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COVISE User's Guide

1. a 139 See R Pee Bene eee ee ee 139 1 1 One step forward one step back 140 Contents 5 Organization of this Document Chapter 1 gives you a brief overview of COVISE architecture and history and shows you how to start it Chapter 2 shows you how to build your own module maps to modify module parameter and how to work in a distributed and or collabarative mode Chapter 3 gives you an introduction into the COVISE Virtual Reality renderer Chapter 4 makes the COVISE desktop renderer accessible to you Chapter 5 explains how to visualize volumetric data Chapter 6 details the colloborative features of COVISE 6 Contents 1 Introduction COVISE stands for COlaborative Vlsualization and Simulation Environment lt is an extendable dis tributed software environment to integrate simulations postprocessing and visualization functionalities in a seamless manner From the beginning COVISE was designed for collaborative working allowing engineers and scientists to spread on a network infrastructure Processing steps can be arbitrarily dis tributed across different machine platforms to make optimal use of their varying characteristics High speed network architectures of different kinds can be properly incorporated into COVISE Industrial or research simulation codes are easily integrated into this distributed software environment by wrapping the code as a COVISE module If required the open design allows easy extension of the CO
2. Execute Close Help Figure 5 4 ReadVolume Preferences window Figure 5 5 Map with WriteVolume to write volume datasets to disk 88 Chapter 5 Volume Rendering in COVISE IHPUT PARAMETER Write volume files or create 2D slice images E FileName Browser Cal gendatrvt OverwriteExisting Boolean EJ J FileType choice Raw volume file ryt DataF ormat Choice B bits per voxel i Minimum alue Scalar Value 0 000000 Delta 1 000000 Maximumtvalue Scalar Value 1 000000 Delta 1 000000 SEEN E yl A Execute Close Help Figure 5 6 WriteVolume Preferences window Figure 5 7 Simple volume rendering map with GenDat 5 3 Desktop Renderer 89 IHPUT PARAMETER Generate data j Coord Type Choice Uniformi J Coord Range Choice idol gt Function choice Sines Li _ Orientation Choice opl J size Slider Min neu Mas rom Value pus Della es JD y5lza Slider Min hou Max ls Value ous Delta pene 3 z8ize Slider Mint Max 64 Value 2 Detafi _ start vector FEE RE jend vector ee kid J timestep Slider Mit TE Ia need Value ssi Delta ss J color String Figure 5 8 GenDat parameters suitable for volume rendering 90 Chapter 5 Volume Rendering in COVISE File DraghMode Arrows Saturation 0 400 Transparent Linear se Opaque se apline Apply Close Figure 5 9 ColorEdit s color editor window In the rende
3. Hostname Shared Memory execution mode timeout s Min SHM shm mmap none rexec rsh ssh manual default 5 segment mike shm ssh 360 32MB peter shm manual 360 george shm rsh 360 For workstations and PCs the memory model is shm shared memory There are other memory models for supercomputers like CRAY When using shared memory COVISE manages multiple shared memory segments and tries to put its data object in free spaces of these segments If no memory is left it will allocate an additional segment The size of this segment is the minimum of the required ize for the object and the minimum allocation size specified in the config file Small minimal SHM segment sizes will reduce memory consumption but increase the number of seg ments and add overhead Both maximum size of shared memory usage and number of segments are limited by operationg system and machine configuration If no value is given the following defaults are used Linux 8 MB SGI n32 and HP 16 MB SGI 64bit 64 MB 1 3 First Steps 11 UlConfig The user interface looks for the scope UlConfig The variable ShortCuts contains the name of favourite application module names If the variable Modulelcons is set to colored module icons for different host have different colors on the Map Editor canvas UIConfig i ShortCuts RWCovise Colors Collect CuttingSurface IsoSurface Renderer Modullcons colored In addition you can use UlConfig to specify a browse
4. 3f gt 0 000 0 100 0 200 0 300 0 400 0 500 hme 2f 0 00 0 10 0 20 0 30 0 40 0 50 The Volume sample rate thumbwheel is needed for Volume Rendering see Appendix When Spin Animation is enabled objects can be rotated around in an animated fashion in viewer mode e Annotation new edit delete With the items of this sub menu new Annotation edit Anno tation delete Annotation you can add a description to the Renderer image like isosurface in the figure below lsosurtace COYISE Renderer Functions Draw style Viewing Decoration Headlight Preferences new Annotation edit Annotation delete Annotation A aSipricnupst Figure 4 11 Annotion function Switch to pick mode and click on the detail you want to explain You can now using a popup with apply add a new Annotation edit an existing Annotation delete an Annotation Please note Annotations can be saved as part of a map Annotations are static they do not move e g with an isosurface if the isovalue is changed e MasterRequest same function as MasterCtrl in MapEditor 62 Chapter 4 The Renderer The Decoration Area The decoration consists of three thumb wheels for rotating Rotx Roty and zooming Dolly as well as a zoom slider trim Zoom and six viewer icons to the right side of the viewer area These icons are shortcuts for some of the viewer pop up functionality From top to bottom there are ic
5. 0 470838 ly 3 73331 Opacity 4 Val 1 000 RGB Alpha Table A Current 0 500 HH numSteps autoScales scaleNow 4H annotation Colors Help Details gt gt Execute Discard Close Figure 2 30 The Colormap Editor 0 1 for the purpose of defining colour mappings The transfer function is given as a piecewise linear mapping the small triangles interpolation markers below the coloured bar in the picture above serve as nodes for linear interpolation By clicking on an interpolation marker you can select it for manipulation e change its position by dragging it or by entering a new value in the input field labelled Current e modify colour and opacity this is described in more detail below The opacity can be modified by the self named slider and input fields For changing the colour values there are more possibilities e enter red green blue values in the range from 0 to 1 in the corresponding input fields e modify the colour according to the hue saturation value space choose a colour hue and sat uration in the large square and select the value in the coloured slider to the left of the large rectangular region where the current colour is displayed e specify numerically hue saturation and value in the corresponding input fields The resulting colour map is displ
6. COVISE PORT the number of the port on which the web interface is accessed from the COVISE session IMPORTANT Before starting the web srv a COVISE session or stopping the web srv the environment variables have to be set using command source init www 2 Start the web interface e execute command web srv e if the following error is displayed ERROR bind to port xxx where xxx is the port number of the HTTP_PORT or COVISE PORT the correspond ing port HTTP PORT or COVISE PORT should be changed to a new value Set the corresponding environment variable to the new value and restart the web interface 3 Access the web interface e Using a a browser with a VRML plug in installed for example CosmoPlayer the user should access the following URL address http HOSTSRV HTTP PORT ClientApplet html The web page displayed will contain a display area for VRML objects and a list of registered renderers This list contains the identifiers of VRML renderers connected from covise Sessions The user can select one of the available VRML_renderers and by using Connect button the objects stored in the VRML renderer are displayed in the browser By selecting the dynamic synchronization option the changes of the objects from the selected VRML renderer are also shown in the browser If the user wants to interact directly with the objects displayed in the browser then he should deselect this option To restore the
7. COVISE User s Guide February 2008 Title COVISE User s Guide February 5 2015 Authors Martin Aumueller Juergen Schulze Doebold Ruth Lang Daniela Rainer Andreas Werner Uwe Woessner Peter Wolf Contents 1 Contents 7 1 1 How COVISE WONG uw eee Row wx 3 o 4 3050405 Leni 8 1 2 ENS sais eros 9079 3E 9 9 E EG eR S RRSG RSS ar 9 05 9 E SENSN eRe eee eee ERE ee MESES NS 9 CARR x aaa yn Row aa x 4565p ae ON q qo X m V P UE UE i 10 A E a 10 13 23 Mentbadk 9x10 oROS X RR RT 14 2114 FINGER 14 2 1 2 Execution Menu 15 lessi 15 CEPIT 18 TT 19 2 2 Available Help 2 22 19 22 Il TOO ure woe AE om eee ed nale 19 222 Mio add 959 5 3 8 20 223 OnlnedelB 344m mU UR ibi i 20 2 _loolbalh Sse oe hae ee Ree ii ehi 20 2 9 1 Toolbar ICONS sones 94 303 909 3 3 4 9 eH OA OA oS A 20 2 3 2 Favourites LL 21 2 4 Module Browser aoa sia a REN ARA a A a 21 2 5 Visual Programming Area Canvas 2 oaa aa 23 2 5 1 Module Icon LL 23 252 Mod le CHOU 4 PERA DUE AX eRe eG eee 4 NUS e 24 2 5 3 How to move a Module 25 TTC 25 AA NUS D PORUM RRUR P RUN AUREUM M RIPE NUS 26 2 06 Module Parameter 2 a a a a a a a 28 24 Control Panell s Lira eo ee ss 23 30 CETTE CERTE PETTO TAI a 31 lesa Gran 31 paras AA Aaa 39 TERRITO ST TEOR CERTE FETTE 34 2 12 Chat Line aa aaa a a a a a a a a a 35 2 Contents 3 COVER 37 3 1 Interaction 2l sss soos 37 3 11 Head
8. COVISE QtMapEditor avisilias Loaded Map Iraid homellangrAtrunk covise netitutorialtutorial pressure 1 net O File Execution CSCW Module Tools Help Za y E G x Favorites Collect Colors CuttingSurface GenDat IsoSurface RWCovise Renderer PTT Restore Modulelist E ilangr visilias E aue i ComputeTrace D Y Obsolete bs TetraTrace i TracerUsg A Tracer E TracerComp E Y UnderDev i LTracer COVISE Search modules and or categories O Please enter the search string e Cancel 82 messages Controller_ Colors Warning input parameter SelectMap is not implemented any more Figure 2 9 List of categories modules after search operation 2 1 5 Tools Menu The items of this menu entry open additional window parts E COVISE OtMapeditor visilias Loaded Map raid home File Execution CSCW Module Tools Help E a 6 x Favorites Control Panel Data Viewer Figure 2 10 Tools Menu The settings are e Control Panel Enables disables an additional window on the right side COVISE OtMapEditor visilias Loaded Map restarttile u File Execution CSCW Module Tools Help amp E 6 N Favorites come CuttingSurface GenDat IsoSurface RWCovise Data Viewer 2 2 Available Help Renderer VRRenderer Modulelist Control Panel 6 Jo langr visil
9. Close Figure 4 2 Renderer Module Setup in the MapEditor 4 3 Cooperative Working Modes see Chapter 5 COVISE CE section MasterCtrl subsection Synchronization 4 3 1 Using the Telepointer see Chapter 5 COVISE CE section MasterCtrl subsection Telepointer 4 4 The Renderer s User Interface 55 4 4 The Renderer s User Interface In the following sections the components of the renderer user interface are discussed Menu Bar Information Area Information Area Tool Bar N Viewer Area Collaboration Status Mi REA a i Ur EUR ORE UE porc PDP ue Renderer 1 as gi001 Inv 2 1 e8 A i lt Hle Viewing Editors Manips Lights Sync Help Colormaps Collect 2 OUT Collect 1 OUT n Geometry Objects MASTER Do main Surface 1 E lias Collect 2 OUT 002 Collect 1 OUT 002 TIGHT k 000 G75 750 525 500 375 250 125 000 pressure CENONE ZE i e A A e e LI heels Figure 4 3 Renderer Main Window Components 56 Chapter 4 The Renderer 4 4 1 The Viewer Area In the viewer area objects are displayed and can be manipulated in several ways The coordinate axes show the current view orientation Direct Interaction Using the mouse buttons in viewing mode affects the camera position the line of sight and the angle of vision in respect to the scene In the default viewing mode the mouse buttons have the functionality as described earlier In edi
10. Default viewpoints can be defined in covise config in the section VRViewpoints and they will be automatically inserted into the list of viewpoints VRViewpoints 1 o 1 X 0 y 0 z 0 h 0 p 0 r 0 10 8 10 X 0 y 0 z 0 h 0 p 0 r 0 100 100 X 0 y 0 z 0 h 0 p 0 r 0 1000 S 1000 X O y 0 z 0 h 0 p 0 r 0 In addition and even if there is no Viewpoints entry in covise config there is a parameter Viewpoints in COVER which contains the name of a custom file where the viewpoints are stored If no name is 3 2 Plug Ins 49 indicated then the file default vwp will be loaded if default vwp doesn t exist it will be created If a file is specified it will be loaded and if it doesn t exist it will be created If COVER is started from the console the custom viewpoints will be loaded using the v option and the path of the vwp file cover v example vwp The Viewpoints Menu The button Viewpoints opens a submenu with the following entries e SaveViewPoint e Flying mode toggles animated flight from current to next viewpoint e Flight opens a submenu e StartRecord starts recording viewpoints e StopRecord stops recording viewpoints e First default viewpoint from covise config if one exists e Last viewpoint from covise config e First viewpoint from custom viewpoint file if one exists e Last viewpoint from custom viewpoint file By pressing SaveViewPoint a new entry NewVi
11. synchronization with the COVISE Renderer the COVISE viewpoint should be reselected and the synchronization option reactivated After interacting with the objects in the browser area the name of the viewpoint is displayed with different fonts 4 Use COVISE with the web interface e In the COVISE session the objects you want to display in the browser have to be connected to the VRML renderer module 6 7 Web Interface 131 e For interaction with the objects the IVRenderer module has to be used with the same input objects connected to the VRML renderer If the web user allows synchronization with the renderer the changes made by user in the IVRenderer are transferred to the web browser e In the COVISE session one pair of the IVRenderer VRML_renderer modules can be used If a new map is opened in covise session the identifier of the new VRML_renderer is sent to the browser 5 Stop the web interface e execute command tsc client 132 Chapter 6 COVISE CE Collaborative Engineering 133 7 Batch Processing in COVISE 7 1 7 2 7 3 The Batch Processing function has been provided together with COVISE version 5 3 1 and this Appendix provides a short introduction to actual a presentation of this topic What does Batch Processing mean e Historically A term from the early age of computing A stack of input decks the program was brought to an operator to be processed e Today A set of commands which covers the whol
12. COVER and your graphics workstation for this Virtual Environment Interaction COVER can be used either as a viewer for 3D scenes or as a renderer module in COVISE As a 3D viewer COVER supports all 3D file formats which are also supported by the graphics library OpenGL Performer and additionally vrml files with sound and interaction To load a specific file call COVER with the file name as parameter cover filename As a COVISE renderer module COVER is started through the Mapditor Select the category renderer and drag the module COVER to the map area You can now connect all modules to COVER which 38 Chapter 3 COVER Renderer COVER COVER vVRML Plot Renderer Figure 3 1 Starting COVER as COVISE Renderer Module generate geometric primitives like lines triangle strips polygons or points with colors normals and textures If you have a full COVISE installation you will recognize that there are two COVERs one called COVER and one called COVER_VRML Only the second one supports vrml files with sound and interaction As you don t need this functionality for most COVISE visualisations a smaller version without vrml support named COVER is provided too 3 1 1 Headtracking and 3D Pointer In COVER the user can freely move in the virtual scene and manipulate it with a 3D input device The movement of the user is measured with a sensor mounted at the glasses With the measured position and orientation an appropriate vie
13. IP_ALIAS 192 168 0 15 133 168 226 234 lt your IP gt lt your firewall IP gt to the config file on every host you want to connect to CSCW 6 2 1 CSCW Summary After having read this section you will be familiar with e including a remote host or partner in the session e starting a module on the remote computer See also Additional feature COVISE daemon covised The COVISE daemon covised included as a preversion in Rel 5 2 provides a more general and more comfortable user interface for collaborative working than CSCW using a concept of rooms working groups can be predefined like N S see 5 6 New Collaborative COVISE Notes e lt is strongly recommended to use COVISE version 5 2 or higher on all participating hosts Otherwise you may have different sets of options and you may run into compatibility problems e g with changes in the implementation of data types e Set Mirrors etc see Section 4 Mirroring e Open Conference Room By using the COVISE Conference Room Interface optional feature 108 Chapter 6 COVISE CE Collaborative Engineering based on Sametime Sametime is a trademark of IBM Lotus Corporation you can extend a Collaborative COVISE Session to a complete meeting see COVISE Conference Room Interface separate document 6 2 2 Including a remote host or partner in the session E COVISE MapEditor amp sgi001 visenso Hle Execution cscw PA ii Dro xD em Add
14. The development of COVISE was initiated in 1993 in the CEC RACE project R2031 named PAGEIN Pilot Applications in a Gigabit European Integrated Network The aim of PAGEIN was to evaluate possibilities of distributed computing and collaborative engineering on top of European high speed network infrastructures One of the activities was the design and development of a software architecture as a testbed for the evaluation The design of this basic architecture was led by the Visualization Department of the University of Stuttgart Computing Center RUS It was later called COVISE Also the main components of COVISE as well as many application modules have been developed at RUS With the project partners group from the aerospace field the application scenario was the simulation and analysis of air flow in the design phase of new airplanes While initially industrial partners only defined their requirements they became more involved when they recognized the potential of CSCW computer supported cooperative working and COVISE for the engineering field As a result COVISE was used in the Esprit project ADONNIS E9033 between Daimler Benz Aerospace Airbus DBAA Bremen Germany and RUS Stuttgart Germany via a 2 MBit s leased line perma nent for one year This allowed engineers of DBAA to evaluate cooperative working in an engineering simulation and design department In the project EFENDA sponsored by the German ministery of education and research BMBF t
15. The following section provides you the necessary information how to use the COVISE Daemon co vised as a comfortable and more powerful replacement of the CSCW menu in the MapEditor Introduction to the COVISE daemon covised e Function The COVISE Daemon covised is a special software which allows the creation of working groups of COVISE users in collaborative mode e lerminology The working groups are called rooms They are used for sharing information within a COVISE session The user who has created predefined a working group is called master of this room working group Any user who is in the list of available partners for a defined room is called member of this room Rooms can have two type of members displayed in separate lists Active members are the members which have Joined the room in order to participate in a COVISE session Potential members are the members which have started a covised session but have not yet joined the room When launching a COVISE session in one of the defined rooms the main part of COVISE Is started for the user which is the master of the room For the other users from the list specified for that room COVISE is started in partner host mode Using the COVISE daemon covised In order to use the COVISE daemon covised the following operations are provided 1 Prepare the environment for using covised Be
16. VR in a standalone environment only for this user group it provides the necessary background to extend the use of COVISE to Collaborative Engineering i e COVISE CE The information has been collected from the Tutorial the first chapters of the old User s Guide and other sources to provide one reference chapter for these users For collaborative working you can either use COVISE CE alone as described in this document or you can extend a collaborative COVISE session to a complete virtual meeting using N S COVISE Conference Room Interface The Conference Room Interface optional feature described in a separate document e has been developed in the framework of the N S ENScube project e is based on Sametime Sametime is a trademark of IBM Lotus Corporation Architectural Concepts For collaborative working with COVISE you should know the basic architectural concepts of COVISE After having read this chapter you will be familiar with e The Architecture of COVISE e how to prepare COVISE for a distributed or collaborative session In COVISE it is possible to run modules on remote computers This is also known as Distributed Computing By distributing modules across a network one can make use of remote resources for example of a compute server with more CPUs or memory than on a local workstation or PC The COVISE session is controlled from the Mapeditor on the local workstation Remote hosts are included in the session via
