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The appropriate view mode for CAD applications

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Phua Khai Fong

The appropriate view mode for CAD applications

Hi,

I need some ideas/suggestions and if possible guidance on how to adjust the camera's view for my CAD tool mainly, the view of the camera in particular the viewing angle, direction and height. I have seen clips from second life videos of avatars hanging in the air while building houses. My thoughts are :-

1) Have an invisible avatar or at least switch to an invisible avatar when creating 3D solids then move the whole avatar around (up,down,left,right,rotate) when creating and editing 3D solids.
2) Leave the avatar alone but enable the camera to be independent with freedom to move about to have adjustable viewing modes.
3) Leave the avatar and camera alone but set the camera's height higher with ability to move its head around and lock on one position. (currently, the avatar can look around by holding the shift key but I have no idea how to lock on a view as it keeps going back to the center when the shift key is released)
4) Leave everything alone and integrate controls to move/rotate those 3D solids around only for better view.

Any suggestions and guidance from all fellow developers would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

hendikon

Re: The appropriate view mode for CAD applications

Either the notion of an avatar is irrelevant in this context, (since one
would want to be everywhere, taking multiple simultaneous points of view
and jumping between points of view instantaneously), or the avatar could
BE the world, or perhaps an appropriate avatar for this is something
like an ant colony or a swarm of insects, each individual representing a
point-of-view while the whole swarm represents the user, one swarm per
user.

Or perhaps Croquet's portal system could be put to use here, allowing
one to be everywhere via invisible portals through which one reaches.

Darius Clarke

Re: The appropriate view mode for CAD applications

In reply to this post by Phua Khai Fong

Hi,

In once sense, all are good depending on the preference of the 3D solid modeler.
However, most people like not having to make a lot of decisions about how to do something. They're only really interested in the finished product, not the process to get there.

It seems the next question would be, "how can we make the awareness of points of view and perspectives disappear or "get out of the way" for the solid modeler?"

For one thing, one's avatar is not for oneself to view, it's for others to view what you're doing and who you are. Do you expect others to be watching the 3D solid modeler, to learn from them, etc.? Because of "I'm only working on this model here/now and I'm done with it when I'm done" aspect of solid modeling, I expect there's not going to be much of an audience. Remember at the fairs and carnivals, those carving wood, shaping glass, painting caricatures, etc., are there all day every day.

Try this. While you and others are solid modeling, make an audio recording of you/them giving a running narrative of what you're doing and why. You may find yourself saying things like "I want to look at this surface straight on" or "I only want to zoom in to see this armature" or "I need to see how all these are in relation to each other as related to this plane" or "Let's see the back" or "Let's see its profile" etc. Now find the fastest, minimal way to answer these questions in the UI so they can become automatic and subconscious motions for the modeler.

Maybe one needs a trail of last points of view like the browser's forward/backward buttons. Maybe perspectives need labels so one can jump to a pov using keyboard shortcuts and only typing the label abbreviations. I think only one camera is needed since one is only viewing one pov at a time, unlike a security camera panel. However, most CAD software and Blender like to show several pov at a time so designers may have their reasons for more than one.

Cheers,
Darius

On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 3:10 AM, Phua Khai Fong <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi,

I need some ideas/suggestions and if possible guidance on how to adjust the camera's view for my CAD tool mainly, the view of the camera in particular the viewing angle, direction and height. I have seen clips from second life videos of avatars hanging in the air while building houses. My thoughts are :-

1) Have an invisible avatar or at least switch to an invisible avatar when creating 3D solids then move the whole avatar around (up,down,left,right,rotate) when creating and editing 3D solids.
2) Leave the avatar alone but enable the camera to be independent with freedom to move about to have adjustable viewing modes.
3) Leave the avatar and camera alone but set the camera's height higher with ability to move its head around and lock on one position. (currently, the avatar can look around by holding the shift key but I have no idea how to lock on a view as it keeps going back to the center when the shift key is released)
4) Leave everything alone and integrate controls to move/rotate those 3D solids around only for better view.

