by Jon Goldman
Inventor Viewer for the CAVE available!
This
Web page and Application is ongoing development. Check here once in a
while for updates to the software.
App Name: cvview
Version: 1.35
Last time/date Updated:
Thu Mar 23 17:17:29 CST 1995
Usage: cvview filename ...
where filename is
an inventor file.
Example :
cvview
/usr/share/data/models/X29.iv
Source Code:
A
tar of the source and executable can be obtained from EVL's ftp site, or here:
Cvview_src.tar.gz
A simplified version of the
source, written by Jason Leigh, can be found in the file SIMPLE.C which
is included in the tar of the source obtained above.
Problems? comments? gripes? contact me at, goldman@eecs.uic.edu
User's Guide
What you see
Version 1.32 of the viewer is
pretty basic. It loads inventor files from the command line and displays
them in the CAVE (or Simulator). There is a point light source at the
center of the CAVE that illuminates at about 60% brightness.
The
wand acts as a spot light with 100% brightness and about a 36 degree
arc. When pointed at objects it illuminates them quite well.
User Interface
The user interface consists of a simple 1-item
menu which appears at the lower right at about the position of the front
wall of the CAVE. There are currently 4 menu items which are described
below. Cycling through menu items is achieved via the right wand/mouse
button.
Menu Actions:
NAV
Navigation
To Navigate, point the wand in the direction of travel and push the
middle button. The left button resets the navigation to the original
starting point.
Datasets
Use the left and middle
buttons to cycle between datasets/files loaded on the command line. The
left button removes a dataset. The right button restores a dataset.
Rotate
Not Implemented yet.
Scale
To scale up the object(s) hold down the middle button.
To scale down
the object(s) hold down the left button.
Holding down the left and
middle button simultaneously will reset the scale factor to 1.0.
Caveats:
Cameras: All inventor camera objects
should be removed from the inventor model file before attempting to view
with cvview. The CAVE library sets up all projection transformations so
if your model has any cameras specified you may end up with an empty
view. To test for cameras use ivcat.
Example: ivcat
mymodel.iv | grep -i camera
Not for the timid: Cameras
can be removed from pre-existing Inventor files by using ivcat to write
to a new file and then hand editing the new file and remove all camera
instances. It is intended that future versions of the viewer will do
this automatically.
Watch out for small inventor models. For
example, you can create inventor models with showcase (by using the 3D
Gizmo and saving out selected objects as inventor files). However,
Showcase normalizes the objects' vertices to fall between 0-and-1.0,
which makes the objects come out looking small in cvview. Use the
scaling feature in cvview to scale up small objects.