17. a batch queue e manual Manual means that someone has to start the CRB process manually on the remote machine This can be useful for sessions across firewalls or access to the remote account is not available In this mode COVISE writes a message in the window start crb 31005 129 69 29 12 1005 on visper hlrs de The collaborativg partner has to type in this quoted string e remoteDamon A remote COVISE daemon has to run on the other machine Currently this is only avalaible for Windows When the remote host is successfully added the remote username and hostname will appear in the ist of hostnames of the Module Browser section 2 4 with a different color 18 Chapter 2 The Map Editor COVISE QtMapEditor visilias Loaded Map raid home lang File Execution CSCW Module Tools Help Select all Ctrl A Delete selected Del Search modules Ctrl F T Figure 2 8 Module Menu 2 1 4 Module Menu Module icons in the Visual Programming Area section 2 5 can be manipulated The settings are e Select all All modules in the canvas are selected Further operations can be applied on this group e Delete selected Delete currently selected modules e Search modules This entry opens a window which allows to enter a search string All categories and or modules containing this string in the name will be highlighted Icons of these module in the Visual Programming Area section 2 5 will also be highlighted
18. an active room and is displayed on the upper part of the covised user interface Only the active rooms are sent to the partners 4 Start a COVISE session e Click on Launch A COVISE session is started including all the active members of the room 5 Invite a partner e Select a potential member of the room and click on Invite The selected member becomes an active member of the room If a COVISE session has already been started the selected member is included in the session 6 Remove a partner e Select an active member of the room and click on the Remove The selected member becomes a passive member of the room If a COVISE session has already been started the selected member is removed from the session 6 7 130 Chapter 6 COVISE CE Collaborative Engineering Web Interface Please note This feature is included as a preversion and with draft documentation use at your own risk The web interface allows a web user to display in his browser the current renderer view from a running covise session In order to do that execute the following steps 1 Set the configuration file init www This file contains the next environment variables which have to be set HOSTSRV the name of the host where the web server is running SERVER PATH optional the path where the files needed to run the web interface are stored HTTP PORT the number of the port on which the web interface is accessed from a web browser
19. and the renderer on the local workstation The green arrows between the processes Controller MapEditor CRB and the modules indicate TCP sockets the blue arrows indicate shared memory access When the module map is executed the Controller sends a start message to the remote read module The read module reads in the data file and creates a COVISE data object 1 in shared memory and after processing tells the Controller that the module has finished The Controller informs the filter module on the remote computer to start The filter module asks its data management process CRB for the data object 1 The filter module now reads that data object computes something and puts the data object 2 into shared memory It then tells the Controller that it has finished The Controller informs the renderer module to start The renderer asks the CRB for object 2 and as this object is not available on the local workstations the CRB transfers it from the compute server into the shared memory of the local workstation 2 Now the renderer can access this object and display the data 6 1 Architecture and Configuration 105 6 1 3 Collaborative Working In a multiuser session each participant has it s own MapEditor and Renderer The session has to be initiated by one partner who adds the other partners to the session The initiating partner plays the master role which means that he has the control over the MapEditor and the Renderer If he e g changes the cam
20. at your own risk Section 1 is a concept paper about this approach that provides the necessary background even if it might be obsolete in some details Section 2 shows you the implementation your actual view might be slightly different Section 3 provides you the actual information to use the COVISE daemon covised 6 6 1 Concept of Collaborative COVISE What s new The goal of this project is to improve the way of using COVISE in collaborative mode and provides the following features e every user has the information about his potential partners and is able to ask to be accepted into a certain group Also if he wants to show his work to the others he is able to create a new group we name it room where he is the master In this case the others can join or he can invite some partners or force the hosts to work together e the connection between partners is done once every COVISE session has already this information and adds automatically the partners or hosts e the concept is able to handle firewalls Structure and Functionality The management of the participants and conference rooms is done by a special application named covised COVISE daemon It can launched by every user and can be configured to run with or without user interface Every daemon reads from a configuration file covised a list of users he is interested in masters list and a list of predefined rooms A room is a list of potential partners and
21. button label is headtracking and the default button location is in the main Pinboard menue The button is a toggle button The default state is OFF this means headtracking is enabled Freezing the current view can be useful for demonstrations with many people where it is impossible that all users move with the demonstrator Or for taking pictures or making a video There you get the best results when the camera position matches the viewer position In some configurations the camera must be in the area where the magnetic tracking system doesn t deliver correct values Then you can freeze headtracking at starting time and specify a viewer position COVERConfig i FREEZE ON VIEWER POSITION 0 3000 500 This means for example the viewpoint is 3 m in negative y direction and 50 cm above the origin in z direction The Performer coordinate system is x RIGHT z UP and Y into the screen FLY 3 1 Interaction 43 In FLY mode the whole scene besides the coordinate axis and the pinboard is moved as if the user sits in an airplane The default button label is fly and the default button location is in the Navigation submenu The button belongs to the button group Navigation The FLY mode indicated with an airplane as 3D icon You start the fly mode by pressing the button of the 3D input device and then moving the hand into the direction you want to fly Moving the hand far away from the point where you pressed the button results in fas
22. current position orientation is converted to a normal and distance in object space and sent back to the CutGeometry module The CutGeometry module is automatically executed and within a few seconds the new cutted geometry appears in COVER The default button label is CutGeometry i where i is replaced by the module instance and the default button location is in the COVISE submenu The button belongs to the button group Navigation ISOSURFACEP The module IsosurfaceP computes an isosurface which contains a certain point This point is specified with the parameter point Then the value at this point is computed and the all grid points containings this value are computed In the 2D interface the user nters the x y and z coordinate of the point in object coordinates In COVER the user selects IsosurafceP i where i stands for the instance of the module A red sphere is attached to the users hand The sphere can be positioned in the scene by moving the hand to the desired point When the Select button of the 3D input device is pressed the current position is converted to a object coordinates and sent back to the IsosurfaceP module The IsosurfaceP module is automatically executed and within a few seconds the new isosurface appears in COVER The default button label is IsosurfaceP i where i is replaced by the module instance and the default button location is in the COVISE submenu The button belongs to the button group Nav
23. depending on the type of monitor attached 4 Head Tracking Mode currently not implemented 82 Chapter 4 The Renderer 4 Stereo Viewing FOMENTO Visio camera rotation DOC 5 0000 Figure 4 33 Stereo mode in the preference sheet 83 5 Volume Rendering in COVISE 5 1 For volumetric scalar data in addition to cutting planes and iso surfaces COVISE offers a direct volume rendering method based on texture hardware This technique displays entire volume datasets Transfer functions are used to determine the visual appearance of the datasets The volume rendering functionality of COVISE was originally developed as part of the project VIRVO Virtual Reality Volume Rendering at HLRS Please note The Volume Rendering function has been provided as a preversion together with COVISE version 5 2 You gain additional functionality but you might encounter minor problems Volume Rendering Basics This chapter will give some basic information about volume rendering in COVISE It will describe what types of volume data can be processed and how the user can display them 5 1 1 Transfer Functions Since scalar volumetric data represent a solid 3D block of data values the user needs a way to look inside of the block A simple way to look inside is to clip the block along a plane a more sophisticated method is to assign opacities to the data values Opacity is the opposite of transparency the higher the opacity the lower the transparen
24. in reality the brain forms a 3D impression of the scene 3 1 Interaction 39 Figure 3 2 Selecting a menu entry with the laser beam And similar to reality objects which are very close to the users head are seens twice because the two images can t be fused any more objects which are very far don t appear to be three dimensional but flat Therefore the optimal location of obejcts for stereo viewing are not too near and not too far If the scene size fits into the virtual reality environment the best position is near the front screen optimally one part of the scene is in front of the screen and the other part behind For many technical visualisations for example flow visualisation of the air around a car the scene can be scaled so that it fits into the virtual environment see chapter xy view all Larges scenes like landscapes are best viewed on large screens If the scene is larger than the screens but the screen is so small that it is inside the users field of view the stereo impression can get lost when the object is located in front of the screen This happens because the human brain is so used to the fact that in reality objects partly covered by something are behind that it can t form a stereo impression if a virtual scene is cut by the frame of the screen Therefore for large scenes and small screens the best position is behind the screen and the screens is like a window to the outside 3 1 3 3D Menu The navigation mode viewing op
25. list of hostnames of the Module Browser Depending on the specification in the scope U Config of the config file the new host and his modules are shown either in another color or have the hostname in their label Here the option is used that hosts are shown colored see Figure 2 4 When the remote computer is added successfully the remote username and hostname will appear in the module browser list see Figure 2 4 Here the option is used that hosts are shown colored In a multiuser session CSCW gt gt AddPartner a Mapeditor will pop up on the remote workstation 6 2 CSCW 109 Hostname visavis User covise Exechiode rh zl Password Display ucc uu Timeout 90 Figure 6 4 Set Connection Parameters Cal Color Lal Examples Filtar Clipinieryal CuttingLina Cutting lane CutingSurace FillerCrop LineReduce Minhtas ProbeLine Selecillag Simplify Sunara smooth umace SuraceExiract SufaceReduca Vessels Cal 10 module Cal Mapper CQ Renderer Eg Tools CQ Tracer Figure 6 5 Module Browser Windows for Local and Distributed Collaborative Working 110 Chapter 6 COVISE CE Collaborative Engineering Figure 6 6 Module Map for Local and Distributed Collaborative Working 6 3 6 3 MasterCtrl 111 6 2 3 Starting a module on the remote computer When selecting the remote computer in the hosts list the categories and modules available on this computer will be offe
26. model is enabled the default all objects are rendered by taking only their diffuse color into account If it is disabled all objects are PHONG shaded The PHONG lighting model takes into account all light sources in the scene and the object s surface orientation the normals on faces or vertices with respect to the lights to generate a realistic smooth shaded 3D appearance of an object Scientists often prefer to see only the real colors defined for the object without shading effects so switching between the two modes is introduced here e Create Dir Light This creates a light which illuminates uniformly along a particular direction e Create Point Light A point light like a star radiates light equally in all directions from a given location in 3D space e Create Spot Light A spot light illuminates from a point in space along a primary direction Its illumination is a cone of light diverging from the light s position This feature is hardware dependent If not supported a spotlight appears as a point light e Ambient Lighting This is used for the PHONG lighting mode it lets you edit the ambient ligthing in the scene e Turn all ON Turns all currently defined light sources on e Turn all OFF Turns all currently defined light sources off e Show all Icons Shows the icons of the currently defined light sources e Hide all Icons Hides the icons of the currently defined light sources e Headlight This is the default light A sub m
27. of transfer functions 8 to 32 bit can be stored per voxel In order to create an XVF file manually it is important to know that the byte order of integer values is big endian most significant first floating point values are stored in big endian mode and 4 byte IEEE standard In this standard the hexadecimal representation of 1 0 is 3F 80 00 00 Here is the XVF header specification XVF Header file ID string VIRVO XVF na e a 3 x 4 bytes real world voxel size width height depth mm um 2 x 4 bytes float physical data range covered by voxel data minimum maximum 3 x 4 bytes real world location of volume center x y z mm compression type D none not supported yet number of transfer functions unsigned short type of transfer functions 0 4 x 256 Byte for RGBA channels deprecated 1 list of control pins Data area The data starts at the position offset to beginning of data area see table The voxel order is similar to DAT and RVF files all bytes of each voxel are stored consecutively If multiple time steps are stored they follow one by one with no separator inbetween Transfer functions The transfer functions are stored at the end of the file right after the data area Transfer functions 5 5 Volume file types 101 should not be added to the file manually this should only be done from within COVISE currently this is only supported by the save volume function in COVER Therefore the forma
28. position in his renderer and the cameras of all other partners are synchronized with the master camera In general manipulators and editors become detached and invisible the menu bar is set to insensitive in the slave renderers and the scene in all slave renderers is updated according to the view in the master renderer Exception Light information is not sent to other renderers in a cooperative environment The Sync field of the information area is set to SYNC e Tight Coupling Sync Field TIGHT The only difference between TIGHT and Master Slave SYNC is that TIGHT enforces permanent synchronization whereas Master Slave updates the slave renderers at endpoints only The Sync field of the information area is set to TIGHT e Loose Coupling Sync Field LOOSE If the master enables this mode all partners have the same interaction facilities as the master the camera positions etc are no longer sent to other renderers The Sync field of the information area is set to LOOSE 6 3 MasterCtrl 115 6 3 4 Telepointer One can make his own mouse pointer visible for the partners by pressing the SHIFT key and moving the mouse This functionality is called Telepointer In all remote renderers the originating hostname appears at the position pointed at Figure 3 5 This also works for Renderer windows having different sizes as the position in 3D space is transmitted and not the 2D pixel coordinates Figure 5 14 shows a snapshot from a collaborative
29. sgi001 vircinity de as mirror of sgi002 vircinity de and sgi002 vircinity de as mirror of sgi001 vircinity de 118 Chapter 6 COVISE CE Collaborative Engineering Module Browser al Color Gi Examples CQ Filler IO Module Ej Mapper Gi Rendarar Gil SRenderer I N Gi TeslProgs Tebratlesghbor 1 Eg Tools J Eg Tracer j pw_te sgi001 vicinity sgin vircinity sgld0z vircinity spin vircinitu 391007 vicinity Hrs ee Pl oom on Hmm Figure 6 15 Set Mirrors 6 5 Mirroring 119 6 5 3 Mirror Nodes If you have set mirrors you can issue Mirror Nodes in order to mirror either a complete map default or a selected group of nodes Module Browser Malal Programming rea Bl coviseensginga vircinity Ca Color Ej Examples Eg Filler Eg 10_Mmocute E mapper al Rendarar Gi SRenderer Ca TesiProgs Eg Tools Gil Traces ta ba Figure 6 16 Mark nodes to be mirrored default complete map 120 Chapter 6 COVISE CE Collaborative Engineering Now you can mirror the selected nodes shown in yellow and compare e g execution times of original and mirrored modules In the example below you see that the mirrored modules run faster so you might choose to change your map accordingly Module Browser E Vidal Programming Area Ql covisedesgi 0z vircinity Eg color Gil Examples Eg Filler Eg IO Module Eg Mapper tal Renderar sRanderer 1 E TestProis Tehat
30. shared memory are used to avoid copying of data objects Between machines data objects are transferred by the COVISE request broker CRB including necessary format conversions How COVISE works Most visualization systems currently available focus on the visual programming paradigm in an algorithm oriented way Data itself cannot be accessed by the user directly but exists only internally Means are provided to connect modules to networks which perform certain visualization tasks but the access to the underlying data mostly is limited to typing a filename in the input module There is no explicit control of data by users within most of the current dataflow based visualization systems Thus either data produced by intermediate steps is kept even if it is not needed any more or this caching mechanism can be switched off globally As data does not exist as directly accessible data objects selective handling is not possible On the other hand a user who wants to examine a certain time interval repeatedly would be delayed by the application creating the same temporary objects over and over again instead of creating the sequence once and then displaying it just from cache Based on experience with own developments other packages available commercially or as open source a system architecture has been designed which fits the needs of a high performance distributed visual ization application Local Workstation t TCP socket Sha
31. the menu item CSCW gt gt AddHost CSCW Computer Supported Collaborative Work In a multiuser session each participant has his own Mapeditor and Renderer The session has to be initiated by one partner who adds the other partners to the session menu item CSCW gt gt AddPartner The initiating partner plays the master role which means that he has the control over the Mapeditor and the Renderer If he e g changes the camera position in the Renderer all other partner s cameras are synchronised with the master camera The master role can be exchanged between partners This way of working together in a multiuser session is also known as Collaborative Working or for COVISE applications as Collaborative Engineering where COVISE is regarded as a Shared Application which is aware of the sharing As the hosts of the partners can also be used for distributed computing COVISE extends far beyond a Shared Application such as the ones based on X Windows sharing or a Windows application shared via Netmeeting 104 Chapter 6 COVISE CE Collaborative Engineering The next sections provide background information on the COVISE architecture and explain how a distributed session Distributed Computing or a collaborative session for Collaborative Engineering Is implemented See also Additional feature COVISE daemon covised The COVISE daemon covised included as a preversion in Rel 5 2 provides a more general and more comforta
32. types are supported by the module ReadVolume Figure 5 4 shows the Read Volume Preferences window The source file name must be set at the FilePath entry If CustomSize is unchecked the size entries are ignored and default values or the values from the respective volume file are used Otherwise the volume size will be set as entered in VolumeWidth Height and Depth ReadVolume can create a volume from a number of 2D slice images RGB PGM or PPM files To do so the slice images have to be numbered ascendingly for instance IMAGE001 RGB IMAGE002 RGB IMAGE003 RGB etc The first file name has to be entered as the source path in the ReadVolume 5 3 86 Chapter 5 Volume Rendering in COVISE File Extension Description rvf Raw Volume File xvf Extended Volume File dat Raw volume data no header automatic format detection pgm ppm Density or RGB images depending on volume data type Preferences window Then on execution the module loads all slice images and creates a volume dataset from them 5 2 2 Module WriteVolume Figure 5 5 shows an example COVISE network to write volume data from GenDat The following file types are supported by WriteVolume Figure 5 6 shows the preferences window of the module WriteVolume The FileName entry expects the destination file name If OverwriteExisting is checked the destination file will be overwritten if it previously existed The file type and data format can be selected with the resp