Any suggestions and guidance from all fellow developers would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

Hans Baveco

[ANN] first version of CroquetGIS

On http://croquet-src-01.oit.duke.edu:8886/@siaEegaAzLgxZmBP/UCEIcAOK you find a first version of CroquetGIS, a package that adds the ability to import and visualize geographic data sets, in the formats ASCIIGRID, ESRI Shapefile, ARC\INFO TINS and geo-referenced Images. More installation details on the wiki (I haven't found a reliable way to load the required packages automatically...). Sample data are at http://webdocs.alterra.wur.nl/internet/landschap/EMM/Croquet/GIS/geo.zip

It should basically work in the Cobalt release. When loading your own datasets it is advisable to set the checkbox for "aligning to Croquet's origin" - otherwise your visualization may end up very very far from where your avatar is waiting! The alternative, for instance when you have multiple datasets for the same area, is to make the Croquet origin represent non-zero coordinates (e.g. the coordinates of the upperleft corner of your map) - this is the first option in the GIS menu. (the scaling is not done quite right yet for non-aligned datasets).
Currently, only a visualization is created of the geographic data. The raw data sets can however be stored and used for other purposes than visualization.
Comments, improvements and extensions are more than welcome,
have fun,

Hans

winmail.dat (5K) Download Attachment

Andreas.Raab

Re: [ANN] first version of CroquetGIS

Try this URL:

http://croquet-src-01.oit.duke.edu:8886/CroquetGIS.html

Cheers,
- Andreas

Baveco, Hans wrote:
> On http://croquet-src-01.oit.duke.edu:8886/@siaEegaAzLgxZmBP/UCEIcAOK you find a first version of CroquetGIS, a package that adds the ability to import and visualize geographic data sets, in the formats ASCIIGRID, ESRI Shapefile, ARC\INFO TINS and geo-referenced Images. More installation details on the wiki (I haven't found a reliable way to load the required packages automatically...). Sample data are at http://webdocs.alterra.wur.nl/internet/landschap/EMM/Croquet/GIS/geo.zip
>
> It should basically work in the Cobalt release. When loading your own datasets it is advisable to set the checkbox for "aligning to Croquet's origin" - otherwise your visualization may end up very very far from where your avatar is waiting! The alternative, for instance when you have multiple datasets for the same area, is to make the Croquet origin represent non-zero coordinates (e.g. the coordinates of the upperleft corner of your map) - this is the first option in the GIS menu. (the scaling is not done quite right yet for non-aligned datasets).
> Currently, only a visualization is created of the geographic data. The raw data sets can however be stored and used for other purposes than visualization.
> Comments, improvements and extensions are more than welcome,
> have fun,
>
> Hans
>

SergeStinckwich

Re: [ANN] first version of CroquetGIS

In reply to this post by Hans Baveco

Baveco, Hans a écrit :
> On http://croquet-src-01.oit.duke.edu:8886/@siaEegaAzLgxZmBP/UCEIcAOK you find a first version of CroquetGIS, a package that adds the ability to import and visualize geographic data sets, in the formats ASCIIGRID, ESRI Shapefile, ARC\INFO TINS and geo-referenced Images. More installation details on the wiki (I haven't found a reliable way to load the required packages automatically...). Sample data are at http://webdocs.alterra.wur.nl/internet/landschap/EMM/Croquet/GIS/geo.zip
>
> It should basically work in the Cobalt release. When loading your own datasets it is advisable to set the checkbox for "aligning to Croquet's origin" - otherwise your visualization may end up very very far from where your avatar is waiting! The alternative, for instance when you have multiple datasets for the same area, is to make the Croquet origin represent non-zero coordinates (e.g. the coordinates of the upperleft corner of your map) - this is the first option in the GIS menu. (the scaling is not done quite right yet for non-aligned datasets).
> Currently, only a visualization is created of the geographic data. The raw data sets can however be stored and used for other purposes than visualization.
> Comments, improvements and extensions are more than welcome,

I'm interested, what are the goals of this project ?

