What is Geomview?

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 for more general comments about Geomview.

How do I download Geomview?

You can also download it via anonymous ftp from ftp://ftp.geomview.org/pub

Geomview is free software, but we like to hear from people using it. Please send us mail telling us what you're doing with it.

What Geomview documentation is available?

How can I get in touch with other Geomview users?

See also the list of third party software and projects.

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?

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, with instructions for using it with Geomview. Or, you can get the full Open Motif distribution (source or binary) from either http://www.opengroup.org/motif or http://www.openmotif.com.

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@geomtech.com].

configure claims it can't find OpenGl on my system, but I'm sure that it is installed

• 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.

• 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 windows 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:
  • The output from 'configure' itself --- look at the lines related to checking for X windows, in particular. If X was not found, or couldn't be linked with, then that is probably the problem.

  • 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.

• 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 windows 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).

• 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 and libGLU.so.VERSION, 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

          libGL.so -> libGL.so.1.2.030200
          libGLU.so -> libGLU.so.1.2.030200
  

  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.

  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.

configure claims it can't find Motif (or Lesstif or OpenMotif) on my system, but I'm sure that it is installed

Read all the suggestions above in the answer to the analogous question about OpenGL; they all apply equally well to Motif. (The main header file to look for in the "include" directory is "Xm/Xm.h").

What platforms have binary downloads available?

There isn't a binary for my workstation. Is there hope?

Note that there is a free version of OpenGL called Mesa (www.mesa3d.org) 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.

Note also that there is a free version of Motif called lesstif (www.lesstif.org).

The INSTALL 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.

Why isn't there a Windows versions?

Geomview can run under Cygwin, which provides Windows with a Unix-alike environment. See Geomview for Windows? for more information.

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 for details.

How fast does Geomview run on various platforms?

What happened to the NeXT Quick Renderman version?

I have access to an X11 and SGI workstation. Which version should I use?

What modules are shipped for which platforms with the current release?

MODULE		DESCRIPTION
addbbox		explicitly create enclosing bounding box
animate		flip through a sequence of objects
clipboard	cut, copy, and past geometric objects
cplxview	visualize graphs of complex functions
drawbdy		compute and draw boundary of an object
emodule_wish	????
example		sample module Example2 described in manual
flythrough	interactive version of "Not Knot"
		hyperbolic flythrough
ginsu		interactively slice objects with movable
		clipping plane
graffiti	draw line segments on objects
gvclock		3D clock, demonstrates real-time motion
hinge		hinge copies of a polyhedron around its edges
maniview	3-manifold viewer
nose		demonstrates picking
stereo		hardware, crosseyed, or red/cyan stereo (beta)
sweep		generates objects of rotation from line segments
tackdown	redefine an object's "home" position
transformer	explicitly control (and see) an object's
		transformation matrix

MODULE		DESCRIPTION
3D-Snapshot	create 3D snapshot of N-dimensional object view
Colormap	create colormaps for N-dimensional objects
Crayola		interactively color objects per-vertex
Labeler		generate polygonal (or vector) text from string
NDdemo		N-dimensional viewing demonstration
NDview		N-dimensional viewing controls and demonstration
Slicer		clip N-dimensional objects to hyperplanes
StageTools	suite of tools for making MPEG/video/etc animations 

MODULE		DESCRIPTION
trigrp		explore triangle symmetry groups

UTILITY		DESCRIPTION

anytooff	convert one or many OOGL files into a single
		OFF file
anytoucd	convert an OOGL file to UCD (AVS) format
bdy		compute boundary of an object (helper for drawbdy)
bez2mesh	dice BEZ file to list of MESHes
clip		clip objects against plane/sphere/cylinder
		(helper for ginsu)
hvectext	generate vector text object
math2oogl	convert Mathematica graphics to OOGL
		(helper for OOGL.m)
offconsol	polylist vertex consolidator
offcvt		convert between ASCII and binary OFF format
oogl2rib	convert OOGL to Renderman RIB format
oogl2vrml	convert OOGL to VRML 1.0
polymerge	merge degenerate OFF vertices/edges/faces
		(to Evolver or OFF)
togeomview	send commands to geomview
ucdtooff	convert UCD (AVS) format to OFF format
vrml2oogl	convert VRML 1.0 to OOGL

What modules are no longer included in the distribution and why?

MODULE	  	DESCRIPTION

4dview		4-dimensional slicing & rotation
pssnap		generate PostScript snapshot
warp		interactively deform an object

Why don't objects appear in the right places?

To turn off normalization by default, customize Geomview by inserting the line (normalization allgeoms none) into a file called .geomview in your home directory.

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.

Why is everything centered and/or on top of each other?

How can I display a collection of points?

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

How do I make the points larger?

appearance {
    linewidth 4 
}

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

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

How do I put text into a scene?

• 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.

• 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.

If you don't need the text to be a 3D object in the scene, you can create an image or postscript file of the scene and then use an image editor such as Illustrator, Showcase, or XPaint to annotate it with text.

Can Geomview do volume visualization?

Can Geomview do texture maps?

Why can't Geomview read my OFF file?

#include "stdio.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;
}

How can I animate a sequence of Geomview/OOGL files?

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 the man page (by typing man animate).

How can I save a sequnce of snapshot files or create a video animation (MPEG/QuickTime/animated GIF)?

• > 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?
  

  Two options:

  • If the motion is axis-aligned, it's pretty easy to use the rotate and snapshot GCL commands together:

    (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)
    

    and so on. The snapshot commanad auto-increments the filename.

  • 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 http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/software/StageTools/

• > 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?
  

  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".

How can I save a picture of exactly what I see in a camera window?

How can I make a true PostScript file that looks good at multiple resolutions instead of just converting a bitmap into PostScript?

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.

Why does my PostScript snapshot look wrong?

How can I make a high quality image with RenderMan?

How do I speed up the X11 version?

What do the Z-Buffer and Dithering controls in the Cameras panel do?

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.

What does "Not enough colors available. Using private colormap" mean?

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.

What does "Shared memory unavailable, using fallback display method" mean?

Why do I get compiler errors about including files Xm/*.h?