33. users hand The plane can be positioned in the scene inside the geometry by moving the hand to the desired position orientation When the Select button of the 3D input device is pressed the current position orientation is converted to a normal and distance and sent back to the CuttingSurface module The CuttingSurface module is automatically executed and within a few seconds the new cuttingsurface appears in COVER The default button label is CuttingSurface i where i is replaced by the module instance and the default button location is in the COVISE submenu The button belongs to the button group Navigation this means that if the previos mode was a navigation mode like XFORM this mode is switched off 3 2 3 2 Plug Ins 47 CUTGEOMETRY The module CutGeometry cuts a COVISE geometry with a plane The position and orientation of the cutting plane is specified with the parameters vertex and scalar In the 2D interface the user has to provide the orientation of the plane with the parameter vertex which is the normal on the plane and the parameter scalar which defines the distance from the origin In COVER the user selects the button CutGeometry i where i stands for the instance of the module A transparent plane is now attached to the users hand The plane can be positioned in the scene inside the geometry by moving the hand to the desired position orientation When the Select button of the 3D input device is pressed the
34. which can be adjusted by twisting the mouse Due to a smaller displayed region a higher image quality is gained in the sub volume A clipping plane can be enabled by the Clipping Plane entry By default the plane clips off the data on one side of the plane see Figure 5 14 but it displays an opaque plane at the clipping location if Opaque Clipping is enabled see Figure 5 15 To move the clipping plane it has to be turned off and on again he Clipping Plane checkbox enables or disables both clipping plane modes the Opaque Clipping checkbox defines only the clipping type used With the Frame Rate slider the Volume menu allows to set the rendering speed which in turn affects display quality Figure 5 15 Lambda dataset with opaque clipping plane 96 Chapter 5 Volume Rendering in COVISE Figure 5 16 Lambda dataset in probe mode 5 4 VR Renderer 97 Another menu entry toggles a boundary box see Figure 5 17 around the dataset Yet another entry toggles data value interpolation see Figure 5 18 By default three linear interpolation is used if supported by the graphics hardware when the interpolation is off nearest neighbor interpolation is used for the volume display Figure 5 18 Lambda dataset without trilinear interpolation When the Discrete Colors knob is set to zero the Discrete Colors mode is turned off and continuous color gradients are used for the transfer function If the knob is set to a non zero value o
35. your partner The data has 53 time steps and the whole data size including all these time steps is 20MB It was computed with 54 800 elements Assume you use an ISDN line and can transfer 8kB s data in average Then it takes around 43 minutes to transfer the data to your partner You are in the session now and you want perhaps just change the color map of your visualization to analyse a certain range of values Do you really want to wait 43 minutes before you can continue the meeting The mirror mode solves this problem in the following way You have to tranfer once your data to your partner s side Every execution you do on your side is also done on your partner s machine Therefore no visualization data has to be transferred All changes are updated on both sides independently You can see the status of execution on your partner s side in the Mapeditor NOTE The path and filenames of your data have to be identical on every machine The easiest way to create this scenario is to put the data in your COVISE directory All modules of COVISE allow the usage of path names that are relative the current COVISE directory 6 6 122 Chapter 6 COVISE CE Collaborative Engineering New Collaborative COVISE Daemon This chapter introduces a new concept of Collaborative COVISE that is more general and more flexible than using the CSCW operations AddPartner etc COVISE Rel 5 2 provides a first implementation of this approach use this preversion
36. 06 6 15 COVISE across Firewalls 2 2222 oorr 106 Ri 107 6 2 1 CSCW Summary aaa da 107 6 2 2 Including a remote host or partner in the session 108 Lanna 111 As Mastretta xm edie Rm e dom ded d mom m weis sd E mE 111 6 3 1 MasterCtrl Summa 111 6 3 2 Master Request 111 use a sta RR 114 LANA LEE EEN 115 6 3 5 Chat lie piede Et 116 CERTE TITO TTECE TE 116 CETTE EEE EE PE E 116 6 4 2 Direct Manipulation rns 116 re pa a aa da ee 116 La eng REE oa PEA sa 117 6 5 Mirroring a x s dos ian 117 6 5 1 Mirroring Summary 117 65 2 ct MMOS sst R E238 4 9 23wE x sx 34 X 9599 9535B5595 117 5 5 5s Mirror INOGGS s da ee eh aw X3 3 93 4 119 605 4 Delete Mirrored Nodes oll 121 SETT VETTE FETTE RETTO TI eee ee 121 6 6 New Collaborative COVISE Daemon es 122 6 6 1 Concept of Collaborative COVISE 2l 122 6 6 2 Implementation 125 6 6 3 Instructions for using the COVISE daemon 128 6 7 Weblnterface 0 130 1 Batch Processing in COVISE 133 7 1 What does Batch Processing mean a 133 TTC 133 7 3 Implementation cles 133 4 Mapping of COVISE to PYTHON llle 134 Lo Howto DECI Ss sx x ee Ped oh we Ew ee oS ES Oe T8 T8 135 LO Python syntax aus eee ooh bosch de moo moo a 137 4 Contents 1 6 1 Not COVISE related a aaa a 137 one ie wee ese eens eee nee eee eee eee 138 TT 138 7 6 4 Details of the Python net object
37. A ak 3k ak 3K aK aK 3K aK 3 K gt K 3K gt K ek aK 2K K 2K 2K K 3K K 2K 2K K 3 3K 3K 2K aK 3 2K 3K 3K K 3 2K aK 3K 3K 3K 3K aK 3K K FK FK K FK K K FK K FK 2K K FK 2K COVISE PYTHON INTERFACE ready Xx Xx X x XA Xx Xx Xx Xx Xx x XA Xx x covise gt Note Using the Python Interpreter provided by your Vendor On some Linux distributions incompatibilities between existing libraries and the python interpreter in cluded in covise may occur In those cases using the python interpreter provided by your linux distributor can resolve the problem Known are incompatibilities at SuSE 9 and Mandrake 9 0 systems In order to circumvent those problems do e Find out if python is already installed on your system rpm qa grep python should show you that the package is installed If not install python according to the rules of your distribution The packages are currently included in all known linux distributions e Find the path to your python binary by typing which python e Set the environment variable COVISE LOCAL PYTHON to the result of the previous command usr bin python in many cases After entering covise script you should receive the following output AK AK AK AK AK A AA A ok AAA A A AK AAA A A AK A AA A K AAA AA K AA A A A AK A A A A AK AA AAA K AAA AAA OK OK OK OK K K K COVISE 5 3 2 starting up please be patient Flexlm license of type STD_UI checked out Starting local request broker Start
38. E The wolrd coordinate system origin is defined in the scope ScreenConfig see ection Display Configuration through the position of the screen center and the orientation of the screen Typically the x axis points to the right and is drawn red the y axis points into the screen and is drawn green and the z axis points up and is drawn in blue SPECULAR With SPECULAR the properties of the light are changed so that objects with a specular material appear specular The default button label is specular and the default button location is in the view options submenu The button is a toggle button The default state is ON SPOTLIGHT With SPOTLIGHT a lamp like light is attached to the users hand The default button label is spotlight and the default button location is in the view options submenu The button is a toggle button The default state is OFF STEREO SEP With STEREO SEP the offset between the left and right eye can be set to zero The default button label is stereo separation and the default button location is in the view options submenu The button is a toggle button The default state is OFF 3 1 Interaction 45 When STEREO SEP switched on only the ofset is set to zero The video mode is not changed to a mono mode so you don t have any rendering performance advantage Use STEREO SEP for example if you want to take pictures or a video from the VE 3 1 6 Part Manipulation SNAP With SNAP constarints for the manip
39. Host eee Add Partner Alt P visual Programmin DelHost Partner HW Cnvise Colle Set Mirrors Colors Cutti Mirror Hodes Module B Remove Mirrored Nodes vy covisemisgi l 6 Cai Color Figure 6 3 Hosts CSCW Menu Hen Conferences Hiei Figure 5 3 shows the menu item for adding a remote host or including a new partner into the session CSCW Computer Supported Collaborative Work The window in Figure 5 4 will pop up First select a hostname or enter a new one gif If the selected hostname is available the window in Figure 5 5 will appear You can select the parameters for a connection Depending on the configuration parameters in covise config the execution model and the time out are adjusted Now one can change the time out and the execution mode if other values than the standard are required For execution mode rexec the user id and password on the remote computer has to be entered For execution mode rsh or ssh only the user id is needed In the manual execution mode COVISE writes a message in the window saying how COVISE should be started on the remote computer It looks like start crb 31005 129 69 29 12 1005 on visit rus uni stuttgart de The collaboration partner has to type in the following command which has to be provided to him by means such as phone video conference or email crb 31005 129 69 29 12 1005 When the remote host is successfully added the remote username and hostname will appear in the
40. HostConfig Hostname MemoryModel ExecutionMode Timeout vista shm rexec 30 visit shm rexec 30 For workstations and PCs the memory model is shm which stands for shared memory There are other memory models like none specifically for machines such as CRAY Y MP computers The execution mode specifies the command which should be used to start the CRB on the remote computer Possible execution modes are e rexec e rsh e ssh e nqs e manual For all execution modes besides manual one needs access to the account on the remote computer For rexec one has to enter the hostname the user id and the password on the remote machine similar to logging in on the remote computer using telnet rsh and ssh can only be used if they allow to log in without password specification see man rsh and ssh for the files where allowed users are specified nqs is not recommended it can be used to put the CRB into a batch queue Manual means that one has to start the CRB process manually on the remote machine This can be useful for sessions across a firewall or if one doesn t have access to the remote account In this case COVISE shows a command in the window where COVISE was started The time out value specifies how many seconds a process will wait to be contacted by a new process that he initiated e g the Controller waiting for a module The default value is 5 seconds For slow networks a time out of 30 seconds is useful For very slow networks even a higher
41. MapEditor window default or a new dockable widget becomes visible inside the main Map Editor window The positions depends on your Settings section parameter execute pipeline starting with this module close tab window immediate parameter blue map parameter with a different Control Panel style parameter name parameter type show additional parameter values open module help je wartex it o oo a H point E CC b scalar Float o n5 H option Plane iD gennormals P enstrips mapped to Control Panel lt E Possible Appearance Types um Float ilisoend dH wertex ratio float la values Figure 2 26 Module Parameter Window Each parameter is represented by e Name This toggle button is used to map an interactor to the Control Panel section window lt contains also the name of the parameter The type String Boolean Vector Scalar Slider Choice Browser and the description is shown as tooltip Most of the parameters were mapped with a standard appeareance that cannot be changed e Appearance Different appearance types for the parameter can be used Scalar and Slider t is always possible to change the type For the parameter type Brower and Colormap a folder icon is visible Clicking on this icon opens an additional browser window either below the parameter list inside the Module Parameter window or in a seperate window Clicking
42. O GmbH First Steps On Windows a new COVISE session can be initiated from the Start menu or by Desktop icons On UNIX systems the installation process appends the path to the COVISE executables and modules to the environment variable PATH Thus starting COVISE should be as easy as typing covise in a shell window If the command covise is not found please contact your system administrator Initiating a COVISE session will start the following processes 1 Controller covise 2 CRB crb 10 Chapter 1 Introduction 3 Map Editor napeditor After the starting phase the Map Editor window will appear see Figl2 1 1 3 1 Start Parameter COVISE can also be started with parameters Typing covise help will show you the syntax The following start options may be useful for you e i start with Map Editor as icon e e execute immediately after loading e q quit after 1st run only together with e 1 3 2 Configuration File COVISE has a central configuration file covise config which resides in the COVISEDIR directory The file consists of sections named scopes which look like Scope name hostname t Var Namei string2 Var Name2 string2 HostConfig see also Chapter 5 COVISE CE Each computer that will participate in a distribited or collaborative session must be included in the scope HostConfig For each host the hostname the memoy model the execution mode and a timeout have to be set HostConfig
43. VISE architecture None of the currently available visualization packages supports all of the following features availabe in COVISE e Distributed Working e Supercomputer Usage parallel or vectorized Collaborative Working Integration of Custom Codes Virtual Reality Time Dependent Simulation fie Execution Hosts Preferentes viosde ti xn amp u BA ele zo m Simutation Y UF gt cant find record for requested M I UF gt gt cant ind record for requested Annotation 1 UF gt gt cont find record for requested s 1 UF gt gt cant find record for requested t s Figure 1 1 Visualization of Data with COVISE COVISE is a modular and object oriented software system To visualize data several processing steps called modules are used Each module is executed as a seperate operating system process and com municates with the central Controller and the local data request broker CRB by sending or receiving control messages via TCP IP sockets Modules are connected into a strictly unidirectional data flow network also called module map Loops are not allowed nevertheless there are possibilities to send feedback messages from later to earlier modules in the processing chain A Qt based user interface the Map Editor gives the user a tool to perform all the necessary interactions 1 1 8 Chapter 1 Introduction Data exchange is handled different from control flow Within a machine pointers to
44. and the following configuration of rooms active Room 2 Master active members covise sgi001 and covise sgi002 potential Room 1 Master Room 3 Master potential member covise sgi001 see Fig 5 20 active Room 2 Slave active members covise sgi001 and covise sgi002 Room 2X Master potential Room 1X Master Room 3X Master potential members covise sgi002 and covise sgi001 see Fig 5 21 126 Chapter 6 COVISE CE Collaborative Engineering Xx Collaborative Covise Daemon Active rooms Pi Roome Paorentia member Active members covisem sgi00t Leave the room covised s gill Launch Covise Invite Remove Potential rooms Pi Rooml Pi Rooms Potentian memeers Active members coviset sgiU0 Join the room Figure 6 19 active Room 2 Master potential Room 1 Master Room 3 Master 6 6 New Collaborative COVISE Daemon 127 Collaborative Covise Daemon lt 2 gt Active rooms Roome m Roomex PERERA members ene members covisemsqi001 Leave the room coviset sgille Launch Covise Invite Remove Potential rooms Pi Room Rooms Bolonia members ene members coviseiisgill z coviserosgi007 Join the room Figure 6 20 active Room 2 Slave Room 2X Master potential Room 1X Master Room 3X Master 128 Chapter 6 COVISE CE Collaborative Engineering 6 6 3 Instructions for using the COVISE daemon
45. angle Keep the mouse button pressed and move the mouse so that module icons which should be 26 Chapter 2 The Map Editor Figure 2 21 Grouped module icons grouped together lie completely inside the rectangle After the mouse button is released each of the icons inside the group become red the current hihglight color Clicking on an empty part of the canvas ungroups the group 3 CTRL A selects all modules on the canvas 2 5 5 Connecting Ports To build a module network you must connect the output ports of modules to the input ports of follow on modules Input and output ports of modules are color coded buttons according to the Module Icon section 2 5 1 A blue input port represents a data port that has to be connected before a proper execution is possible A green input port represents an optional port that can have a connection Not all blue output ports need to be connected There are two methods for connecting ports 1 Using the left mouse button The easiest way to establish proper connections without looking into the detailed descriptions of the module ports is by clicking with the left mouse button on the port of a module This leads to highlighting and or blowing up of matching module ports which offer the appropriate data type 4 RW tiny p 2 e B e Renderer1 Figure 2 22 Generating a connection line Image after clicking on a module port Move the cursor to a heighlighted port You now see a rubber line
46. ap Editor Modules running on a host appear in the same color as the host name in the list The subdirectories of covise ARCHSUFFIX bin will be used as names of the categories The files in each category subdirectory are displayed as module names Short description of the category and the modules are shown as tooltips Clicking on a host with the right mouse button opens a popup menu with one single entry Delete Host Clicking on this item with the left mouse button will remove all modules running on that host and a possible remote user interface Clicking on a category or module with the right mouse button will open the COVISE help system The modules shown for each category depend on the choosen modules in former sessions To simplify the view only modules which have been used before are shown All other modules are hidden behind the item More Clicking on this item will show all available modules in this category The special category A contains all available modules in alphabetic order and the corresponding category Module Browser Host Category Module o RAI D AddAttriiiisi L Tools Animate Unsupported archflaw UnderDewv i Wl Modulename Assemblelsg L Converter Atomcolors Color AtomRadii Tools AxialRunner dev VISIT Name of category BlockCollect Tools BoundingBox Tools Calc Tools CellToVert Interpalator Checkobj Tools liga aLiEiter B Collect Tools m Already used modules Colors Color Comp
47. ar values to be stored as 16 bit integers RGB color values consisting of a red a green and a blue color com ponent stored as 3x8 bit RGBA color values consisting of a red a green a blue and an opacity alpha value stored as 4x8 bit the sample distance in x direction width mm default 1 0 the sample distance in y direction height mm default 1 0 the sample distance in z direction slices mm default 1 0 the length of each time step for transient data s default 1 0 Data area The data area begins right after the header The voxel data values are listed separated by whitespace and or end of line markers Both floating point and integer values are accepted The voxel order is similar to DAT RVF and XVF files All elements of each voxel are stored consecutively Sample file WIDTH 4 HEIGHT 3 SLICES 2 5 6 102 Chapter 5 Volume Rendering in COVISE FRAMES 1 MIN 0 0 MAX 1 0 FORMAT SCALARS 8 bit data XDIST 1 0 YDIST 1 0 ZDIST 1 0 TIME 1 0 0 9 0 9 0 9 0 9 0 9 0 2 0 3 0 9 0 9 0 2 0 4 0 9 0 8 0 8 0 8 0 8 0 8 0 1 0 1 0 8 0 8 0 0 0 0 0 8 Acknowledgments The lambda function dataset used in some images is courtesy of Ulrich Rist IAG University of Stuttgart 103 6 COVISE CE Collaborative Engineering 6 1 Architecture and Configuration 6 1 1 Architecture Summary Usage Hints This short introduction has been prepared for users with basic experience in using COVISE
48. attending hosts are also terminated PP EOVISE MapEdRor j 3 Save your changes before closing the COVISE session Save amp Quit i i Cancel Figure 2 3 Quit COVISE 2 1 2 Execution Menu When executing a module network one module icon after the other shows a colored frame which indicated that it operates A module network can be executed once or repeatedly COVISE OtMapEditor visil File Execution CSCW Mo x Execute Ctrl E On Change Figure 2 4 Execution Menu The settings are e Execute the complete module network independent of the previous state Stored parameter changes are applied This item is also avaible in the Toolbar section 2 3 Executing the module network beginning with a certain module is described in the Module Actions section 2 5 2 Module Parameter section 2 6 and Control Panel section 2 7 e OnChange behaves as an update lt initiates an execution after every single parameter change The Control Panel section 2 7 interactor Player and Sequencer in play or reverse mode not in single step will automatically set OnChange and start the execution of the map repeatedly until their ending condition is met You can also set OnChange explicitly within the Control Panel section 2 7 2 1 3 CSCW Menu More detailes about distributed and collaborative working mode can be foundin chapter 5 Additional hosts can be introduced at nearly every time during a COVISE session lt serv