--
Serge Stinckwich
http://blog.doesnotunderstand.org/

Hans Baveco

RE: Re: [ANN] first version of CroquetGIS

The project has two goals, one is to in general enable the use of geographic data in on-line multi-user virtual worlds like Croquet. These data might be useful for the creation of the landscape, e.g. using digital elevation data and textures derived from landuse maps etc or just to allow the use of this data in the application itself (image the avatars discussing and editing maps projected on the wall, like in QWAQ is possible for other document types) - this latter boils down to the development of a simple on-line multi-user GIS. A second goal is to allow my simulation models to "live" in virtual worlds like Croquet, with the main focus on visualization of (spatial) model output and maybe the exploration of different ways of user-interaction with the models.

Hans
________________________________

From: news on behalf of Serge Stinckwich
Sent: Thu 7/10/2008 11:22 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [croquet-dev] Re: [ANN] first version of CroquetGIS

Baveco, Hans a écrit :
> On http://croquet-src-01.oit.duke.edu:8886/@siaEegaAzLgxZmBP/UCEIcAOK you find a first version of CroquetGIS, a package that adds the ability to import and visualize geographic data sets, in the formats ASCIIGRID, ESRI Shapefile, ARC\INFO TINS and geo-referenced Images. More installation details on the wiki (I haven't found a reliable way to load the required packages automatically...). Sample data are at http://webdocs.alterra.wur.nl/internet/landschap/EMM/Croquet/GIS/geo.zip
>
> It should basically work in the Cobalt release. When loading your own datasets it is advisable to set the checkbox for "aligning to Croquet's origin" - otherwise your visualization may end up very very far from where your avatar is waiting! The alternative, for instance when you have multiple datasets for the same area, is to make the Croquet origin represent non-zero coordinates (e.g. the coordinates of the upperleft corner of your map) - this is the first option in the GIS menu. (the scaling is not done quite right yet for non-aligned datasets).
> Currently, only a visualization is created of the geographic data. The raw data sets can however be stored and used for other purposes than visualization.
> Comments, improvements and extensions are more than welcome,

I'm interested, what are the goals of this project ?

--
Serge Stinckwich
http://blog.doesnotunderstand.org/

winmail.dat (6K) Download Attachment

Phua Khai Fong

Re: The appropriate view mode for CAD applications

In reply to this post by Phua Khai Fong

I get what you mean. Thanks for the help.

I am now trying to implement moving the avatar around with controls to look up and down.

How do I catch events for the scroll wheel?

----- Original Message ----
From: Darius Clarke <[hidden email]>
To: [hidden email]; Phua Khai Fong <[hidden email]>
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 2:50:27
Subject: Re: [croquet-dev] The appropriate view mode for CAD applications

Hi,

In once sense, all are good depending on the preference of the 3D solid modeler.
However, most people like not having to make a lot of decisions about how to do something. They're only really interested in the finished product, not the process to get there.

It seems the next question would be, "how can we make the awareness of points of view and perspectives disappear or "get out of the way" for the solid modeler?"

For one thing, one's avatar is not for oneself to view, it's for others to view what you're doing and who you are. Do you expect others to be watching the 3D solid modeler, to learn from them, etc.? Because of "I'm only working on this model here/now and I'm done with it when I'm done" aspect of solid modeling, I expect there's not going to be much of an audience. Remember at the fairs and carnivals, those carving wood, shaping glass, painting caricatures, etc., are there all day every day.

Try this. While you and others are solid modeling, make an audio recording of you/them giving a running narrative of what you're doing and why. You may find yourself saying things like "I want to look at this surface straight on" or "I only want to zoom in to see this armature" or "I need to see how all these are in relation to each other as related to this plane" or "Let's see the back" or "Let's see its profile" etc. Now find the fastest, minimal way to answer these questions in the UI so they can become automatic and subconscious motions for the modeler.

