[louns at cs.washington.edu: Re: Geomview use collection (long)]

[munzner]

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Date: Fri, 29 Apr 1994 12:08:12 -0700
From: louns at cs.washington.edu (Michael Lounsbery)
To: munzner at geom
Subject: Re:  Geomview use collection (long)

I've used geomview to view polygonal models in OFF format as part of our
research on multiresolution analysis for arbitrary genus surfaces.  I have
found the interface particularly nice to use for still models.

Having no other alternative, I also used the lisp-like control language to
drive geomview for a frame-by-frame animation.  This was a lot less
enjoyable, but I realize this was not exactly what geomview was designed
for, and I was seriously pushing the limits.  There were numerous problems
with animation, including slowly growing memory leaks, no good facility for
multiple camera views of different spaces, and light setting bugs.  The most
important drawback, however, was that there is no signal that I could use to
test when the display was completely updated.  I therefore had to put sleep
statements in the C program being called, and guess at how long to sleep.
This was problematic for many reasons.

On the whole, geomview is a nice piece of work for 3D viewing, with a
prticularly nice interface, but it's not what you want for animation.

Michael