49. ay of the renderer geometry input data objects lf no colors are specified the color of each vertex of the object is set to RGB 1 0 1 0 1 0 default Editing the diffuse color of those objects affects all vertices of the object thus the whole object changes its color If one color is specified for the whole object color binding OVERALL all vertices of the object are colored according to this value If you edit the diffuse color of these objects also all vertices are affected by color changes If vertex based objects such as polygons or lines with colors attached per vertex color binding PER VERTEX or per face binding PER FACE are present only the first vertex is affected by changes of the diffuse color field therefore editing the diffuse color of those objects is not very useful The next items affect the whole object in any case The Ambient Color is the reflected color of an object in response to the ambient lighting in the scene The default value for this field is 0 2 0 2 0 2 The Emissive Color is the light caused by self illuminating objects The default for this field is 0 0 0 0 0 0 which means the object is emitting no light The degree of shininess of an object s surface is for e g achieving metallic effects on the surface of an airplane wing The value ranges 4 4 The Renderer s User Interface 69 from 0 0 default for a diffuse surface with no shininess to 1 0 for a highly polished surface Let us assume there are two objects
50. ayed in the large bar near the bottom For speeding up chose from predefined colour maps available in the configuration file with the Available Colormaps combo box use the button labelled Save in ConfigFile for adding such a colour map 2 10 Settings 33 MMC ILE T HOMES General Qt style Plastique Expert mode Auto connect hosts x Embedded Filebrowser x Embedded OpenSG Renderer Restore window layout Error dialog boxes Saving User configuration path covise Module History Length 50 Autosave file name autosavemap net Autosave interval 120 Visual programming Highlight module ports X Highlight color magenta Enlarge module ports Enlarged port size Snap factor Show snap grid x Save Defaults Cancel Figure 2 31 Settings for the Map Editor 2 10 Settings Settings are used for the appearance and behaviour of the Map Editor These parameters are stored in the file mapqt xml which resides in HOME covise and in APPDATA covise respectively e QT style default defines the Qt theme used for the layout These themes can differ from one operating system to the other On Linux systems the default style is used e Expert Mode off If set all modules in the Module Browser section 2 4 are always shown e Auto connect hosts on Autoconnect hosts of a loaded network if this map contains additional hosts e Embedded Filebrowser on Opens the filebrowser for this module parameter insi
51. ble user interface for collaborative working than CSCW using a concept of rooms working groups can be predefined like N S see 5 6 New Collaborative COVISE 6 1 2 Distributed Computing In COVISE it is possible to run modules on remote computers This is also known as Distributed Computing By distributing modules across a network remote resources are used for example of a compute server with more CPUs or memory than ojZwischenablage leerin your local workstation or PC The COVISE session is controlled from the MapEditor on the local workstation Remote Compute Server Local Workstation MapEanor 1 CONTROLLER Figure 6 1 Distributed Session Distributed Computing The previous figure shows the elements of an example for distributed working in COVISE The ap plication consists of three modules a module which reads in data READ a module which extracts a special feature FILTER and a module which displays the extracted data RENDER As the filter module consumes much CPU time and memory it will be started on a remote compute server also the Reader because the data to be read in is on the remote machine The first process started by COVISE is the Controller which in turn starts the user interface process MapEditor and the data management process CRB As soon as another host is included in the session a CRB is started on that computer The read module is started on the local workstation the filter module on the remote computer
52. copy of the module with the current parameter values is created Connection lines inside a copied module group are also picked In distributed and collaborative working mode the module is copied to another host for execution This means that the module is initialized on the other host and remain on the original host This is only possible if an additional host was added e Rename The module is renamed A new name is prompted for This action is also avilable to add a label to a module group e Parameters The Module Parameter section 2 6 window is opened This action has the same effect as clicking on a module book icon e Help A HTML module description is shown in the Qt Help viewer that is part of the Map Editor 2 5 3 How to move a module Hold down the left mouse button on the module icon The mouse pointer changes and you can move the icon to a new position The icon will follow the mouse pointer Then release the mouse button If the icons have connection lines to other ports these lines will be repositioned too 2 5 4 How to group modules Y There are two methods for grouping module icons on the canvas 1 Specific Selection Press the SHIFT Key and click on a module icon The icon background changes to the highlight color see section 2 10 Doing the same action on an already selected module icon deselects it 2 Selection via a rubberband Click on an empty part of the canvas to determine the startpoint of the rubberband rect
53. cursor If you click on an object with the left mouse button the object becomes selected and highlighted by a red wireframe box which now surrounds the object You can select only one object at a time If you have opened any editors or enabled manipulators these will be attached to the selected target object for further editing If you switch between objects by clicking on a different object all manipulators and editors automatically become attached to this object ST SS Viewing Editors Manips Ligh r Pick Edit Light Edit Mode View selection Fog Antialiasing screen Door Transparency Blended Transparency Delayed Blended Transparency sorted Blended Transparency Edit Background Color Hide Coordinate Axes Clipping Plane Figure 4 16 The Viewing Menu 4 4 The Renderer s User Interface 607 Light Edit Mode Enabling this mode lets you interactively edit the current visible light sources in the scene by using the mouse Fog This item affects the environment of a scene to simulate various atmospheric effects such as fog haze pollution and smoke which are grouped under the term fog Anti aliasing This technique is useful to eliminate or reduce jagged lines and make objects drawn on the screen look smooth Enabling this item reduces drawing speed Screen Door Transparency This and the next three items affect the transparency quality level Screen door transparency is the default and the only supported mode on some machin
54. cy The assignment of opacity values to data values is defined by a transfer function In addition to the transfer function for opacity there is a transfer function that assigns colors to the scalar values In Figure 5 1 both transfer functions are depicted the opacity function is drawn as a line the color function is represented as a color gradient On the desktop a ColorEdit module serves as a transfer function editor the VR renderer COVER has its own built in editor which comes with the Volume plugin and is displayed as soon as volume data is loaded Transfer Functions Scalar values Figure 5 1 Opacity and color transfer functions 84 Chapter 5 Volume Rendering in COVISE 5 1 2 Rendering Technique Depending on the available graphics hardware either 2D or 3D textures are used for displaying the volume data lf only 2D textures are supported three sets of textures have to be stored in texture memory one for each principal axis For 3D textures the volume data only needs to be stored once For technical reasons on SGI machines each voxel occupies at least two bytes of texture memory even if only 8 bits per voxel are stored The volumes are displayed by drawing them slice by slice see Figure 5 2 The number of slices drawn determines the rendering speed the faster the graphics hardware the more slices can be drawn and the higher the image quality The slices are always oriented in a way that their normal vectors point towards t
55. d by Pins which are represented as vertical lines These lines can be moved horizontally For each scalar value the maximum value of the alpha function s components define the current transfer function Alpha blanks dominate over all other alpha Pins they set the alpha value to transparency no matter what other elements are located at the same position Location i r j adl Knob p Transfer Function Window A Alpha Alpha Alpha Color Pin Color Bar Hat Ramp Blank Settings l Slope 10 0 4 Shi ope 1 0 e 4 Pj Vi fidth D 0 Width 0 0 Bs Max 10 di Delete Default m do dii uU 1 Histo ram Button Configurations Button 9 Figure 5 19 Transfer function editor in three different interaction states Since in some cases the volume data display in virtual environments may be poor see Figure 5 20 due to large image sizes stereo projection and multiple screens a high quality rendering mode see Figure 5 21 was implemented The user can switch to that display mode by clicking a mouse button while the mouse is located above the user s head Then the volume is displayed with full detail but the frame rate usually drops No interaction with menus is possible until the user leaves this mode with another mouse click at an arbitrary position 5 4 VR Renderer 99 Figure 5 20 Low quality Lambda dataset Figure 5 21 High quality Lambda dataset 100 Chapter 5 Volume Rendering in COVISE Volume file types DAT Pu
56. de the Module Parameter section window e Embedded OpenSG Renderer off Integrate the OpenSG renderer windows inside the Map Editor as a tab on the right side Currently not implemented e Restore window layout on After quitting the Map Editor all positions and sizes of all windows are stored and reopened again the next time 34 Chapter 2 The Map Editor Error dialog boxes off Off show errors in the Message Area section 2 11 On pops up a dialog error window User configuration path covise Path for storing files Module History Length 50 Maximal numbesr of modules that will be stored Autosave file name autosavemap net After a certain amount of time a map is automatically stored using the above name Autosave interval 120 After a certain amount of time 120 sec a map is automatically stored Highlight module ports on When connecting ports in the Visual Programming Area section 2 5 highlight matching ports Highlight color red Color name from rgb txt for highlighting ports connection lines and module icons Enlarge module ports on When connecting ports in the Visual Programming Area section 2 5 blow up module ports for better visibility Enlarged port size 15 Hight of enlarged module ports in pixel Axis aligned connections off When moving module icons in the Visual Programming Area section 2 5 the move of corre sponding connection lines were shown time comsum
57. ditor window provides the functions to select which parts are visible you have 3 possibilities Select any subset of parts out of the selection list toggle switches any subset Set all parts visible invisible or invert your selection Specify the subset of parts by a regular expression and press RETURN On the right side you can optionally select a reference part that will be fixed during move ments to specify this reference part you can use 2 possibilities 72 Chapter 4 The Renderer Select this part from the list toggle switches 1 part only Specify a regular expression and press RETURN the first part matching the regular expres sion is fixed 4 4 The Renderer s User Interface 73 e Interactors Snap Free handle The last two options of the Editors menu item have been added to select options for an Interactor If you want to move e g a Cutting Surface you can attach an interactor to it An interactor attached to a point of a Cutting Surface consists of a tangential plane reduced to a square at that point a normal at that point see example below Figure 4 22 Interactor You attach an interactor by clicking on a point of the Cutting Surface Note You must be in pick mode and select click on the Cutting Surface before you can attach an interactor You can rotate the Cutting Surface by using the normal arrow as a handle translate the Cutting Surface by pulli
58. due to performance considerations Alternatively the master has the ability to switch to a second mode called Loose Coupled Mode When this mode is enabled every partner has full access to all Renderer functionalities without disturbing the other partners setup and view This mode is convenient when the partners have stopped their discussion about the current rendered objects and want to do some postprocessing on the data like changing some colors adding light sources saving or printing etc The discussion on the data is supported by introducing Telepointers A telepointer marks a position in the renderer s window to guide the other partners to interesting details on the screen Each renderer has a telepointer attached to the current mouse position which is sent to the remote renderers In addition the renderer supports stereo viewing mode with the Crystal Eyes shutter glasses as well as with various autostereoscopic viewing devices It also supports the Spaceball or the DLR Spacemouse for 6Degree of Freedom interaction Getting started To start the Renderer simply select the module named Renderer in the category Renderer in the Ma pEditor After a few moments the renderer s icon 4 1 is displayed in the MapEditor canvas and the renderer main window appears on the screen as shown in 4 3 Figure 4 1 The Renderer Icon Note that you can resize the renderer according to your needs but reducing the window size may hide some of the m
59. e functionality of a software to be processed without a Graphical User Interface GUI Applications User e Creation of individual converters e Preparation of huge data sets for interactive analysis VR or presentations Typical tasks Cutting CropUSG Sampling Sample Assembling BlockCollect e Specific animations Developer e Testing e New applications e Rapid prototyping Implementation New user interface the command line Language used PYTHON Advantages of Python e Open source www python org and widespread in scientific computing e Comprehensive syntax e Rich on features object orientation huge package library e extensible 134 Chapter 7 Batch Processing in COVISE 1 4 Mapping of COVISE to PYTHON Visual Programming Area Python CuttingSurface ls Figure 7 1 Mapping of COVISE to PYTHON Rule Each module on the map editor corresponds to an object in Python the map itself translates to an object called net 1 5 7 5 How to begin 135 How to begin Run Python interface by typing covise script filename gromit SNAP gt covise script Kok AA KK AAA AA 3K K AA AAA ACACIA 2K IONICA AO AAA AA AA ION 3K 2K K 3K FK AAA AA AA AA AAA COVISE 5 4 a1 starting up please be patient Flexlm license of type STD UI checked out otarting local request broker otarting user interface x xkkkkk COVISE PYTHON INTERFACE 4 done initialization AA
60. e mouse or typing exact values using input fields There are three different widget layout styles available simply click on Style in the slider menu Note that the changes only affect the currently selected object in the scene Translation changes the position of an object in the scene Scale changes the size of an object Rotation changes the orientation of the object in the scene Scale Orientation changes the orientation for scale operations Center changes the center around which rotations take place 70 Chapter 4 The Renderer Transform Editor TRANSLATIONS SCALES ROTATIONS SCALE ORIENTATION CENTER Figure 4 20 The Transform Editor e Part Editor 4 4 The Renderer s User Interface 71 If the geometry objects displayed by the Renderer can be identified in case of modules using finite elements you can use the COVISE Part Editor to select which parts of the geometry will become visible or invisible and optionally which part is fixed during movements Haleri Bair Cafe afara gt shige Trafsfenmo 6 COV SE Part Editor lt 2 gt select visible parts from this list any subset All visible JAN invisible e select fixed part for movements from this list 1 part only lt gt Fix 1 part for movements TT gt o o o O 3 use reference Part Enter regular expression to specify parts visible regular expression Figure 4 21 Part Editor The left side of the Part E
61. ective choice menus MinimumValue und MaximumValue allow to constrain the stored data range All values that are smaller or equal to MinimumValue will become zero values greater or equal to MaximumValue will become 255 or 65535 depending on the data format 8 or 16 bit per voxel The remaining values are distributed linearly inbetween Desktop Renderer COVISE s desktop renderer displays volume data after they had been classified with the Color Editor module A simple module layout can be created with the GenDat module see Figure 5 7 as a uniform grid generator when volume rendering compatible parameters see Figure 5 8 are used Both a uniform grid and scalar data are needed as data sources for volume data The Color Editor see Figure 5 9 acts as a transfer function editor In order to get a volume display with semi transparencies the Transparency checkbox must be checked The Color Editor module converts incoming scalar values to RGBA tuples which are then passed on to the Collect module The Collect module combines grid and data value information and feeds them into the renderer see Figure 5 10 5 3 Desktop Renderer 87 INPUT PARAMETER Read volume files or create a volume from 2D slice images J FilePath Browser wl data VolumeF ile xvf R CustomSize Boolean _ ValumeWidth Scalar Value 200 00001 Delta 1 000000 ValumeHeight scalar Value 400 00001 Delta 1 000000 VolumeDepth Scalar Value 250 00001 Delta 1 000000
62. ed This is indicated by grey text on the menu buttons and in the modules The slave partners can request the master role using the menu MasterControl gt gt Request or use the corresponing item MasterRequest of the Viewer Popup Menu in the Renderer Fig 5 9 and 5 10 below show both possibilities 112 Chapter 6 COVISE CE Collaborative Engineering E COVISE MapEditor sgi001 visenso txecuih en CHOW MasterControl visual Programming COWISE Objects Contr PHE OVIEDO Loma ACE MES CR CUPI ACI PERES Figure 6 8 MasterControl from Mapeditor COVISE Renderer Functions i Draw style a e Viewing Decoration r Headlight Preferences MasterRequest Figure 6 9 MasterRequest from Renderer 6 3 MasterCtrl 113 If you click on MasterCtrl a question dialog Figure 5 11 pops up on the master computer Figure 6 10 Master Request Window If the master replies No you will be informed by the window shown in Fig 5 12 Figure 6 11 Negative Response If the master replies Yes e all previously grey menu items on the former slave side are now black selectable only MasterCtrl becomes grey not selectable e all previously black menu items on the master side are now grey not selectable only MasterCtrl becomes black selectable This applies not only to the Mapeditor menu but also to the parameter entries in Module Info and Control Panel window but please note the following r
63. een in the first entry in the ChannelConfig section of covise config You may create your own list by adding a SNAPHOT SCREEN entry in section Snapshot of covise config The rgb snapshot files are created by default in the working directory You may override this behaviour if a SNAPHOT DIR entry in section Snapshot is present for instance onapshot SNAPHOT_SCREEN FRONT TOP SNAPHOT_DIR usr tmp The generated files have the following structure snap number _ extra digits left right Eye Screen Screen name rgb The first number is a snapshot counter The extra digits have no special meaning they are only used in order to prevent new file or button names from being repeated Whenever you create a snapshot a new viewpoint entry is also created for the Viewpoint plugin which should also be in use otherwise the COVER will crash For these new viewpoints associated with snapshot actions new buttons are also created in the Snap shot submenu with the same name as in the Viewpoint submenu These names have the structure snap number _ extra digits 3 2 4 Sketches You create drawings in 3D space using this plugin A sketch is a set of lines A line is defined in this context to be a series of connected points The Sketches Plugin is activated if the line MODULE Sketcher in COVERConfig is present In order to create a sketch you should activate the Draw button in the Sketches menu Then you may create lines by pressing the poi
64. el Window Widgets corresponding to the parameter types are used for the layout of interactor Interactors in the ControlPanel allow the manipulation of parameters at every time without the need to pop up the Module Parameter section 2 6 By clicking the toggle button in the Module Parameter window an interactor is generated lts representation then appears in the Control Panel Changes made via interactors in the Control Panel section 2 7 are updated in the corresponding parameter value fields of the Module Parameter section 2 6 window This works also vice versa Available interactors for each parameter are shown in the following list e String Only one string interactor is available Just type in a string in a text input field e Boolean A boolean interactor is realized as a toggle button Click on it to set unset the state This is the only one e Vector A vector interactor has the same text input fields as in the Module Parameter section window This is the default e Choice As in the Module Parameter section 2 6 window you see a combo box e Scalar Scalar interactor default This interactor has the same input fields as in the Module Parameter window Sequencer interactor Use this interactor like the control element of a videoplayer There are no limits for the upper and lower value 2 8 Data Objects Data Viewer 31 e Slider Slider interactor default Player interactor Use this interacto