Maybe one needs a trail of last points of view like the browser's forward/backward buttons. Maybe perspectives need labels so one can jump to a pov using keyboard shortcuts and only typing the label abbreviations. I think only one camera is needed since one is only viewing one pov at a time, unlike a security camera panel. However, most CAD software and Blender like to show several pov at a time so designers may have their reasons for more than one.

Cheers,
Darius

On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 3:10 AM, Phua Khai Fong <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi,

I need some ideas/suggestions and if possible guidance on how to adjust the camera's view for my CAD tool mainly, the view of the camera in particular the viewing angle, direction and height. I have seen clips from second life videos of avatars hanging in the air while building houses. My thoughts are :-

1) Have an invisible avatar or at least switch to an invisible avatar when creating 3D solids then move the whole avatar around (up,down,left,right,rotate) when creating and editing 3D solids.
2) Leave the avatar alone but enable the camera to be independent with freedom to move about to have adjustable viewing modes.
3) Leave the avatar and camera alone but set the camera's height higher with ability to move its head around and lock on one position. (currently, the avatar can look around by holding the shift key but I have no idea how to lock on a view as it keeps going back to the center when the shift key is released)
4) Leave everything alone and integrate controls to move/rotate those 3D solids around only for better view.

Any suggestions and guidance from all fellow developers would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

sathyas

Re: The appropriate view mode for CAD applications

hi i'm sathya

u have any example application ( using croquet).........................

thks

SergeStinckwich

Re: Re: [ANN] first version of CroquetGIS

In reply to this post by Hans Baveco

Thank you Hans for your explanation. I will soon be part of a project
merging a GIS system with observation robots deployed on a disaster
zone.
I will have a look at your work and talk with you latter if necessary.

2008/7/10 Baveco, Hans <[hidden email]>:

> The project has two goals, one is to in general enable the use of geographic data in on-line multi-user virtual worlds like Croquet. These data might be useful for the creation of the landscape, e.g. using digital elevation data and textures derived from landuse maps etc or just to allow the use of this data in the application itself (image the avatars discussing and editing maps projected on the wall, like in QWAQ is possible for other document types) - this latter boils down to the development of a simple on-line multi-user GIS. A second goal is to allow my simulation models to "live" in virtual worlds like Croquet, with the main focus on visualization of (spatial) model output and maybe the exploration of different ways of user-interaction with the models.
>
> Hans
> ________________________________
>
> From: news on behalf of Serge Stinckwich
> Sent: Thu 7/10/2008 11:22 AM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: [croquet-dev] Re: [ANN] first version of CroquetGIS
>
>
>
> Baveco, Hans a écrit :
>> On http://croquet-src-01.oit.duke.edu:8886/@siaEegaAzLgxZmBP/UCEIcAOK you find a first version of CroquetGIS, a package that adds the ability to import and visualize geographic data sets, in the formats ASCIIGRID, ESRI Shapefile, ARC\INFO TINS and geo-referenced Images. More installation details on the wiki (I haven't found a reliable way to load the required packages automatically...). Sample data are at http://webdocs.alterra.wur.nl/internet/landschap/EMM/Croquet/GIS/geo.zip
>>
>> It should basically work in the Cobalt release. When loading your own datasets it is advisable to set the checkbox for "aligning to Croquet's origin" - otherwise your visualization may end up very very far from where your avatar is waiting! The alternative, for instance when you have multiple datasets for the same area, is to make the Croquet origin represent non-zero coordinates (e.g. the coordinates of the upperleft corner of your map) - this is the first option in the GIS menu. (the scaling is not done quite right yet for non-aligned datasets).
>> Currently, only a visualization is created of the geographic data. The raw data sets can however be stored and used for other purposes than visualization.
>> Comments, improvements and extensions are more than welcome,
>
> I'm interested, what are the goals of this project ?
>
> --
> Serge Stinckwich
> http://blog.doesnotunderstand.org/
>
>
>
>
>
>

--
Serge Stinckwich
Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]
http://blog.doesnotunderstand.org/

Lorenzo

Re: Re: [ANN] first version of CroquetGIS

Hi Serge,

I have seen your mention to a project about observation robots for GIS
applications.

