On 07/03/12 06:29, Barry Cooper wrote: > Hi everyone, > > I have a scenario that's attached more to academia (research and programming) than most of what is discussed here, but there is some really good experience here in this group, and I'd like poll to get your thoughts. > > I'm going to purposely avoid the details of exactly what I'm doing and the why's, but please feel free to pipe in with any thoughts you may have. > > For visualization purposes, I want to programmatically create spheres in 3D space. If you think of stars, orbiting bodies, and constellations, you aren't far off from where I'm going with this. > > I want to control the size of the spheres, their location, and their proximity to each other. I want to be able illuminate them and control their brightness relative to each other, and I would like to be able to change perspective (zoom in/out and move about through defined 3D space). > > Being able to control the opacity of objects and the interplay of light between interacting objects would also be nice. Again, if you think of being able to programmatically generate solar systems, galaxies, etc, and how the interplay between them is perceived from varying distances/perspectives, you pretty much have the idea for what I'm looking to do. > > I'm looking for a way to programmatically generate the above for visualization purposes. I have a lot of programming experience, but I have no experience personally using tools like Maya, etc, that intuitively seem like they may be good avenues to explore. Again, I need to do this programmatically so that I can work with aggregated and changing data. > > I've asked around quite a bit, and I've only received blank stares and "I don't know's" from many people in the industry. > > I'm a new media producer and part-time graduate student, and this is tied to my research. Programming and producing the visualization is by far secondary to the analysis of the visualization itself, so please keep this in mind, but I'm open to any thoughts or directions on a tool, tools, or otherwise that would be helpful. Are you making a video, or are you making a program that needs to react in realtime to the user's input? If the former, as others have recommended, Maya/Houdini/etc are good routes to go if you're going to need to do complex animation and models, and want to tweak things a lot, and add effects and make a carefully rendered piece. Esp. if you're trying to make a video where you want to tweak small aspects of animation/models, and do fancy stuff. If the latter, openGL might be good IF you don't want to depend on 3rd party 3D packages, don't need to make a 'video', and want this to be a standalone realtime program that interacts with the user, and all the geometry is simple (eg. spheres and lights) openGL is free, but it takes a C or C++ programmer and someone who knows 3D pretty well (transformation matrices, coords, how to connect polygons, etc) There are zillions of small simple example programs that show how to render spheres with shading and lights, so you can start with these examples and go from there. openGL also supports nurbs, so you're not stuck in the world of polygons. Once you have it rendering a sphere with lights properly, you can then duplicate it to make several, controlling their size and position etc. procedurally. openGL is a graphics programming library mainly for realtime 3D rendering. Most programs that show 3D objects in realtime use openGL to do it, esp. cross-platform apps. openGL is pretty low level though. Usually if one is making simple programs, you can use openGL + GLUT; openGL handles the 3D stuff, and GLUT handles making the window and handling keyboard/mouse. For a more advanced program that has lots of sliders and widgets to interact with the user, in place of GLUT you can use qt/wxwidgets/fltk/whatever. You could probably even use pyqt if you wanted the app to be an easily modified script, so that you don't have to compile an application. A simple shaded sphere rendering example using GLUT+OpenGL (scroll down to "sphere.c"): http://www.opengl.org/archives/resources/code/samples/glut_examples/examples/examples.html To unsubscribe from the list send a blank e-mail to mailto:studiosysadmins-discuss-request@studiosysadmins.com?subject=unsubscribe

second the use of Processing, and just to throw it out there, there's Quartz Composer on macosx. To unsubscribe from the list send a blank e-mail to mailto:studiosysadmins-discuss-request@studiosysadmins.com?subject=unsubscribe

And there's still good ol' DX: http://opendx.org/ (first used that on an IBM PVS! What a blast!) On 7/3/2012 2:51 PM, Colin Doncaster wrote: > Right now what you're describing sounds fairly simple, especially if you > have programming background - so it would be good to know how you expect > to present this, what sort of interaction you'd expect from users and > how much data is being aggregated. > > If you're dealing with interactive systems being controlled with > aggregated data than WebGL + Javascript would be a decent place to > start, as for the 3D side of things check out the Rome Tech > page http://www.ro.me/tech/ which is using the Three.js > > http://philogb.github.com/philogl/ has been developed with web based > aggregated data visualization in mind. > > Then there's Processing.org and OpenFrameworks. > > When you say aggregated data are you talking Twitter level? I've > "toyed" with a Node.js aggregator that talks with a hadoop service for > dealing with the aggregation and a Javascript front end