65. enderer and the VR renderer You can find more details about single scopes in the chapters explaining these central COVISE parts 13 2 The Map Editor This chapter explains the usage of the COVISE Map Editor how to work with modules connect module ports to a map and modify module parameters After reading this chapter you should be able to visualize your data within COVISE The graphical user interface is based on the Qt software from Qt http www trolltech com After typing covise on a command line or clicking on a covise icon the Map Editor top level window appears COVISE QtMapEditoravisilias Loaded Map raid home langr trunk covise nevtutorial titorial_ pressure_1 net File Execution CSCW Module Tools Help Gp E N Favorites Collect Colors CuttingSurface GenDat IsoSurface RWCovise Renderer Modulelist B 5 langr visilias amp y Al G Converter GQ Filter y 10_Module L E Q Examples E E E n Renderer 1013495 115 229 Inv 21 File Viewing Editors Manips Lights Sync Help Colormaps Geometry Objects Objects MASTER Collect 1 OUT 0 Collect 1 OUT 0 1 r SYNC Domain Surface 1 OUT 2 1 Renderer i i VRRenderer gj M Simulation lg Tools lg Tracer G UnderDev E y VISIT Cutting Surface_1 134 95 115 229 complete run took 0 082 seconds Figure 2 1 Map Editorcontaining a tu
66. ends the definition of a sketch and creates a new entry in the list of sketches e SaveSketch saves all sketches to file e First sketch name if one exists e Second sketch name if one exists 52 Chapter 3 COVER 53 4 The Renderer 4 1 4 2 Introduction In this chapter the main functionality of the COVISE Renderer is summarized Like the map editor one renderer is started on every host in a cooperative working session once the master renderer has been brought up on the master map editor The design of the Renderer supports collaborative working for more details see chapter 5 COVISE CE Collaborative Working Basically the Renderer works in a what you see is what see mode This is called the Master Slave Mode or Tight Coupling lt means that every partner in the session has the same viewpoint in respect to the rendered geometry objects Only the master has the ability to change the view in the other renderers On the slave side it is possible to change the camera position independently from the others as long as the master isn t changing anything As soon as the master performs an interaction the slaves automatically become synchronized and updated Strictly speaking there is a slight difference between Master Slave Mode and Tight Coupling Master Slave causes the slave renderer to be updated at the end of a move only whereas Tight makes a contiuous update The two possibilities have been introduced
67. enu components By clicking on the module setup button in the Renderer icon the data object and parameter list for the Renderer appears 4 2 As you can see no parameters can be set or adjusted and there is currently only one input port called DO Geometry In the future there may be additional input ports e g for pixel images Unlike other 54 Chapter 4 The Renderer application modules in the COVISE environment the renderer has it s own Motif based point and click user interface You can connect all modules with geometry output ports to the renderer s input port The renderer will accept any number of input objects After an execution of a complete module network the renderer will appear highlighted while new objects from local memory or remote machines are sent into the module New rendered objects will be shown in the geometry objects list in full name You can find out your point of view in respect to the scene by looking at the coordinate axes and their orientation If you cannot see objects just select the View All icon on the right side of the drawing area You see the objects as you would look through a camera lens While pressing the left mouse button and dragging the mouse around in the Viewer Area you can move the camera around the scene This allows you to rotate the whole view around a point of interest using a virtual trackball The viewer area uses the camera s focal distance to figure out the point of rotation which is usually
68. enu lets you edit the color of this light or removing it from the scene The icon for the headlight is turned off by default If you create new lights new entries will appear below 4 4 The Renderer s User Interface 77 Figure 4 27 The Spot Light Icon e New lights are shown by placing the light icon at a default position in the scene These lights can be edited interactively with the mouse after turning on the Light editing mode To edit the properties of a light you can also select Edit from the sub menu of the Headlight item The edit window appears displaying the light you have selected You can change the intensity of the light emanating from the source by moving the intensity slider You can also adjust the angle at which the light shines on the object by clicking on the directional arrow and changing its position in the window Editing the color of the light brings up the color editor Show all Icons Hide all Icons Headlight Spot aes F On Off F Icon Edit Color Remove Figure 4 28 New Light Entries 8 Chapter 4 The Renderer Headlight Editor BENE Edit Figure 4 29 The Light Editor Menu 4 4 The Renderer s User Interface 79 Sync menu SYNC Help Loose Coupling F Masterislave Tight Coupling Figure 4 30 The Sync Menu see Chapter 5 COVISE CE section MasterCtrl subsection Synchronization Help Pressing Help provides you online help for the Renderer but you can easily branch e
69. er ox user whet j aer host 31000 covised Invite a userz hostia Userd gihostg partner cored file Romi user xD i covised ser host aer host od c Invite a partner f Join a room Ram Pea covised Room user i ra werlicihostl aser hot Join a room Ronni user a wer xihost aer host aer host user Oghosto cavised file usarl izhost user i ihosta covised file user host Romn J user d user Ghost No GUI aer host aser_x host_ Figure 6 18 Concept of Collaborative COVISE This is the first step obtaining the informations about rooms and partners and it is done automatically by the application opening some permanent connections between the members who have launched covised passive members That does not mean that they already work together they need to be invited or to ask to be accepted to become an active member of a certain room In the figure above the user1 host1 which is not the master of the Rooml_user_x is also displayed with different color because he was invited by the userl he accepted the invitation and he is considered now an active member and the option Join a room will be transformed into Invite a partner for the same list When the user_x wants to join the Room1 user 1 double click on the room a request will be sent to the master which will accept send a message to all connected members of the room user6 user
70. era position in the Renderer all other partner s cameras are synchronised with the master camera The master role can be exchanged between partners This way of working together in a multiuser session is also known as Collaborative Working Collaborative Engineering The hosts of the partners can also be used for distributed computing Remote Workstation Local Workstation Remote Compute Server Figure 6 2 Collaborative Session Collaborative Engineering in COVISE CE In a collaborative session see figure a user interface process MapEditor and a Renderer are started also on the remote machine The Renderer module is the only module which is started on all computers In a session 106 Chapter 6 COVISE CE Collaborative Engineering 6 1 4 Preparing COVISE for a Distributed or a Collaborative Session See also Additional feature COVISE daemon covised The COVISE daemon covised included as a preversion in Rel 5 2 provides a more general and more comfortable user interface for collaborative working than CSCW using a concept of rooms working groups can be predefined like N S see 5 6 New Collaborative COVISE Every computer that will participate in a distributed or collaborative session should be included in the section HostConfig in the file covise config For each host you have to specify the memory model for data exchange between modules on the local machine the execution mode and a timeout for TCP connections
71. es For transparency details refer to the editor s section Screen door transparency uses GL patterns for achieving the transparency effect Blended Transparency uses GL alpha blending Delayed Blended Transparency uses GL alpha blending opaque objects are rendered first then transparent objects Sorted Blended Transparency uses GL alpha blending opaque objects are drawn first then transparent objects Additionally the objects are sorted by their distance from the camera and are drawn from back to the front Edit Background Color Invokes a color editor for changing the background color of the render area default is black Hide Coordinate Axes Toggles between hiding and showing the three coordinate axes The axes are on by default Clipping Plane Cut Geometry 68 Chapter 4 The Renderer Editors menu Renderer 1 smi Editors Manips Li Material Editor Color Editor Object Transform snap handle to axis tros pu nhaiin Figure 4 17 Editors Menu e Material Editor The material editor is used for customizing objects by interactively changing values for ambient diffuse specular transparent emissive and shininess elements and immediately seeing the effects of these changes Material Editor Edit Color v 4 Amb e 3 Diff 4 Spec 2 Emis ohininess Transp Figure 4 18 The Material Editor The diffuse color is the object s base color specified in the color arr
72. es to use specific resources like supercomputers or fileservers The first three items of this menu entry are also available in the Toolbar section 2 3 16 Chapter 2 The Map Editor COVISE QtMapEditor visillas Loaded Map raid ho File Execution CSCW Module Tools Help pes O Add Host Ctrl H 0 Add Partner Ctrl P M Delete Host Partner B a langr v Set Mirror Hosts l E AII E G Cony E G Exan Remove Mirrored Nodes Start Mirroring Nodes Figure 2 5 Host Menu e Request Master State A master slave relationship is applied among participating partners of a session This means that at every point in time only one participant has control over the overall session while the others can only watch ongoing actions performed by the master All slave windows are insensitive for user input that influence the network consistency and parameters Important events are spread to all slaves Therefore when a new network is generated or edited every module icon and connection line between module ports also appears on the slave Map Editor canvas The modifications in the Module Parameter section and attached parameters in the Control Panel section 2 1 are also spread to the slave sides Clicking on the RequestMasterState item pops up an inquiry dialog on the master side informing that a user on a slave host wants to become the master WEGVIEE OtMapEditor Gviss d 3 Grant Master status to
73. estrictions for scalar slider parameters if their appearance type has been changed to player sequencer e A player sequencer will be stopped if you transfer control to the slave e the delta value is will not be transferred to the slave so if you don t like the default value you have to explicitly set delta at the slave 114 Chapter 6 COVISE CE Collaborative Engineering 6 3 3 Synchronization The slave Renderers are synchronised with the master renderer which means that all manipulation actions like changing the camera position zooming selecting objects etc are sent to the slave Ren derers As long as the master doesn t do anything in the Renderer the slave Renderers can be used independently Depending on the line speed of your connection you can choose your adequate level of synchronization see Fig 5 13 use LOOSE coupling if you have a slow connection F Loose Coupling Master Slave Tight Couplin LOOSE I ght Coupling i Sync Loose Coupling z Master Slave MASTER SYNC Tight Coupling Loose Coupling MASTER Figure 6 12 Increasing levels of Synchronization Master Slave r Tight Coupling This is a summary of the different levels of coupling e Master Slave Coupling Sync Field SYNC default value Normally a master slave re lationship has been established between the partners of a working session Only the master can change e g the camera
74. ewpoint will appear and it will be saved in the file The name NewViewoints can be changed in the file with a text editor By chosing a viewpoint and pressing on this entry the viewpoint will be activated If flying mode is active then an animated flight from the current viewpoint to the selected viewpoint will be started The selection of viewpoints can also be done using the keys F1 F12 The Flight button opens a submenu with a list of all viewpoints and a button Run Run starts an automatic flight through all selected viewpoints in the list Viewpoints can be removed from the flight by deselecting them in the list StartRecord starts recording viewoints The viewpoints are saved in vrml format to a file named animation wrl StopRecord stops recording viewpoints The recorded viewpoints have to be added to a vrml file and become available in the submenu VrmlViewpoints as soon as the file is loaded 3 2 3 Snapshot This plugin is available when an entry MODULE Snapshot in COVERConfig is present When pressing the Snapshot button of the pinboard a submenu appears which has a single button as long as you have creted no snapshots When you press this button the submenu disappears and a snapshot will be creted whenever you press the pointer again A snapshot may encompass several rgb files One or two files are generated for each screen in a screen selection list By default this list 50 Chapter 3 COVER reduces to scr
75. fer ing double buffering or the switching between single buffering during manipulation and double buffering otherwise COWISE Renderer Functions Draw style Viewing Decoration Headlight Preferences new Annotation sS Anup STR gigaivaiea ADueisiiposn Manier anumit Fi f as is hidden line discrete mesh no texture low volume low resolution wireframe points bounding box no depth move same as still move low volume move no texture move law res move wireframe move low res wireframe na depth move points move low res points no depth move bounding box no depth single buffer double buffer interactive buffer Figure 4 5 Available Drawstyles in the Viewer Popup Menu You can see different viewing modes in 4 6 4 7 and 4 8 The hidden line representation removes all lines which normally could be seen shining through in a wireframe representation Figure 4 6 Wireframe Representation 58 Chapter 4 The Renderer A C LT Hi AAZCARS VANTO fl MAI SSA era Figure 4 7 Hidden Line Representation Figure 4 8 Discrete Representation 4 4 The Renderer s User Interface 59 e Viewing Toggles between View and Edit Pick mode When picked a red bounding box appears surrounding the selected object 4 9 Figure 4 9 A Selected Picked Object When you click on the background in the viewer area the object becomes deselected again You can only
76. following your mouse cursor 2 5 Visual Programming Area Canvas 27 Figure 2 23 Generating a connection line Move the cursor The connection is established when the mouse button is released within a port You can also directly click onto the the desired highlighted port In the same way you have to connect all modules of a map Figure 2 24 Generating a connection line Connection established 2 Using the right mouse button Pressing clicking on a port with the right mouse button pops up a menu that shows matching ports Selecting an item will create a connection line This method is best when the network map has a lot a modules some of them outside the visible range E m RW tiny geo 14 RW tiny p 29 ir B No data object CuttingSurface_1l 1soDataln DomainSurface 1 dataln RW tiny geo 1 mesh in RW iny p 2 mesh in i rr d Collect 1 nein e Figure 2 25 Generating a connection line with the right mouse button Move the mouse over a connection line The line will be highlighted if the cursor is exactly on the line 2 6 28 Chapter 2 The Map Editor Delete the connection line by a double click or via a popupmenu that is shown when using the right mouse button on a line Module Parameter Every module can present a detailed view of its input and output data objects as well as its parameters Click with the left mouse button on the book icon of a module A new window appears on top of the
77. fore starting covised an initialization file can be prepared The name of the file has the following format covised hostname where hostname is optional The initialization file has two sections e ZZMASTERS LIST section with the names of the users and hosts to which covised tries to establish connection e ROOMS_LIST section which contains predefined working groups established for using COVISE in collaborative mode 2 Start a covised session e After the start covised tries to establish connections to the COVISE daemons started by the other users specified in the ZZMASTERS LIST section e After connecting to the users from the ZZMASTERS LIST covised tries to establish con nections to the members of the rooms defined in the initialization file but not yet connected e f the connection is established the process of exchanging the available rooms is started in both directions The rooms are sent only to the users which are members of those rooms 3 Create active rooms 6 6 New Collaborative COVISE Daemon 129 e After covised has been started the available rooms including the members to which con nection has been established are displayed in the room list The rooms created by the user who has started covised have a M icon on the left side of the room name The rooms received by connected partners don t have this icon e f the master of the room joins a room by clicking on Join the room becomes
78. g to help for MapEditor or Modules 90 Chapter 4 The Renderer 4 4 3 The Information Area WERE ima Area Information Area Tool Bar E Viewer Area Collaboration Status M Pirates tas hahaa a WERE dM uite Renderer_1 As gi001 Inv 2 1 s JA EX Hle Viewing Editors Manips Lights Sync Help Gi Geometry Objects MASTER DomainSurface 1 OUT 071 gt TIGHTI Collect 2 OUT 002 Collect 1 OUT 002 Colormaps Collect 2 OUT Collect 1 OUT gt amp 4 Diez e e om 000 875 750 625 S 375 250 125 000 pressure i O A A A e e LI heels Figure 4 31 Information Area of the Renderer On the left side of the information area the list of currently displayed geometry objects is shown together with the colormaps used If you click on a certain object in the render area the name of the object gets highlighted in the object list It is also possible to select an object in the render area by clicking on it s name in the object list The red bounding box appears around the selected object in the render area to highlight the selection Thus similar objects can be distinguished by their unique name 4 5 Using Spaceball and Spacemouse Colormaps Geometry Objects Collect 1 OUT Colect 1 OUT_001 Domainsurface 1 OUT O21 A In In Figure 4 32 List of Current Geometry Objects and Color Maps 81 On the right side of the information area there are f
79. he integration of modules from the airplane design field into COVISE as homogeneous software integration platform was performed to increase the productivity of the airplane developer In the final phase of the ADONNIS project a short demonstration of CSCW applied to the analysis of vibration simulations of satelites was given This prove of concept led to the definition of an Esprit best practice and demonstration project ACATAD with CASA CONSTRUCCIONES AERONAUTICAS SA Division Espacioas as the primary industrial partner in which collaborative analysis of dynamic simulations among satellite producer and sub contractors is introduced COVISE will be used across multiplexed ISDN lines Also the COVISE development was initated in the aerospace field the underlying concepts and archi tecture are independent of a certain application field Thus it was possible to also apply COVISE to the automotive applications In the Esprit project E20184 HPS ICE High Performance Simulation of Internal Combustion En gines INDEX E22745 COVAS E22542 the BMBF project EFENDA the G7 Projects SPOCK and GWAAT the Collaborative Research Center SFB374 and many other national projects Since 2004 the development of COVISE is a joint effort by HLRS at the University of Stuttgart and RRZK at the University of Cologne In 1997 the developers of COVISE founded the company Vircinity IT Consulting to bring COVISE to the market COVISE is now distributed by VISENS
80. he default button label is drive and the default button location is in the Navigation submenu The button belongs to the button group Navigation The DRIVE mode is indicated with a driving wheel as 3D icon 44 Chapter 3 COVER COLLIDE With COLLIDE collision detection between the viewer and the scene is enabled disabled The default button label is collide and the default button location is in the Navigation submenu The button is a toggle button The default state is OFF SPEED With SPEED you can adjust a scale factor for the velocity in fly drive or walk mode The default button label is speed and the default button location is in the Navigation submenu The button is a slider button he default minimum speed is 1 and the default amximum speed is 30 The default value is 1 The minimum and maximum and the initial value can be defined in the scope COVERConfig COVERConfig 1 SPEED min max initial value Viewpoints The viewpoints submenu is described in the section about plugins 3 1 5 View Options COORD_AXIS With COORD_AXIS drawing of a coordinate axis system is enabls disabled The default button label is coord axis and the default button location is in the view options submenu The button is a toggle button The default state is OFF The axis are drawn as lines with a small arrow at the end The origin is in the world coordinate origin and the length of the axis is 0 5 SZENE SIZ