I have been involved in something similar in a project for pollution control
at Università Cattolica di Brescia, where we plan to use an approach based
on neuro fuzzy technology based on a framework (FuzzyWorld) which I
developped in Smalltalk and that I was thinking to port to Squeak.

Can you give me some further details about your project ?

Maybe we could find some synergies

Thanks

Ciao

Lorenzo
----- Original Message -----
From: "Serge Stinckwich" <[hidden email]>
To: "Baveco, Hans" <[hidden email]>
Cc: <[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 3:20 PM
Subject: Re: [croquet-dev] Re: [ANN] first version of CroquetGIS

Thank you Hans for your explanation. I will soon be part of a project
merging a GIS system with observation robots deployed on a disaster
zone.
I will have a look at your work and talk with you latter if necessary.

2008/7/10 Baveco, Hans <[hidden email]>:

> The project has two goals, one is to in general enable the use of
> geographic data in on-line multi-user virtual worlds like Croquet. These
> data might be useful for the creation of the landscape, e.g. using digital
> elevation data and textures derived from landuse maps etc or just to allow
> the use of this data in the application itself (image the avatars
> discussing and editing maps projected on the wall, like in QWAQ is
> possible for other document types) - this latter boils down to the
> development of a simple on-line multi-user GIS. A second goal is to allow
> my simulation models to "live" in virtual worlds like Croquet, with the
> main focus on visualization of (spatial) model output and maybe the
> exploration of different ways of user-interaction with the models.
>
> Hans
> ________________________________
>
> From: news on behalf of Serge Stinckwich
> Sent: Thu 7/10/2008 11:22 AM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: [croquet-dev] Re: [ANN] first version of CroquetGIS
>
>
>
> Baveco, Hans a écrit :
>> On http://croquet-src-01.oit.duke.edu:8886/@siaEegaAzLgxZmBP/UCEIcAOK you
>> find a first version of CroquetGIS, a package that adds the ability to
>> import and visualize geographic data sets, in the formats ASCIIGRID, ESRI
>> Shapefile, ARC\INFO TINS and geo-referenced Images. More installation
>> details on the wiki (I haven't found a reliable way to load the required
>> packages automatically...). Sample data are at
>> http://webdocs.alterra.wur.nl/internet/landschap/EMM/Croquet/GIS/geo.zip
>>
>> It should basically work in the Cobalt release. When loading your own
>> datasets it is advisable to set the checkbox for "aligning to Croquet's
>> origin" - otherwise your visualization may end up very very far from
>> where your avatar is waiting! The alternative, for instance when you have
>> multiple datasets for the same area, is to make the Croquet origin
>> represent non-zero coordinates (e.g. the coordinates of the upperleft
>> corner of your map) - this is the first option in the GIS menu. (the
>> scaling is not done quite right yet for non-aligned datasets).
>> Currently, only a visualization is created of the geographic data. The
>> raw data sets can however be stored and used for other purposes than
>> visualization.
>> Comments, improvements and extensions are more than welcome,
>
> I'm interested, what are the goals of this project ?
>
> --
> Serge Stinckwich
> http://blog.doesnotunderstand.org/
>
>
>
>
>
>

--
Serge Stinckwich
Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]
http://blog.doesnotunderstand.org/

sathyas

Re: Re: [ANN] first version of CroquetGIS

hi friends,

i am new in croquet....
how to interact particular part of object in croquet

example:

human is one object

it has head,hand,leg.....

i can interact total object(human)...

but i can't interact particular part of human(head,hand,leg)

help me.........