that seemed to > work pretty well. > > And you didn't ask for it, but if you need to deal with > input http://phonegap.com/ is great for cross platform development as > well as supporting all the various platform touch based events etc. > > On 2012-07-03, at 9:29 AM, Barry Cooper wrote: > >> Hi everyone, >> >> I have a scenario that's attached more to academia (research and >> programming) than most of what is discussed here, but there is some >> really good experience here in this group, and I'd like poll to get >> your thoughts. >> >> I'm going to purposely avoid the details of exactly what I'm doing and >> the why's, but please feel free to pipe in with any thoughts you may have. >> >> For visualization purposes, I want to programmatically create spheres >> in 3D space. If you think of stars, orbiting bodies, and >> constellations, you aren't far off from where I'm going with this. >> >> I want to control the size of the spheres, their location, and their >> proximity to each other. I want to be able illuminate them and >> control their brightness relative to each other, and I would like to >> be able to change perspective (zoom in/out and move about through >> defined 3D space). >> >> Being able to control the opacity of objects and the interplay of >> light between interacting objects would also be nice. Again, if you >> think of being able to programmatically generate solar systems, >> galaxies, etc, and how the interplay between them is perceived from >> varying distances/perspectives, you pretty much have the idea for what >> I'm looking to do. >> >> I'm looking for a way to programmatically generate the above for >> visualization purposes. I have a lot of programming experience, but I >> have no experience personally using tools like Maya, etc, that >> intuitively seem like they may be good avenues to explore. Again, I >> need to do this programmatically so that I can work with aggregated >> and changing data. >> >> I've asked around quite a bit, and I've only received blank stares and >> "I don't know's" from many people in the industry. >> >> I'm a new media producer and part-time graduate student, and this is >> tied to my research. Programming and producing the visualization is >> by far secondary to the analysis of the visualization itself, so >> please keep this in mind, but I'm open to any thoughts or directions >> on a tool, tools, or otherwise that would be helpful. >> >> Thanks in advance! >> >> >> Take care, >> >> Barry >> >> -- >> >> *Barry Cooper* >> ______________________________________ >> /Producer, New Media/ >> *March Entertainment* >> >> >> >> Email: bcooper@marchentertainment.com >> >> Sudbury: (705) 670-9831 x301 >> Toronto: (416) 604-9000 x169 >> Fax: (705) 670-9640 >> ______________________________________ >> >> ENTERTAIN | INFORM | INSPIRE >> ______________________________________ >> >> To unsubscribe from the list send a blank e-mail to >> mailto:studiosysadmins-discuss-request@studiosysadmins.com?subject=unsubscribe > > > > To unsubscribe from the list send a blank e-mail to mailto:studiosysadmins-discuss-request@studiosysadmins.com?subject=unsubscribe > To unsubscribe from the list send a blank e-mail to mailto:studiosysadmins-discuss-request@studiosysadmins.com?subject=unsubscribe

In a message from 7/3/12 6:29 AM, "Barry Cooper" wrote: >Hi everyone, > > >I have a scenario that's attached more to academia (research and >programming) than most of what is discussed here, but there is some >really good experience here in this group, and I'd like poll to get your >thoughts. Well, first question is what tools are at hand? If this is an academic subject being explored at a studio, we will probably assume that things like Houdini are readily available. If the question is coming up in a math department, Houdini probably isn't right at hand, and probably isn't a sensible thing to go out and buy for this sort of thing. I'll work from the assumption that this isn't for delivering a VFX shot, and normal VFX tools aren't automatically available. (And, having been an admin for a dept. of Applied Math, I'll assume nobody is buried in excess budget, so free tools preferred, all else equal.) >I'm going to purposely avoid the details of exactly what I'm doing and >the why's, but please feel free to pipe in with any thoughts you may have. Generally speaking, hiding the question makes it harder to answer. :) > > >For visualization purposes, I want to programmatically create spheres in >3D space. If you think of stars, orbiting bodies, and constellations, >you aren't far off from where I'm going with this. The scale matters here. Are you trying to do pool balls on a 3D table, or a trillion bodies in colliding galaxies? At very big scales you will potentially run into numeric accuracy issues that make for an interesting set of challenges, and will impact how you can do what you need. At very high numbers of particles, you will get into performance issues that make real time display impossible, etc. >I want to control the size of the spheres, their location, and their >proximity to each other. I want to be able illuminate them and control >their brightness relative to each other, and I would like to be able to >change perspective (zoom in/out and move about through defined 3D space). Easy. Do you want to do that interactively? A million years ago I did a visualization project in school showing growth of carbon molecules. I used the RenderMan API, and rendered it in BMRT. BMRT no longer exists, but the RenderMan API certainly does, so