81. he menu and the start values of toggleand group buttons can be specified in the file covise config see configuration in cover installation guide Menu Button Types In the 3D menu there are three different types of buttons Simple Buttons with only a label execute a certain function once for example if you press the view all button the scene is scaled once so that it fits onto the screen Toggle buttons E switch between two states for example you can switch headtracking on or off Radio buttons select one function in a group of functions All navigation functions are in such a button group if you you have move world on and then switch to scale world the move world button is switched off All collaborative working modes are also in a separate button group Group buttons can be spread across the menu and the submenus Slider buttons are used to select a numerical value between a minimum and a maximum value The drive speed button is such a slider button Currently only floating value slider buttons are implemented Submenu buttons open a new menu The submenu can be selected and dragged like the pinboard 3 1 4 Navigation Modes With the functions XFORM SCALE FLY DRIVE WALK the user navigates through the scene These functions are grouped into a radio button group therefore only one navigation mode can be active 3 1 Interaction 41 ciview opt x misc oClipPlane Oaxis Ospecular ospotlight
82. he user so that the user never looks in between slices The number of slices that can be drawn at interactive rates depends on the size of the volume object on screen This is due to the pixel fill rate being the limiting factor Sampling Planes View A Frustum Figure 5 2 Slicing approach for texture based volume rendering 5 2 COVISE Modules In order to work with volumetric data a dataset that is compatible to the volume rendering subsystem needs to be created Compatible data must be located on a cartesian grid which means that the coordinate axes must be perpendicular to each other and the data values must be distributed equally on each coordinate axis There can be different sample distances on each coordinate axis but not within an axis If the source data is not on a cartesian grid it has to be resampled with the appropriate COVISE modules The total size of texture memory required for rendering can be computed by multiplying the number of voxels in each dimension with one another and with the number of byes per voxel For example a 16 bit per voxel dataset with 256 x 256 x 256 voxels requires 256x256x256x2 bytes 32 megabytes of texture memory If the data does not fit entirely into texture memory it either has to be swapped in and out which is time consuming or it does not load at all In the latter case a white volume dataset is displayed Volume data in COVISE is internally represented as one of the following data t
83. hlighted reverse video mode The layout of these messages is gt gt hostname gt gt Text Performance Considerations in a Cooperative Session Particularly for performance reasons it is advantageous to know little about what is going on behind the scenes when the mouse is moved around in the viewer area especially when working with the master renderer in the environment 6 4 1 Updating the Telepointer The telepointer is operating in all directions If you press the SHIFT key on your keyboard your machine s name will appear at your current mouse position in the other renderer s drawing areas To reposition the telepointer to another position release the SHIFT key move the mouse and press SHIFT again at the new position or move the mouse while the SHIFT key is still pressed The difference here Is that in the second case the new mouse position is sent over the network very often 6 4 2 Direct Manipulation Normally new positional information is only sent when the master releases the mouse button in the viewer area 6 4 3 Using the Decoration Around the Viewer Area The same is true for the thumb wheels and the slider around the viewer When you release the mouse button information is sent over the network 6 5 6 5 Mirroring 117 6 4 4 Using Sliders As far as the sliders in the transform editor are concerned the situation is somewhat different If you are using the transform sliders by pressing the mouse button and mov
84. ias i E amp A i BE a Converter i Eg Examples i BE amp Filter E S IO Module UserColormap Q Initial Colormap M P in More O 9 Qoemansutaces i RWCovise i i ReadStar i E y interpolator angle 5 g 3 Mapper HE 01 x E gy Obsolete Ej Ey Renderer i More VRRenderer E y Simulation opion LX E g Ja JW ale Figure 2 11 Map Editorwith Control Panel More information about the Control Panel is available in section 2 7 e Data Viewer Opens an additonal window containing the COVISE Data Viewer section 2 8 2 2 Available Help 2 2 1 Tooltips 19 A tooltip is a small piece of text that appears when the cursor is hover a widget for a certain period of time Tooltips are available for all icons of the Toolbar section 2 3 the main buttons in the Module Parameter section 2 6 window the Control Panel section 2 7 the Settings section 2 10 and some other relevant items 2 3 20 Chapter 2 The Map Editor 2 2 2 What s this If more information is needed about a certain region of the Map Editor the What s This mode is ideal The mode can be entered when the icon in the Toolbar section 2 3 is clicked The cursor changes to Click a region to obtain more information 2 2 3 Online help COVISE opens a seperate he
85. if you want exit the COVISE Python interface sys exit COVISE net file to Python use the save fileName method of the net object
86. igation Tracer The COVISE modules TracerUSG MagTracer MagBlockTracer STracer BlockS Tracer Cell Tracer and TetraTrace all computes streamlines or particle traces The traces start either on a line or on a plane In the COVISE module the line is specified with the parameters startpointl and startpoint2 and the number of traces started on that line is defined with the parameter no startpoints The plane is specified with the parameters startpointl startpoint2 and normal In COVER the user selects Trace i from the Pinboard where Trace stand for the Tracer module and i for the instance of the module A red sphere is now attached to the users hand When the user presses the select button of the 3D input device the current position is converted to object space and is taken as startpointl The user can move the hand now to the endpoint of the line while keeping the select button pressed When he releases the button the current position is converted to object space and is taken as startpoint2 The parameters are sent back to the tracer module and the module is executed Within a few seconds the new particle traces appear in COVER Plug Ins COVER provides an interface for programming Plug Ins For details see COVISE Programming Guide section COVER Plugin Programming Below you get a description of some plug ins you may find useful for your current work 48 Chapter 3 COVER 3 2 1 Probe Probe is a new plugin for 2D probing To
87. ing 2 11 Message Area 1 ransparent Controller Colors Warming Choice parameter SelectMap has changed list of possible values from Standard Star ITSM Rainbow Blue Blue Light to Standard User defined Star ITSM Rainbow Rainbow ITSM Star Blue Blue Light IAG MTransparent Controller IsoSurface Warning input parameter pointOrValue is not implemented anymore Controller IsoSurface Warming input parameter isovalue type Scalar is not implemented anymore CuttingSurface_1 134 95 115 194 complete run took 0 014 seconds IsoSurface_2 134 95 115 208 complete run took 0 015 seconds CuttingSurface_1 134 95 115 194 complete run took 0 025 seconds IsoSurface_2 134 95 115 208 complete run took 0 015 seconds Figure 2 32 Message Area This scrollable text output window shows messages with different colors Error message are colored red Warning message are colored blue Info message are colored green Informations and control output produced by the Map Editor itself are black Messages are sent from modules during their execution the Controller and the request broker CRB 2 12 Chat Line 35 2 12 Chat Line This editable text field is used for sending information to other partners joining a COVISE session As expected the chat line is shown for two or more partners only 36 Chapter 2 The Map Editor 37 3 COVER 3 1 COVER COvise Virtual Environment Renderer is a COVISE renderer module with
88. ing back and forth every little movement will directly go over the network If you want to avoid this click on the slider once at the desired position or use the input line Note that renderers running on machines without advanced graphics hardware can manually change the scene drawstyle changed to wireframe or points for locally doing extensive editing operations This especially applies to the master slave mode Mirroring 6 5 1 Mirroring Summary After reading this chapter you will be able to work with a mirror of your map The main purpose of mirroring is to show a map in a slave without copying huge amounts of input data COVISE allows you to mirror a whole pipeline also distributed or parts of it completely to another host and to delete it e Set Mirrors Sets the mirror for each host in the session e Mirror Node Mirror nodes modules of the current map to the chosen mirror host e Delete Mirrored Nodes Delete all mirrored nodes modules the original map remains un changed You can set new mirrors and add more hosts see next 3 sections with a simple not realistic example For a motivation to use mirroring see the realistic example in the last section 6 5 2 Set Mirrors In order to Set Mirrors you should have added at least one partner host in case of the example below you are working as user coviseOsgi002 vircinity de and you have added pw_te sgi001 vircinity de as a partner You can specify now
89. ing user interface using local python interpreter usr bin python KK COVISE PYTHON INTERFACE eee done initialization HE kk k k k k k k k k 2K 3K ek 3K ke KI I RK I KK A KK 2K 2K 2K K 2K K K gt K FK FK FK FK ak ok COVISE PYTHON INTERFACE ready covise gt 136 Chapter 7 Batch Processing in COVISE On some systems you might obtain a warning like RuntimeWarning Python C API version mismatch for module covise This Python has API version 1012 module _covise has version 1011 In most cases you can ignore this warning but nevertheless it is recommended to check the proper functionality by converting an example COVISE map with the tool map converter map _converter P o converted py COVISEDIR net tutorial channel net and run the resulting python script in COVISE python by typing the command covise script convertedNet py In case problems occur due to version incompatibilities of covise and the version of python provided by your linux distributor please contact support visenso de 7 6 Python syntax 137 7 6 Python syntax 7 0 1 Not COVISE related covise gt a 3 covise gt b 14 Assignment covise gt print atb 17 Output covise gt i 0 covise gt for i in range 0 3 print i Ne O Loop covise gt s hello World covise gt print s Hello World String Comprehensive tutorial http www python org doc 2 2p1 tut tut html 138 Chapter 7 Batch Processing i
90. ion FORWARD FORWARD sets the animation mode to forward playing This means that the objects in the animation sequence are drawn one after each other After the last object in the sequence it re starts with the first object The button appears only if COVER receives a COVISE set objects with timesteps The default button label is forward and the default button location is in the animation submenu FORWARD is a function button Backward BACKWARD sets the animation mode to backward playing This means that the objects in the animation sequence are drawn in backwards order After the first object in the sequence it re starts with the last object The button appears only if COVER receives a COVISE set objects with timesteps The default button label is forward and the default button location is in the animation submenu FORWARD is a function button 46 Chapter 3 COVER ANIM SPEED With ANIM SPEED the time interval how long an object in the sequence is drawn can be set The default button label is anim speed and the default button location is in the animation submenu FORWARD is a slider button The minimum and maximum value and the initial value can be defind in the scope COVERConfig COVERConfig ANIM_SPEED lt min gt lt max gt lt initial value gt The default values are min 0 max 5 0 and value 1 0 When the slider is set to the maximum value objects are drawn as fast as possible In this case a timestep contai
91. is directly related to the user who created it the master of the room It can be private only the name of the room is propagated to the members normal the members are propagated but only inside the room only this version is currently implemented or public the name of the members and the name of the room are propagated to everybody who asks Example of covised file for user x host j Masters list useri hostl user2 host2 Rooms_list Roomi_user_x user3 host3 user4 host4 user4 computeserver host ssh hwwo2k covised host user_x host_j 6 6 New Collaborative COVISE Daemon 123 When the covised is launched it tries to establish first the connections with every user of his masters list Some of them are already connected and ready to inform him about the rooms where they take part entire list of potential participants and those who already work together with a different color If there are some predefined rooms in his list he is the master the application will try to connect to all potential members of the room s and if they run covised and he is included in their masters list a info connection will be established and the information about rooms will be sent useri OSES cored file user xi host_ user rhost i user i ghost corised file covised user host userzi lhoste Invite a partner covised Rooml user xj Room user D a aer host use Ghost r user xit host Join a room Ronni us
92. langr 2134 95 115 229 Figure 2 6 MasterRequest Window If the master rejects the action the requesting slave will be informed Otherwise the master slave relationship between these two will be exchanged As a result the greyed menus of the MapEditor on the previously slave side are now in black while all menu items on the previous master side except for the MasterRequest and the Help button are now in grey e AddHost Distributed Working This item adds another host to the current session No other Map Editor or COVISE session will be started at that host Only modules can be executed on this host e AddPartner Collaborative Working This item will invite a partner to participate in a current session A complete COVISE session starts on that host The partner gets an own Map Editor The content of the local windows are duplicated to those windows By default the invited partner is in a slave state so he can t initiate actions until the master slave relationship is changed via the item Request Master State All important events are spread to all slave user interfaces and all parameters and user ac tions are copied The only enabled button in the Menubar section of the partner is the RequestMasterState and the Help button A host in the Module Browser section 2 4 can be deleted by clicking on it with the right mouse button This action is not possible for the first host of a COVISE session Pressing AddHost or AddPartner will p
93. le browser IS opened in a seperate top level window or inside the Module Parameter window Module Parameters RWCovise 2 0 Qj Read OR write COVISE Data A4 grid path amp E I t Path hgr trunk covise data general tutorial X Directory List File List bny geo covise Uny_p covise tny te covise tny_velocity covise tny_vis covise Filename tiny p covise Filetype covise Apply Cancel ET forceReading 4H stepNo integer 0 44 rotate_output JHM rotation axis z H rot speed Float 2 Figure 2 27 File Browser inside the Module Parameter window Colormap How to modify a colormap is explained in Colormap Editor section 2 9 30 Chapter 2 The Map Editor 2 Control Panel The purpose of the Control Panel is the collection of graphical interactors which typically represent often used and changed parameters close open Module open module help minimize info for this module Parameter Window Module ata Control Infos x Module execute pipeline starting with this module Pata Objqct Browser C Ge a CuttingSurface_1 immediate parameter lt lt i o o E blue scalar laos 0 S gennormals lt offset o1 Gul restur 1 utrol Fanel top switch _ Sliders E islidimm he __ _ Tislidcom CO pp parameter name fslidCom os Ss Figure 2 28 Control Pan
94. lp window when the item Help in the menubar is pressed This window is also available with Shift F1 COVISE OtMapEditor visilias Loaded Map raid home langritrunk covise File Execution CSCW Module Tools Help gt DG x Favorites Colle laica Tutorial Modulelist User s Guide s langr visilias Module Reference Guide Q All Programming Guide h BA Cem Figure 2 12 Available help items in the menubar The following help topics are available e Version shows the version of your COVISE installation e Tutorial opens the online version of the Tutorial User Guide opens the online version of the User Guide Module Reference Guide opens the online version of the Module Reference Guide e Programming Guide opens the online version of the Programming Guide Toolbar The Toolbar contains 1 icons for the most important actions 2 frequently used modules 2 3 1 Toolbar Icons or DON 2 DON Figure 2 13 Available icons in the toolbar These icons have the same behaviour as the items in the Menubar section 2 1 The toolbar is dockable that means it can be disconnect from the main window and show the content in an own separate window A short decription of the icons is given in the following list 1 Load a new map into COVISE 2 4 Module Browser 21 2 Save the current map Overrides a given map name 3 Execute the module network 4 The What s This help cursor 5 Request the master state on
95. ly enabled if you are in slave mode 2 3 2 Favourites Favourites are often used modules They can be used in the same manner as modules listed in the Module Browser section 2 4 Favorites Collect Colors CuttingSurface GenDat IsoSurface RWCovise Renderer Figure 2 14 Frequently used modules 1 The module name can be dragged into the Visual Programming Area section 2 5 2 New favourite can be addeed to the list by dragging a module from the Module Browser section 2 4 to the favourite list The drop point marks the position in the list 3 A favourite can be removed from the list by dragging a favourite name to the Module Browser section window 4 The list can be sorted by double clicking on a favourite name 2 4 Module Browser This area contains a hierarchy tree displaying the hostnames category names and module names When COVISE is started in single user mode only the name of the local host is shown in the tree Module Browser Hosts Slangr visoo N list of all available modules Categories CutGeometry often used modules i GO CuttingSurface stored in XML file i N DomainSurface gy INterpotete go Module Mapper click on this item to peter see all modules in GVectorField this category Renderer lg Simulation lg Tools ig Tracer UnderDev A Unsupported 3 VISIT Figure 2 15 Parts of the Module Browser 22 Chapter 2 The M
96. n COVISE 7 6 2 COVISE related covise gt myNet net Create a net object implicit after opening the map editor covise gt rin RWCovise Create a RWCovise object covise gt myNet add rin Add module to the net drag RWCovise module to the visual programming area VPA covise gt rin showParams set_grid_path x Utility function covise gt rin showPorts mesh_in mesh covise gt rin set_grid_path share covise example data COVISE airbag covise Set parameter covise gt render Renderer Create Renderer module covise gt myNet add render Add Renderer to net drag Renderer to the VPA covise gt myNet connect rin mesh render RenderData Create connection between modules covise gt runMap Guess what 7 6 3 Mapping rules COVISE Python e The Visual Programming Area is represented by the object net e Each COVISE module is represented by a Python object of the same name Renderer Renderer e Each parameter of a COVISE module is mapped by a member function with the prefix set Example 7 6 Python syntax 139 covise gt re ReadEnsightNT covise gt re showParams set_case_file x set data for sdatal set data for sdata2 set data for vdatal set data for vdata2 set choose parts x set repair connectivity x PS PI PI PI U NU um Note Due to technical reasons you MUST set a parameter after you have added the module to
97. name description and available datatypes If a data object exists after the pipline has already been executed information about the created data type are shown otherwise the text No data object appears 2 5 2 Module Actions A popup menu is shown when the right mouse button is pressed on a module icon This allows to perform the following module actions e Execute This executes the module network starting from the current module It is typically more efficient to execute only a part of the map after having changed some parameters instead of executing the whole network 1 O modules often need a lot of time to read in large data files which is not necessary if a module parameter has been modified further down in the module chain e Delete The module is deleted and disappears from the canvas This function is also avaibale to remove a module group 2 5 Visual Programming Area Canvas 25 4 RWCovise 2 e 4 Execute Delete Clone Rename Parameters face 11 Figure 2 20 Available Module Actions e Restart Move Restarts the module with the current parameter values and connection lines In distributed and collaborative working mode the module is moved to an other host for execution This means that the module is deleted on the current host and initialized on the other host The current parameter and connections are moves too This is only possible if a further host was added e Clone Copy An exact
98. ng the plane You use the option Snap handle to axis in order to in order to enable Free handle motion in order to disable the orientation of CuttingSurfaces normal to coor dinate axis 4 Chapter 4 The Renderer Manips menu Manipulators are used for direct manipulation of a certain object like the editors explained in the last section Hanips Lights Trackball Handle Box Jack Centerball Transform Box TabBox gt None F Replace Figure 4 23 The Manips Menu This way of manipulation is more direct than using editors but less precise than using the sliders To attach a manipulator to an object switch to the picking mode and select a manipulator type in the Manips Menu shown in Now click on the desired object The manipulator appears and surrounds the object There are different manipulators to transform rotate scale and move an object in the viewer e Trackball This manipulator is for rotating and scaling an object lt appears as a transparent sphere around the selected object Figure 4 24 Object with Trackball Manipulator Attached e Handle Box This inserts a transparent cube into the scene that allows the user to scale and translate the object by moving the mouse in various ways Use the SHIFT and ALT keys with the left mouse button to achieve specific effects for both the trackball and the handlebox manipulator see e Jack The object can be zoomed and rotated e Centerball s for m
