MathGroup Archive 2005

[Date Index] [Thread Index] [Author Index]

Search the Archive

Re: Visualization site updates

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg60979] Re: Visualization site updates
  • From: "Martin Kraus" <martin_kraus_germany at yahoo.com>
  • Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2005 04:08:21 -0400 (EDT)
  • References: <dht4fq$hng$1@smc.vnet.net>
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

Jeff,

I definitely agree that the resolution of most of the excellent
visualizations on your site is too fine for LiveGraphics3D,
i.e., there are too many primitives for interactive rendering
with LiveGraphics3D. Rendering at a lower resolution is
therefore often unavoidable, and I'm usually much more
aggressive in this respect when adapting
Mathematica graphics for LiveGraphics3D in order to ensure
interactive rendering also on less powerful machines.
Without the possibility to render graphics interactively, it is usually
preferable to offer a static picture for a well chosen view point
and/or a precomputed animation for a rotating object (as you
did for the earthquake example).

The 3d surface offers an example for which the interactive version
doesn't offer a lot of benefits: there are too many polygons for
interactive rendering with LiveGraphics3D and the geometry of the
surface (a height field) appears to be simple enough to be understood
with a 2d image (apart from some hidden parts).

I think the ability to interactively rotate and zoom objects is
particularly useful to examine the earthquake and molecule
examples because the 3d point positions cannot be understood
from a 2d image.  In these cases the stereo viewing (press "s" to
toggle the applet between single view, stereo view for
divergent fusing and stereo view for cross fusing) is also useful.

In order to separate points of the same color (in particular for
molecules) you could try the applet parameter
<PARAM NAME="POINT_EDGE_COLOR" VALUE=#000000>
to render each point with a thin black edge.

Without further coarsening, any of the animations would not render
interactively with LiveGraphics3D. However, using LiveGraphics3D
to view animations offers the benefit of more control over choosing
the time step (ALT/META/COMMAND + left button  or right button
and dragging horizontally).

BTW a great site for visualization with Mathematica!


Martin Kraus


Jeff Bryant ha escrito:

> I've begun adding some new functionality to my visualization site.  A
> few people have requested the ability to be able to interact with the 3D
> graphics in real-time.  I decided to try using LiveGraphics3D by Martin
> Krauss on several of my examples.  Some of the examples are not
> appropriate for real-time interaction as the render time was too long.
> I picked a few of my 3D visualizations that were more reasonable.  For
> those examples that are interactive, they are often rendered at lower
> resolutions to keep loading time down.  I'd would be interested in
> hearing your thoughts on whether this is useful where appropriate.  Here
> are the examples I currently have:
>
> http://members.wri.com/jeffb/visualization/3dsurf-interact.shtml
> http://members.wri.com/jeffb/visualization/potentials-interact.shtml
> http://members.wri.com/jeffb/visualization/galaxies-interact.shtml
> http://members.wri.com/jeffb/visualization/quake3d-interact.shtml
> http://members.wri.com/jeffb/visualization/algebraic-interact.shtml
> http://members.wri.com/jeffb/visualization/prehistoric-interact.shtml
>
> I have also added a new visualization (non-interactive) that uses
> Mathematica to visualize molecular structures in the protein data bank
> format.  This particular animation shows an insulin molecule with 14,940
> atoms in it.  To keep the render time down, I used 3D points instead of
> spheres which unfortunately means no lighting effects:
> http://members.wri.com/jeffb/visualization/molecule.shtml
> 
> -Jeff


  • Prev by Date: Re: Interactive surface manipulation with GUIkit
  • Next by Date: Re: graphs
  • Previous by thread: Re: Visualization site updates
  • Next by thread: Re: Re: Visualization site updates