[Update REQ 5233]: Geomview implementation

["Tamara Munzner" <munzner>]

>   I am interested in developing a software package for teaching vocal 
>   pedagogy, including the anatomy and function of the larynx.  It seems 
>   that Geomview would be useful in this package, to render, rotate and 
>   animate 3D anatomical images.  I have no experience in 3D rendering, 
>   however, so I am wondering how difficult it is to create the necessary 
>   object files, and whether or not Geomview would indeed be appropriate for 
>   my inteded applications.  Any help and information you could provide 
>   would be much appreciated.  Thank you.

Well, the short answer is "it depends". We need more information.
Geomview will certainly let you render, rotate, and animate surfaces.
There are a number of issues. Here are the first few:

1. Geomview is designed to deal with surfaces as opposed to volumes.
If you've got volumetric data (for instance a stack of slices from CAT
scans) then Geomview might not be your best choice and a volume
rendering package like "bob" would be more appropriate. (You can get
more info about Bob on the Web at
http://www.arc.umn.edu/html/gvl-software/bob.html.) Of course, volume
rendering tends to be much slower than surface rendering, 

2. What machine would you be using? Geomview on a very high-end
Silicon Graphics could handle over objects made from over one hundred
thousand polygons in the best case, whereas the X version of Geomview
running on a very old Sun workstation or a PC could be very slow with
more than a few thousand polygons. (Of course if you're on an old Sun,
interactive volume rendering is pretty much out of the question.)

3. If you do indeed want to see surfaces, then the next issue is how
to create the object files.  I assume you've got data in some form,
and need to figure out how to convert it into a form Geomview can
handle. I need to know what form the data's in before I can answer
that.

It will probably take a few email iterations to sort this out...

Tamara Munzner		The Geometry Center	     ((555) 555-5555
munzner at geom.umn.edu    http://www.geom.umn.edu/people/munzner.html