you could go a similar route. It makes it quite easy to generate spheres. (IIRC, the Ri API for it is "Sphere()") Put them wherever you want, add lights, put your camera where you want. And, you can potentially handle very large scenes in a RenderMan renderer that you could load interactively. People often use them for crowd sims with squillions of polygons and such. Downsides to that approach - no interactivity. Using raw Ri API means doing it 100% in code, rendering and waiting to see what it looks like, and hoping for the best. Finding a good camera angle can be quite a pain. If I were doing something similar to that project today, I'd probably look at the Blender python API. Blender has a much maligned UI, but you wouldn't have to delve deep into it. It's free and cross platform, so you can easily run it on any machines that you have access to. You can write some python to place your Spheres, and then place lights and cameras interactively in Blender. For modest amounts of geometry, this would be fine. For Galactic collisions with every asteroid being modeled, this would be terrible. The next step in interactiveness would be something real time in OpenGL, so the end user isn't just watching an animation, but rather inspecting the simulation however they like. >Being able to control the opacity of objects and the interplay of light >between interacting objects would also be nice. Again, if you think of >being able to programmatically generate solar systems, galaxies, etc, and >how the interplay between them is perceived from varying >distances/perspectives, you pretty much have the idea for what I'm >looking to do. Transparency is easy when talking to a renderer, or working inside a 3D app like Blender or Maya. Set the transparency of your material, go yay. It's slightly harder in real time because you probably won't get order independent transparency. Some game engines and such will support it to a certain point, but with a zillion overlapping particles, you may have problems if you want accurate and consistent rendering. So, you'll need to sort everything and draw them in order from back to front. Some scene graph API's will probably do this for you. > > >I'm looking for a way to programmatically generate the above for >visualization purposes. I have a lot of programming experience, but I >have no experience personally using tools like Maya, etc, that >intuitively seem like they may be good avenues to explore. > Again, I need to do this programmatically so that I can work with >aggregated and changing data. > > >I've asked around quite a bit, and I've only received blank stares and "I >don't know's" from many people in the industry. > > >I'm a new media producer and part-time graduate student, and this is tied >to my research. Programming and producing the visualization is by far >secondary to the analysis of the visualization itself, so please keep >this in mind, but I'm open to any thoughts > or directions on a tool, tools, or otherwise that would be helpful. You still haven't said what you want to do, what you want the end result to be, or how that will analyzed. Nail that down a bit more, and you might get fewer "I don't know's." > > >Thanks in advance! > > > > >Take care, > > >Barry To unsubscribe from the list send a blank e-mail to mailto:studiosysadmins-discuss-request@studiosysadmins.com?subject=unsubscribe

a week late, but this might help: * if you go wth maya, use python. it'll be easy to generate objects and position them, light them, etc with python. * if you can't spend the money on maya, try blender, it's free, and has some python bindings (but it's harder to use and navigate -- i hear). or you can simply use something like SDL (the library) to generate the scenes you're looking to build, and make it work (in whatever language you want -- there are tons of bindings for it). my $.02 a week late... (slowly catching up -- my apologies if this was all suggested before) Jok On Tue, 3 Jul 2012, Barry Cooper wrote: > Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2012 09:29:08 -0400 > From: Barry Cooper > Reply-To: discuss@studiosysadmins.com > To: discuss@studiosysadmins.com > Subject: [SSA-Discuss] Looking for some input on programmatically definable > tools for data visualization > > Hi everyone, > > I have a scenario that's attached more to academia (research and > programming) than most of what is discussed here, but there is some really > good experience here in this group, and I'd like poll to get your thoughts. > > I'm going to purposely avoid the details of exactly what I'm doing and the > why's, but please feel free to pipe in with any thoughts you may have. > > For visualization purposes, I want to programmatically create spheres in 3D > space. If you think of stars, orbiting bodies, and constellations, you > aren't far off from where I'm going with this. > > I want to control the size of the spheres, their location, and their > proximity to each other. I want to be able illuminate them and control > their brightness relative to each other, and I would like to be able to > change perspective (zoom in/out and move about through defined 3D space). > > Being able to control the opacity of objects and the interplay of light > between interacting objects would also be nice. Again, if you think of > being able to programmatically generate solar systems, galaxies, etc, and > how the interplay between them is perceived from varying > distances/perspectives, you pretty much have the idea for what I'm looking > to do. > > I'm looking