Topic: free 3D hidden line rendering

[drlava]

I don't know how many of you cave-dwellers saw this, but it bears repeating.  There is a FREE 3D RENDERER capable of generating laser animations.  AND it can be used with laserboy, too.

I have tried it and it works.  it's slow and hard to learn at first, but just go to the blender GUI tutorial immediately and it's not that bad. See attached.

http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8086



http://www.blender.org/education-help/tutorials/tutorial-folder/blender-user-interface-tutorial/

[BlinkenLights]

yeah.. i mentioned that a long time ago

[drlava]

and did you do anything with it?
and this isn't google sketchup we are talking about.  this is actual 3D animation.

[BlinkenLights]

i exported some DXFs and imported them into LB, but i felt that the software was overly complex for laser animation and i did not like the way it did mesh. but over all it did work..

[Agent C]

I don't know how many of you cave-dwellers saw this, but it bears repeating.  There is a FREE 3D RENDERER capable of generating laser animations.  AND it can be used with laserboy, too.

I have tried it and it works.  it's slow and hard to learn at first, but just go to the blender GUI tutorial immediately and it's not that bad. See attached.

http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8086



http://www.blender.org/education-help/tutorials/tutorial-folder/blender-user-interface-tutorial/

We need to look up some computer graphics papers on hidden line rendering - preferably using vertex/fragment shaders and discuss it over lunch.  If we can figure out how to do this real time in OpenGL and combine it with some of your optimization we are in business.

[Agent C]

Here is where I'll be starting:

"Many previous techniques exist for fast, automated outlines and
two-tone shading (e.g., [Markosian et al. 1997; Raskar and Cohen
1999; Gooch et al. 1998, 1999; Buchanan and Sousa 2000; Gooch
and Gooch 2001; McGuire and Hughes 2004])."

MARKOSIAN, L., KOWALSKI, M., GOLDSTEIN, D., TRYCHIN, S.,
AND HUGHES, J. 1997. Real-time nonphotorealistic rendering.
SIGGRAPH ’97, 415—420

RASKAR, R., AND COHEN, M. 1999. Image precision silhouette
edges. In Proc. of I3D 1999. 135—140

GOOCH, B., GOOCH, A., SHIRLEY, P., AND COHEN, E. 1998. A nonphotorealistic
lighting model for automatic technical illustration.
SIGGRAPH ‘98. 447—452

BUCHANAN, J., AND SOUSA, M. 2000. The edge buffer: a data structure
for easy silhouette rendering. Proc. of NPAR ’00, Annecy, Fr.39—42

GOOCH, B., AND GOOCH, A. 2001. Non-photorealistic rendering.
AK Peters, Natick, MA

MCGUIRE, M. AND HUGHES, J. 2004. Hardware-determined
feature edges. In Proc. of NPAR ’04. Annecy, Fr., 135—147

[James]

Dude!

You sound like a PhD student! 

James. 

[Agent C]

Yeah that's what grad school is about - learning how to do literature and background research so we don't constantly reinvent the wheel.  We like to say that you can save an hour in the library by spending a week at the bench.

  The 2004 paper has a great background on the gl pipeline as well as discussing the edge and feature detection methods.  If it isn't freely accessible let me know and I'll lend you my copy.

[Agent C]

I figured out the technical term for what I'm trying to do.  I'm trying to render contours and suggestive contours.  Ideally this will run as a geometry shader or vertex shader program on a GPU.  Searching for contour or suggestive contour rendering turned up a huge number of recent presentations on google, freely accessible.

[meandean]

  A bit over my head, but good luck with that (damned egghead PhD grad students on this forum- Who left the barn door open?)...

[James]

I figured out the technical term for what I'm trying to do.

I really enjoy the fact that SOOOOOOO much math, science, technology, equipment, money, and hours of effort go into what I like to call

making pretty pictures! 

James.