99. ning only a few objects is drawn faster than a timestep containing a large number of objects Steady Cam With STEADY_CAM the user can attach the viewer to an animated object and move with this object For example if the viewer wants to see a car crash from the view of the person sitting in the car he can attach the camera to the seat and then he is moved with the crashing car The default button label is steady cam and the default button location is in the animation submenu The button belongs to the button group Navigation 3 1 8 COVISE The Mapeditor function Execute and the parameters of the most important COVISE modules can be accessed from within COVER EXECUTE With the function button EXECUTE the whole pipeline is eceuted once The default button label is execute pipeline and the default button location is in the COVISE submenu CUTTINGSURFACE The module CuttingSurface cuts a plane cylinder or sphere out of a 3D grid and interpolates the data to the plane sphere cylinder The position and orientation of the cutting surface is specified with the parameters vertex and scalar In the 2D interface the user has to provide the orientation of the plane with the parameter vertex which is the normal on the plane and the parameter scalar which defines the distance from the origin In COVER the user selects the button Cuttingsurface i where i stands for the instance of the module A transparent plane is now attached to the
100. nly as many different colors are used for the color transfer function as selected The Animation menu can be used to control the display of time dependent datasets If only a single time step is loaded this menu has no effect When Animate is checked the time steps are cycled at the value selected by Speed When the Speed slider is in the middle of its range the speed is zero The animation runs backwards if the slider is in the left half of its range Step Forward and Backward 98 Chapter 5 Volume Rendering in COVISE can be used to switch to the next or previous time step respectively The Frame slider can be used to directly access a specific time step When the Save Volume menu item is clicked on the currently loaded volume dataset together with the current transfer function is stored to the file virvo saved xvf which is located in the directory which was current when COVER was started The file can be read with ReadVolume but only without the transfer function When it is loaded directly from COVER s Volume Plugin by entering it into the list of files for the Files menu entry in covise config the saved transfer function will be restored As soon as a volume is loaded from the menu the transfer function editor window pops up see Figure 5 19 The transfer function for opacity can be combined by a number of different elements a tent function a ramp and an alpha blank In the transfer function window the elements can be accesse
101. nter and moving it When it is released the current line is finished You may create several lines by repeating this operation When you are done with one sketch then you will want to create a new entry in the list of available sketches You should press the button NewSketch in this case But this is not enough to save the sketch in a file see below comment on button SaveSketches The available sketches may be shown or hidden by activating or deactivating the corresponding entry in the menu All sketches are saved to the file specified by the COVER parameter Viewpoints when you press the button SaveSketches whose action will be eventually preceded by the action of button NewSketch You may edit this file in order to change some attributes of the sketches or their lines sketch name color attributes etc The position of the sketching tool with respect to the hand may be parametrised by a pertinent section in covise config Sketcher ANGLE 5 0 DISPLACEMENT 0 5 SCALE 100 0 where SCALE determines the size of the sketching tool DISPLACEMENT stands for a displacement along the local Y axis relative to the sketching tool size and ANGLE parametrises a rotation around the local X axis in degrees 3 2 Plug Ins 51 By way of summary you may read the table below with explanation to the buttons in the submenu Sketches The button Sketches opens a submenu with the following entries e Draw enters drawing mode e NewSketch
102. ntly executing modules This red highlighting sweeps sequential through the processing pipeline Figure 2 17 The Visual Programming Area 2 5 1 Module Icon Fig 2 18 shows a typically module icon Each module is represented by such an icon A module icon has e a background color which corresponds to the hostname color of the Module Browser section 2 4 e input data ports pink These ports have to be connected Otherwise an error message appears green These ports can be optionally connected e Output data ports blue Normal output ports orange These output ports depend on an input port If such an output port is selected the corre sponding input ports change its color and become required If disconnected the correspond ing input port become green again e a text label which consists of the module name and an instance number 24 Chapter 2 The Map Editor requested port optional port DomainSurface_1 P normal output port depending port ichange status due to optional port status Figure 2 18 Module Icon e a book icon If the closed book icon is selected the Module Parameter section 2 6 window of this module will be opened In this window the module parameters are shown and can be changed If an opened book icon is selected the Module Parameter window will be closed Unstructured V3D Data Figure 2 19 Available data types on a port A tooltip shows port information like
103. ocation is in the main Pinboard menue The button belongs to the button group Navigation The SCALE mode indicated with a magnifying class as 3D icon When the button of the 3D input device is pressed and the hand is moved to he right the world becomes larger when the hand is moved to the left the world becomes smaller The interaction is stopped when the button is released The same applies for mouse input View All VIEW ALL When the VIEW ALL button is pressed the whole scene besides the coordinate axis and the pinboard Is scaled so that it fits into the visible part of the world typically the screen size The default button 42 Chapter 3 COVER label is view all and the default button location is in the main Pinboard menue The button is a function button The size for the scaling is defined in the file covise config in the section COVERConfig with the keyword SZENE SIZE It is defined in mm A 19 Monitor for example has 340 x 270 mm there a good choice would be 270 in a CAVE with the wall size 2800 x 2500 mm we would choose 2500 COVERConfig i SCENE SIZE size in mm COVER also supports an autoscale mode In this mode a view all is performed every time a new object is appended to the scene graph You enable this mode in the scope COVERConfig with the keyword SCALE ALL COVERConfig i SCALE ALL ON or OFF Stop Headtracking FREEZE With FREEZE headtracking is enabled disabled The default
104. olm TebraHeiinbon T_T Info Messages look here 1 Tetraliedronizie esdig vircimty aeu grid has 82 315s Ihe size of tive original Tatrahedronize_1i sgi00 virciniy new qund has 92 31 ihe size of the original Tetraxrace 20259001 vircinitu StanPolnts 100 0 005 seconds Tatrafrace_2 sgi00 vircmity all Traces dock 0 560 seconds Tetra race Tupsnile vircinitu gt StarPoints took 0 006 seconds TatraTrace T sqin vircimity all Traces iopk 1 310 seconds Figure 6 17 Mirror nodes and compare execution times 6 5 Mirroring 121 6 5 4 Delete Mirrored Nodes Delete Mirrored Nodes is just the inverse operation of Mirror Node i e it removes the mirrored nodes and leaves your original map unchanged 6 5 5 Example The advantage of mirroring modules to your partner s host is that you save the time of transferring the whole visualization data every time the object changes Changing the camera position in the renderer doesn t change the visualization data itself Therefore if you only use functions of the Renderer the visualization data will not be transferred multiple times You don t need the Mirror mode feature in this case But if you really want to change the visualization data during the session you should use this mode For example if you want to change the data mapped on the surface from temperature to pressure you can take advantage of the mirror mode Suppose you want to share the visualization of a crash with
105. on the open file icon will close the browser window e Values 2 6 Module Parameter 29 The value fields contain the parameter values Depending on the parameter type different input fields to change the values are available Values can be selectively overwritten The following list will show the different represenation of the parameter types String Just type in a string in a text input field Boolean A toggle button is shown Click on it to set unset the state Vector For each element of the vector a short text field is given which is used as a string input field Choice A combo box with the current item is shown Click on the arrow to see all items Scalar There are integer and float scalar parameters available In the parameter window both are handled in the same way There are a text input field for the current value and one for a delta value The last value is only estimated Please adapt this value It is used by the interactors to calculate a new current value Slider Slider parameters are values that have a minimum and a maximum value to be used to step up and down endless as a scalar parameter They also have a delta value assigned that Is used by the interactors Browser To choose a filename together with the proper path use either a string input field or a filebrowser The first alternative is useful if the path and the filename is already known otherwise open the file browser to find the file Depending on the settings the fi
106. ons for e switching between View and e Edit Pick Mode e Head Tracking Mode currently not implemented e invoking the help browser Help not implemented use help button in menu bar instead e resetting camera position to the home position Home e saving a new home position for the camera view Set Home e viewing the whole scene View All e seeking to a certain point of the scene Seek 4 4 The Renderer s User Interface 63 4 4 2 The Menu Bar The menu bar of the renderer window is shown below File Viewing Editors Manips Lights Sync Help Figure 4 12 Renderer Menubar File Menu File Viewing Editors Ma Dave Alt s save As PIU S nap Ctri s snap All Cir 3 LX VAR Piet Print Alt p Read Camera Env cave Camera Env Figure 4 13 The File Menu e Save he current objects are saved in Inventor 3D format Programs reading this format like IRIS Explorer or IRIS Showcase can load this objects and allow further usage and postprocessing of the 3D data e Save as Save the whole scene A file selector box appears where directory and file name can be selected e Snap Take a snapshot of the viewer area Format of the snapshot files is tiff changed with Rel 5 2 3 Creates an error dialog if offscreen rendering is not possible due to low colordepth Offscreen rendering requires at least a 24bit true color Same applies to Snap all e Snap all Take a series of snapshots of the viewer area You can
107. op up the left window in Fig 2 7 In this window a existing can be selected or typed The hostnames in the list are the same as in the scope HostConfig of 2 1 Menubar 17 the COVISE configuration file When OK is pressed COVISE will look for information about the requested host his is shown in the right window The default values for the remote host are also taken from the scope HostConfig of the configuration file PC ESSE Add Host os d Available hosts COVISE Set Conr Hostname vis Username langr ExecModes remoteDaemon v Password Display Timeout 60 Apply Cancel Figure 2 7 Adding hosts for distributed or dollaborative working mode The timeout value specifies how many seconds a process will wait to be contacted by a new process it initiated e g the Controller waiting for module This parameter should be increased if the network is slow The execeution mode specifies the command which should be used to start the CRB on the remote computer Possible execution modes are e rexec An userid and a password for the remote machine has to be typed This is similar to login on a remote computer via telnet e rsh In this case only the userid is required A password on the remote machine is not needed The rsh specific rules for remote execution pf proceses have to be followed e ssh Same as above but a secure shell is needed e nqs This is not recommended lt can be used to put the CRB into
108. ostereo sep aViewpoints Figure 3 4 Submenu Button Move World XFORM In XFORM mode XFORM stands for transform the whole scene besides the coordinate axis and the pinboard can be moved The default button label is move world and the default button location is in the main Pinboard menue The XFORM mode indicated with the above 3D icon Only when the button of the 3D input device is pressed the world is translated and rotated with the users hand The translation is relative to the point where the button was pressed The center of rotation is the users hand The interaction is stopped when the button is released For pulling the whole scene closer to the user you can move the hand away from the body then press the button and move the hand closer too th body and then relase the button Do this several times if the appropriate position can t be reached in one step If the input device is the mouse the scene is rotated when the left mouse button is pressed and translated when the middle mouse button is pressed In rotate mode up down movements rotate around the x axis left right movements rotate around the z axis In translate mode up down movements translate into positive and negative z direction left right movements into positive negative x axis Scale World SCALE In SCALE mode the whole scene besides the coordinate axis and the pinboard can be scaled The default button label is scale world and the default button l
109. our lines the first two display the collaboration status of the renderer e Interaction Mode Shows whether the renderer is master or slave e Synchronization Tells whether tight master slave SYNC or loose coupling is enabled between the renderers in the environment e Rendering State obsolete not used e Rendering Time obsolete not used 4 5 Using Spaceball and Spacemouse If the Spaceball or the DLR Spacemouse is connected to your workstation you are able to manipulate the geometry objects in 3D space in a six degrees of freedom fashion The device should beep two times at renderer startup time when initialization of the device was successful To move an object around select the object in picking mode The device is now attached to the selected object Some of the device buttons provide some additional functionality e Button 1 Disable enable rotation e Button 2 Disable enable translation e Button Set home selected object e Button 3 Set home all objects If no object is selected the spacemouse changes the viewpoint in respect to the scene by changing the current camera position 4 6 Stereo Viewing Mode Some platforms support stereo in a window viewing Stereo viewing is enabled by choosing Stereo Viewing in the renderer s preference sheet You return to the default mode by deselecting Stereo Viewing in the preference sheet or typing in a shell window usr gfx setmon n 72HZ or usr gfx setmon n 60HZ
110. oving the center point of rotation for an object Afterwards the object can be rotated around the new rotation point 4 4 The Renderer s User Interface 75 TransformBox This manipulator is for transforming the selected object TabBox This lets you scale an object by doing a click drag release motion with the mouse after clicking on the green control points None This is the default If an object gets picked no manipulator is attached to the object Replace If a different manipulator is selected from the list the currently active manipulator is either replaced or stays attached uu Figure 4 25 Tube Surrounded by a Handlebox Manipulator 76 Chapter 4 The Renderer Lights menu The lights menu is for creating editing and removing light sources in an object scene This is a feature used for changing the appearance of an object by changing its illumination Light information is currently not sent to other renderers in a cooperative working environment Each entry in the menu is explained now in detail Lights sync Help Lightmodel BASE COLOR Create Dir Light create Point Light Create spot Light Ambient Lighting Tum all OH Tum all OFF show all Icons Hide all Icons Headlight Figure 4 26 The Lights Menu e Lightmodel BASE COLOR Each object has its own base color also called diffuse color If no colors are specified the objects are colored white over all faces or vertices When the base color
111. present by one object covering the other where one cannot see the covered object By adjusting the Transparency Level of the covering object you can see either both values larger than 0 0 or only the previously covered object value 1 0 e Color Editor The color editor lets you interactively change the color properties of an object a light source or the background color of the render area You can set RGB or HSV values or pick a color directly from the color wheel By selecting Manual from the edit menu bar item you can prevent changes being reflected immediately in the object until you are ready Use the two color squares to test new colors and store the previous one By clicking on the three pads beneath the squares you can switch back and forth between colors The new color is always on the left and the previous color on the right You can send the new color to the right square or the old color to the left square RGB values range from 0 0 to 1 0 for the red green and blue color component where 0 0 0 0 0 0 is black and 1 0 1 0 1 0 is white Diffuse Color Edit Sliders Figure 4 19 The Color Editor e Object Transform Transform sliders are useful to change the position of objects in respect to each other or to scale an object to make it appear larger or smaller on the screen If you click on an item in the transform slider set sub menus appear in which you can do the desired editing operations by adjusting sliders with th
112. r for displaying online help or other online docu mentation default is Browser netscape Please note that online help and documentation is optimized and tested with Netscape so there might be minor problems with other browsers Additional information for using a MultiPC system In order to improve the performance of COVER under Linux you can use 2 synchronized PCs running in parallel instead of 1 PC using a dual graphic card One of them will be the master and will be connected to the tracking system The PCs will be connected through TCP IP and serial connection The serial cable will be plugged into one of two serial ports which has to be specified in cover config section MultiPC key Serial Port Master and Slave names of the machines are defined in the same section In addition you have to define the type of connection between the hosts in covise config section HostConfig like in collaborative working Example HostConfig x Hostname Shared Memory execution mode timeout in seconds pel shm rsh i pc2 shm rsh sl MultiPC Master pel Slave pc2 Serial Port dev ttySO License A very important scope in the configuration file is the license key Without such a key no COVISE can be started License Key NFLHOODOLEBLILIEDEMLMNJGAJDPPHHHCDCIDPGDHABJKAKN visage 31 12 2001 12 Chapter 1 Introduction Most of the currently existing scopes are mainly used by the controller the user interface the desktop r
113. r like the control elements of a videoplayer Keep in mind that the value has a range e Colormap This interactor works the same way as in the Module Parameter section 2 6 window Open close a filebrowser if necessary e Browser This interactor works the same way as in the Module Parameter section 2 6 window Ppen close a filebrowser if necessary 2 8 Data Objects Data Viewer Data objects are created when a map is executed The names of the data objects are generated generically after the map was executed once After a new execution the list is updated with the new names If you select a data object in the Data Object Browser more information is shown in the Data Viewer section 2 8 on the right side of the Map Editor COVISE OtMapEditor visilias Loaded Map restartfile gt C d File Execution CSCW Module Tools Help E G R Favorites Collect Colors CuttingSurface GenDat IsoSurface RWCovise Renderer VRRenderer Visual Programming Data Viewer Data Objects List of currently opened dataobjects DomainSurface 2 OUT 2 1 P X Coordinates o 4 langr visilias DomainSurface_2_OUT_2_1 T RW tiny geo 1 DomainSurface_2_OUT_2_1_P E RWCovise_1_OUT_0_1 1 2 Renderer_1 gt S l 0 398767 0 4 0 425 0 395075 RW tiny_p_1 pa A E RWCovise 2 OUT_0_1 15 0208999 0 181596 0153073 0 123607 0 0933781 gt Collect_1 E Collect_1_OUT_0_1 Content of selected data object M
114. re volume data file This file type stores raw volume data without a header The data can contain 1 2 3 or 4 byte per voxel When loading a file of this type the program tries to find the volume dimensions automatically If this doesn t work you can help by adding the volume size to the file name prefix for instance cthead256x256x64 dat for a 256 x 256 x 64 voxels dataset The order of voxels in the file is start at top left front go right first then down then back just like the order of letters in a book All bytes of each voxel are stored consecutively beginning with the most significant byte for 8 and 16 bit per voxel files or in RGB A order for 24 and 32 bit per voxel files DAT files can only store one time step RVF Raw volume file This format can easily be created by hand from any voxel data array on disk by adding the appropriate header 3 x 2 Bytes big endian for the volume s width height and depth in voxels This can be done with a hex editor for example The header of a 256x128x127 volume would be hex values 01 00 00 90 00 7F The volume data can only have 8 bit per voxel in RVF files and only one time step can be stored The data order is the same as in DAT files XVF Extended volume file This format can store more information than DAT and RVF but it is still easy enough to describe and to create manually XVF files can store multiple volume datasets time steps in one file and the storage of a random number
