. For a commercial company, a Qt license is not expensive, so using Open inventor on Windows would be a problem there. One other thing: because they have a working GUI, vgui3d would need to be very compelling indeed for them to switch. Ian. |
From: Joseph M. <mu...@le...> - 2004-02-24 12:26:01
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Ian, I understand the need for a professional GUI with intuitive buttons and sliders when implementing a commercial product. I wasn't really suggesting that VGUI would evolve to this level. On the other hand, we have found VGUI 2-d capabilities to be quite useful in general research activities and have added some additional tableaux in brl/bgui to support our data local structures. The key power of VGUI is the tableau layering concept. If one needs more functionality, then one adds additional tableaux, each being specialized to a specific GUI task. Now we are facing the need to display 3-d curves and surfaces with sufficient interaction to select data items for debugging and analysis. I think that the tableau mechanism can provide a general, flexible 3-d capability, which the user can easily tailor to specific research GUIs. At the same time, we don't want to re-implement basic 3-d view structures and event handling mechanisms if we can avoid it. We have currently narrowed our consideration to open inventor and VTK. Joe -----Original Message----- From: vxl...@li... [mailto:vxl...@li...] On Behalf Of Ian Scott Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 7:06 AM To: Joseph Mundy (E-mail) Cc: Vxl-maintainers (E-mail) Subject: RE: [Vxl-maintainers] 3-d Visualization/Interaction > About the 3D GUI: our spin-off companies > do a lot of 3D GUI stuff. They use a hand > rolled GUI, build using Qt and OpenGL. > We'll ask them for more details. A few > other people in the dept. use VTK (though > not with VXL) and find it very good. I talked to our spin-offs (the big users/developers of 3D GUIs here) and the following points came up: They use 3D for rendering meshes and surface models. Most user interaction occurs in a 2D window, with the 3D window used for rendering the results. Picking operations do take place in the 3D window, but they are hard to write, and so used only occasionally. They need a good looking GUI, with all the widgets - so they currently use Qt. For a commercial company, a Qt license is not expensive, so using Open inventor on Windows would be a problem there. One other thing: because they have a working GUI, vgui3d would need to be very compelling indeed for them to switch. Ian. ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net is sponsored by: Speed Start Your Linux Apps Now. Build and deploy apps & Web services for Linux with a free DVD software kit from IBM. Click Now! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1356&alloc_id=3438&op=click _______________________________________________ Vxl-maintainers mailing list Vxl...@li... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vxl-maintainers |
From: Ian S. <ian...@st...> - 2004-02-20 20:16:17
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> 2) Is there broader interest in extending the 3-d > functionality in VXL, e.g., 3-d surface geometry? We'd be interested in this. We do a fair bit of work in the 3D domain. Although most of it using stats, occasionally geometric algorithms are useful (e.g. convex hull, triangulation) Ian. |
From: Graham V. <gr...@im...> - 2004-02-21 12:39:04
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> >> 2) Is there broader interest in extending the 3-d >> functionality in VXL, e.g., 3-d surface geometry? > imorphics is a company with very close ties to ISBE at the University of Manchester. We work exclusively in 3D (and use VXL). We would be very interested in any extentions to the 3d functionality in VXL. Graham Vincent imorphics |