for a way to programmatically generate the above for > visualization purposes. I have a lot of programming experience, but I have > no experience personally using tools like Maya, etc, that intuitively seem > like they may be good avenues to explore. Again, I need to do this > programmatically so that I can work with aggregated and changing data. > > I've asked around quite a bit, and I've only received blank stares and "I > don't know's" from many people in the industry. > > I'm a new media producer and part-time graduate student, and this is tied > to my research. Programming and producing the visualization is by far > secondary to the analysis of the visualization itself, so please keep this > in mind, but I'm open to any thoughts or directions on a tool, tools, or > otherwise that would be helpful. > > Thanks in advance! > > > Take care, > > Barry > > -- > > *Barry Cooper* > > ______________________________________ > *Producer, New Media* > *March Entertainment* > > > > Email: bcooper@marchentertainment.com > > Sudbury: (705) 670-9831 x301 > > Toronto: (416) 604-9000 x169 > > Fax: (705) 670-9640 > ______________________________________ > > ENTERTAIN | INFORM | INSPIRE > ______________________________________ > --- Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool... oo ,(..)\ ~~ To unsubscribe from the list send a blank e-mail to mailto:studiosysadmins-discuss-request@studiosysadmins.com?subject=unsubscribe

Libcinder -opensource and coded by a bunch of ex-VFX TDs that know their stuff (don't mess with Hai) Sent from my iPhone. On Jul 8, 2012, at 1:22 AM, epac wrote: > a week late, but this might help: > > * if you go wth maya, use python. it'll be easy to generate objects and position them, light them, etc with python. > > * if you can't spend the money on maya, try blender, it's free, and has some python bindings (but it's harder to use and navigate -- i hear). > > or you can simply use something like SDL (the library) to generate the scenes you're looking to build, and make it work (in whatever language you want -- there are tons of bindings for it). > > my $.02 a week late... > (slowly catching up -- my apologies if this was all suggested before) > > Jok > > On Tue, 3 Jul 2012, Barry Cooper wrote: > >> Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2012 09:29:08 -0400 >> From: Barry Cooper >> Reply-To: discuss@studiosysadmins.com >> To: discuss@studiosysadmins.com >> Subject: [SSA-Discuss] Looking for some input on programmatically definable >> tools for data visualization >> Hi everyone, >> >> I have a scenario that's attached more to academia (research and >> programming) than most of what is discussed here, but there is some really >> good experience here in this group, and I'd like poll to get your thoughts. >> >> I'm going to purposely avoid the details of exactly what I'm doing and the >> why's, but please feel free to pipe in with any thoughts you may have. >> >> For visualization purposes, I want to programmatically create spheres in 3D >> space. If you think of stars, orbiting bodies, and constellations, you >> aren't far off from where I'm going with this. >> >> I want to control the size of the spheres, their location, and their >> proximity to each other. I want to be able illuminate them and control >> their brightness relative to each other, and I would like to be able to >> change perspective (zoom in/out and move about through defined 3D space). >> >> Being able to control the opacity of objects and the interplay of light >> between interacting objects would also be nice. Again, if you think of >> being able to programmatically generate solar systems, galaxies, etc, and >> how the interplay between them is perceived from varying >> distances/perspectives, you pretty much have the idea for what I'm looking >> to do. >> >> I'm looking for a way to programmatically generate the above for >> visualization purposes. I have a lot of programming experience, but I have >> no experience personally using tools like Maya, etc, that intuitively seem >> like they may be good avenues to explore. Again, I need to do this >> programmatically so that I can work with aggregated and changing data. >> >> I've asked around quite a bit, and I've only received blank stares and "I >> don't know's" from many people in the industry. >> >> I'm a new media producer and part-time graduate student, and this is tied >> to my research. Programming and producing the visualization is by far >> secondary to the analysis of the visualization itself, so please keep this >> in mind, but I'm open to any thoughts or directions on a tool, tools, or >> otherwise that would be helpful. >> >> Thanks in advance! >> >> >> Take care, >> >> Barry >> >> -- >> >> *Barry Cooper* >> >> ______________________________________ >> *Producer, New Media* >> *March Entertainment* >> >> >> >> Email: bcooper@marchentertainment.com >> >> Sudbury: (705) 670-9831 x301 >> >> Toronto: (416) 604-9000 x169 >> >> Fax: (705) 670-9640 >> ______________________________________ >> >> ENTERTAIN | INFORM | INSPIRE >> ______________________________________ >> > > --- > Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool... > oo > ,(..)\ > ~~ > To unsubscribe from the list send a blank e-mail to mailto:studiosysadmins-discuss-request@studiosysadmins.com?subject=unsubscribe -- ------------------------------ T +1 647 317 1603 F +1 647 317 1604 *DASHING.TV * To unsubscribe from the list send a blank e-mail to mailto:studiosysadmins-discuss-request@studiosysadmins.com?subject=unsubscribe