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Re: beautiful 3D graphics with Mathematica 4

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg21119] Re: beautiful 3D graphics with Mathematica 4
  • From: "P.J. Hinton" <paulh at wolfram.com>
  • Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1999 01:21:17 -0500 (EST)
  • Organization: "Wolfram Research, Inc."
  • References: <831ieo$df3@smc.vnet.net>
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

On 12 Dec 1999, sniff wrote:

> When looking at http://www.wri.com, I can find a lot of very beautiful 3D
> images (small binary images). But when I use Mathematica, it looks far from
> being pretty. Are there some real nice macros out there that can produce
> decent 3D images? Something for free, of course, since I have already spent
> too much for Mathematica 4.

What do you define as "far from pretty"?  Many of the images used in the
website and in the graphics gallery are the results of very sophisticated
computation.

If you look in the demos section of the online help, you'll find a number
of notebooks that show how to do things like generate buckyballs, generate
the cover image for the Mathematica book, create an image of a klein
bottle, and even how to use Mathematica to generate spirograph output.  
You can jump to this section of the online help by evaluating this
expression in a notebook:

FrontEndExecute[
  FrontEnd`HelpBrowserLookup[
    "GettingStarted",
    "Buckyball Construction"
  ]
]

Another place to look is up on MathSource (http://www.mathsource.com).
You can find several example notebooks that generate complicated graphics
from there.

If you intend to do serious graphics programming of your own, be sure to
read and study Section 2.9 of _The Mathematica Book_ (Fourth Edition).  

FrontEndExecute[
  FrontEnd`HelpBrowserLookup[
    "MainBook",
    "2.9"
  ]
]

You may also want to get a copy of _Mathematica Graphics: Techniques &
Applications_ by Tom Wickham-Jones.

--
P.J. Hinton
Mathematica Programming Group           paulh at wolfram.com
Wolfram Research, Inc.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed herein are those of the author alone.



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