115. red Clicking on a module it is started on the remote computer This is indicated by the hostname in front of the module name Figure 2 5 if the hosts are not colored T vision CullingSurface 2 os Figure 6 7 Icon for a Remote Module Next the module ports have to be connected and parameters adjusted lt does not make any difference whether modules are executed locally or on a remote computer When a map is saved menu File gt gt Save the information about the hostname is saved too When a map is loaded which was saved including remote modules one is asked to add the remote hosts first MasterCtrl 6 3 1 MasterCtrl Summary After having read this chapter you will be familiar with e sending a Master Request using MasterCtrl in the MapEditor or the Renderer PopUp Menu e synchronization of Renderers e using the Telepointer e using the Chat Line 6 3 2 Master Request CSCW gt gt AddPartner includes the remote host in the session and starts a Mapeditor on the remote machine Except for the renderers all other modules are started on the computer which was selected in the hosts list Renderer modules are started on all workstations The partner who initiated the session initially has the master role He can load maps or start modules and connect them He also controls the renderers The slave partners can watch all actions of the master but all menu items besides the menu master and interaction in the Mapeditor are deactivat
116. red Memory access CONTROLLER Shared Memory Workstation Figure 1 2 Local Working in COVISE A modular approach allows for the most flexibility in distributing certain parts of the visualization application to specific computers The need for excellent high speed network utilization makes it necessary to put emphasis on the management of the network connections depending on the nature of transferred data The database approach makes a data request broker CRB necessary This combination defines the COVISE architecture The Controller is the central part of this architecture lt has the overall view of the whole application This Controller supervises the distribution of modules across the involved computers as well as the management of the execution of the application So an application module only needs connections to the Controller and the request broker CRB The Controller supplies the application module with the information that is necessary to guarantee the proper execution of the overall application The data that will be exchanged between subsequent application modules is stored under the control of the request broker CRB This allows a very simple structuring of an application module The implementation of the COVISE system architecture is done in C The basic communication functionality is provided as a library 1 2 1 3 1 2 History 9 For Distributed and Collaborative Working see Chapter 5 COVISE CE History
117. rer window the volume object is just another COVISE data object If both volume data and traditional data are displayed occlusion artifacts may occur For this case the renderer menu offers several types of transparency sorting The desktop renderer offers a special draw style for volume data while the data is rotated with the mouse the volume is drawn in a lower quality to speed up the drawing process and when the mouse 5 3 Desktop Renderer 91 File Viewing Editors Manips Lights Sync Help Colonmaps Geometry Objects Collect 1 OUT Collect 1 OUT 0030 jRotx Roty IT iim Figure 5 10 Volume rendering output of simple GenDat application 92 Chapter 5 Volume Rendering in COVISE button is released the volume is drawn in regular quality This draw mode move low volume can be enabled in the pop up menu which appears when the right mouse button is pressed in the renderer window The quality of the static volume display can be set in the renderer s Preferences window sampling rate see encircled area in Figure 5 11 The Preferences window can be accessed from the renderer window s pop up F Auto clipping prz _ Stereo Viewing _ StippleStereo Viewing Enable spin animation _ Show point of rotation axes J Generate smooth normals Figure 5 11 Desktop renderer s Preferences for volume quality 5 4 VR Renderer 93 5 4 VR Renderer In order to work with volume data in the VR renderer COVER
118. rs they will be added automatically as partners An active member can quit by asking the master or can be eliminated by him An automatic remove partner will be done in the COVISE session but the connection will be kept because he is still a passive member An exit from collab covise will also close the connection For detecting crashes there will be an exchange of messages between the master and slaves every 30s Multiuser Concept If there is more than one user on the same machine running covised the usage of a fix port 31000 is not sufficient The first process which accepts connections on 31000 will route in this case all messages between other users and their partners If a new user on the same machine launches covised it will connect to 31000 for sending or receiving messages to or from outside through the first user If the first user terminates covised or crashes his role should be taken by another daemon of another user For doing that there will be a priority list FIFO principle which will be sent to all local users When the owner of 31000 will exit the first in the list will listen to 31000 and the others will connect there 6 6 New Collaborative COVISE Daemon 125 6 6 2 Implementation The pictures below show you an example of the implementation of Collaborative COVISE with covised Your actual view might slightly differ from the images shown below There are 2 members covise sgi001 covise sgi001
119. select one object at a time e Decoration Hides and shows the decoration around the render area The render area appears a bit enlarged while decoration is hidden e Headlight Switches the headlight on and off If you are in PHONG shading mode and no other lights are active the objects may become invisible depending on the direction of the normals on the object surface lt is possible to add more lights to a scene This is described later in this chapter e Preferences You can select options from the Preference Sheet 60 Chapter 4 The Renderer M COVISE Renderer Preference Sheet ES Seek animation time 2 00 seconds Seek to point object Camera zoom _ DS n Zoom slider ranges from n to 140 0 Volume sampling rate IE 000000 F Auto clipping planes stereo Viewing Supple stereo Viewing Enable spin animation show point of rotation axes Generate smooth nonnals Use alternative number format for Colonnaps Figure 4 10 The Preference Sheet 4 4 The Renderer s User Interface 61 A menu appears in which defaults for the seek mode zoom slider bounds clipping planes and stereo viewing can be set or an alternative number format for colormaps can be specified This field can be used to specify formats of the numbers along the color legend lt must be a float format for the printf format as specified in the unix manual pages and should be left justified Examples Values 0 0 1 0 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 Format
120. session The user pw te on host richard visenso de uses the telepointer to show the other user s the backflow zone in a channel gt Renderer_1 richand vircinity Inv 2 1 File Viewing Editors Manips Lights Sync Help Colomnaps Geometry Ohjects Collect 1 OUT 2 Collect 1 OUT 002 Domainsurface 1 OUT O22 Rote Roty MMI Figure 6 13 Telepointer in the Renderer 6 4 116 Chapter 6 COVISE CE Collaborative Engineering 6 3 5 Chat Line Renderer 1 i en Info Messages look here 1 Tetrahedronize_1 t esgi00 vircinity new grid has 232 3155 the size of the original Tetralrace T sqi001 vircinity startPoints took 0 00 seconds TetraTrace_18sgi001 vircinity all Traces took 0 650 seconds gt gt please look at the following message Po Chat Line Message Area LL Figure 6 14 Message Area and Chat Line The Message Area is a scrollable text output window lower part of Map Editor window that shows warning and information text produced by modules during their execution In addition this Message Area can be used for receiving information sent from other partners The Chat Line is an editable text field below the Message Area that can be used for sending information to other partners joining a COVISE session After pressing ENTER the contents are sent to all other message areas of the partic ipating user interfaces A beep happens on the receiving host and the information text is hig
121. set to be in the center of the scene You can also translate the camera in the viewer plane by using the middle mouse button as well as zoom getting closer or moving backward from the scene center by using both left and middle mouse buttons The viewer area also supports seeking see description of viewer pop up and decoration You can also use the decoration thumb wheels around the viewer area for most of these operations Changing the camera means changing the view in respect to all visible objects If you want to do editing operations like scaling certain objects or changing some colors you need to switch to the Edit Mode or Pick Mode first Therefore press the Pick Mode icon on the right side of the viewer area The cursor changes to an arrow shape and you can select objects now by clicking on them with the left mouse button A wireframe bounding box appears around the selected object and the name of the object gets highlighted in the geometry object list Now it is possible to edit this object by bringing up multiple manipulators and editors all explained in detail in the next sections If you want to return in viewing mode click on the View Mode icon Note that editing operations are only possible in master mode Only the master has access to the menu bar functionality For the slave renderers the menu bar Is disabled A Renderer 1izlocalhost Renderer INPUT DATA Openlnventor 2 0 Renderer _ RenderData DO Geometry none Execute
122. support for Virtual Reality VR input devices backprojection displays and intuitive interaction COVER can also be started independendly of COVISE and just be used as a virtual reality viewer for 3D geometry To start COVER within COVISE select the module COVER in the module list under the category Renderer To start COVER as a 3D viewer type in cover lt filename gt Note Please make sure to set the variable DISPLAY in your environment before starting COVER COVER is based on Performer a high level 3D graphics library from SGI providing high speed rendering multi processing multi pipe scene graph loaders for 3D database formats Performer is available for IRIX and Linux platforms This chapter about COVER describes the COVER User Interface and has the two sections e Interaction in COVER 3 1 This section describes how to use COVER It explains the entries in the 3D menu and the corresponding interaction techniques e Plugins 3 2 This section describes the plugins Probe and Viewpoints For configuration of displays and input devices see the separate document COVER Installation and Configuration with the sections e Graphics Board and Display This section explains which types of Virtual Environments are supported and how to configure COVER and your graphics workstation for this Virtual Environ ment e Input Devices This section explains which types of Virtual Environments are supported and how to configure
123. t 3 Colors 1 gt Y El Colors 1 OUT 0 1 General information DomainSurface 2 OUT 2 1 P Y Coordinates B i Colors 2 Type Points E Colors 2 OUT 2 1 Name DomainSurface 2 OUT 2 1 A 3 langr vis Host 134 95 115 194 134 95 115 229 E Q DomainSurface_1 Data E B DomainSurface 2 OUT 2 1 DomainSurface_2_OUT Number of Points int 720 l X Coordinates X Coordinates 720 a i s Y Coordinates Y Coordinates float 720 Z Coordinates DomainSurface_2_OUT_2_1_P gt Z Coordinates Z Coordinates H Vertex List les LI tuis 9 Mino 0 Max 721 Step 1 NCol 15 Eo 8 CuttingSurface 1 E E CuttingSurface_2_OUT_0_1 B CuttingSurface 2 OUT 1 1 m La ilr 1 message CuttingSurtace_2 1 34 95 115 194 complete run took 0 013 second s Figure 2 29 Explore a COVISE Data Objects Be careful if the data field is large or the data is located on another host because this action will be time consuming 2 9 Colormap Editor The purpose of the colormap editor is to define the transfer function i e the mapping from scalar values to opacity i e inverse transparency and colour values The range of your data is mapped to 32 Chapter 2 The Map Editor Module Parameters EN d Colors 2 H Min Max x
124. t pick mode pressing the left mouse button selects the object under the mouse cursor When seeking is enabled by clicking on the seek icon pressing the left mouse button starts seeking to the selected point COVISE Renderer Functions F Home Draw style Set Home E View All Decoration Geek r Headlight Preferences new Annotation ei PHT ATH acia fami PAS TE Pie 2 Figure 4 4 The Viewer Popup Menu The Viewer Popup Menu The popup menu 4 4 is activated by clicking the right mouse button while the mouse pointer is positioned in the viewer area The popup menu contains several items and sub menus These are e Functions The items of this popup sub menu correspond to the icons on the right side of the viewer area e Draw Styles There are two drawing modes Still Mode and Move Mode and seven different drawstyles for each of these modes among which the user can choose Move Mode is automati cally enabled when interactively moving objects or the camera using the mouse The objects may be rendered in a simpler style when selecting one of the menu items This is especially useful on slower machines thus z buffering is turned off while rendering in these styles The different mode items are Asis Hidden Line No Texture Low Resolution Wireframe Points Bounding box 4 4 The Renderer s User Interface 57 The last three items of the drawstyle sub menu in the viewer popup menu activate single buf
125. t of transfer functions will not be described here To create a volume file manually it is sufficient to set the number of transfer functions to zero in the header AVF ASCII volume file AVF files are ASCII representations of volume data They consist of a header and a data section Header In the header several lines give information about the data format Each line consists of an identifier and a value separated by whitespace Each line can contain one identifier and one value This file format cannot store transfer functions Anywhere in the file comments starting with are allowed This comments out all the rest of the line The following abbreviations are used lt int gt integer values float floating point values lt OPT1 OPT2 OPT3 gt list of options The following lines are required WIDTH int width of the volume voxels HEIGHT int height of the volume voxels SLICES int number of slices in the volume voxels The following lines are optional If they are missing the respective default values are used FRAMES int number of data sets contained in the file default 1 MIN float minimum data value smaller values are constrained to this value default 0 0 MAX float maximum data value larger values are constrained to this value default 1 0 FORMAT voxel data format default SCALAR8 SCALAR8 16 SCALARS scalar values to be stored as 8 bit integers RGB A SCALAR16 scal
126. ter flying Moving the hand close to the body behind the point where you pressed the button results in flying backwards A scale factor for the fly speed can be applied with the slider SPEED Mouse input in fly mode doesn t work WALK In WALK mode the whole scene besides the coordinate axis and the pinboard is moved as if the user walks in the scene The default button label is walk and the default button location is in the Navigation submenu The button belongs to the button group Navigation The WALK mode is indicated with shoes as 3D icon You start the walk mode by pressing the button of the 3D input device and then moving the hand into the direction you want to walk COVER then intersects a line from the feet into the negative z direction towards the bottom with the scene and if close enough repositions the user on that point in the scene As the feet are not tracked the feet position is calculated from the head position and the floorHeight and the stepSize FloorHeight and stepSize are specified in the section COVERConfig in the file covise config COVERConfig floorHeight lt z position of the floor in mm gt stepSize lt step length in mm gt When using a mouse for input pressing the left button and moving the mouse up down left right moves forward backward left and right DRIVE In DRIVE mode the whole scene besides the coordinate axis and the pinboard is moved as if the user drives in the scene T
127. the network 7 6 4 Details of the Python net object myNet add module Add module to net mynet remove module Remove module from net myNet save filename Save module into a COVISE net file myNet connect modulei portNamei module2 prtName2 Connect two modules myNet finishedBarrier Wait until all modules have finished their work 7 6 5 Details of the Python module objects e Parameter methods e Utility methods module showParams module showPorts Note Due to technical reasons you MUST set a parameter after you have added the module to the network Cl 140 Chapter 7 Batch Processing in COVISE One step forward one step back COVISE net file to Python map converter P o myFile py myFile net Example airbag net converted with COVISE C map converter from home ralfm te covise snap net examples Airbag net create global net theNet net MODULE RWCovise RWCovise_1 RWCovise theNet add RWCovise_1 set parameter values RWCovise_1 set_grid_path share covise example data COVISE airbag covise MODULE Renderer Renderer 1 Renderer theNet add Renderer 1 CONNECTIONS theNet connect RWCovise 1 mesh Renderer 1 RenderData uncomment the following line if you want your script to be executed after loading runMap uncomment the following line
128. the stored parameter settings The current layout in the canvas is destroyed as if New would have been chosen If modules are distributed and the used hosts have not yet been included in the session the passwords for the participating hosts are required The loaded network appears in the Visual Programming Area section 2 5 Each module is represented by an icon A Module Icon section 2 5 1 consists of input data ports on the top output data ports on the bottom a label and a book icon e Save stores the current network and its parameters This is possible at any time even while working in collaborative mode If a previously opened module network exists the same filename and path is used for storing Otherwise a file browser is opened e Save As stores the current map and its parameters A prompt appears asking for a storing location e Settings defines the layout and behaviour of the Map Editor The parameters are described in Settings section 2 10 2 1 Menubar 15 e Reset Layout resets the default layout e SnapShot copies the content of the Visual Programming Area section 2 5 into a png file If a network is open or has been previously saved the current network is stored using this filename and path Otherwise the current working directory is used e Quit pops up an logout window see Fig 2 3 when something was modified When Yes is selected the COVISE session is closed All participating processes on all
129. the volume plugin must be loaded by adding the following line to the COVERConfig section of the covise config file MODULE VolumePlugin COVER s volume rendering capabilities can be accessed by the Volume menu see Figure 5 12 which appears in the COVER main menu see Figure 5 13 when the volume plugin was successfully loaded at startup lts topmost entry is Files which opens another menu with a selection of volume files The file selection can be defined in the covise config file in the VolumeFiles scope Each line represents a file entry consisting of a file path and a display name These files can be created with the COVISE module WriteVolume the supported file types are the same as for ReadVolume Volume Files Probe Mode oClipping Plane oOpaque Clipping 10 0 Lp Frame Rate OBoundaries interpolation WA Discrete Colors Animation pm Animation eo Save Volume OAnimate 1 0 d Li gSpee Step Forward Step Backward Figure 5 12 COVER Volume menu with Animation sub menu 94 Chapter 5 Volume Rendering in COVISE move world oscale world view all ostop headtracking o fly nav part manip view opt MISC Viewpoints Volume ESA L i Figure 5 13 The COVER main menu 5 4 VR Renderer 95 The Probe Mode checkbox toggles a mode in which only a cubic sub volume is displayed see Figure 5 16 which can be dragged around with the left mouse button and the size of
130. tions and manipulation modes are selected through a 3D menue called the Pinboard You select a menu entry by pointing to the button with the laser beam and pressing the button of the 3D input device If the pinboard is used with a mouse simply bring the mouse pointer over the menu entry and click a button The COVER Pinboard can be re positioned in the VE by pointing to the title bar and pressing the button of the 3D input device lf you have a 3 button device and select it the left button the menu is rotated around it s z axis so it always faces the viewer billboard mode Selected with the right button it moves as if it s mouned at the laser beam Selected with the middle mouse button it changes it s size according to the rotation of the users arm The same applies for mouse input left mouse button moves the menu in a way that it faces the viewer right mouse button moves the menu with the mouse pointer The orientation is defined through a line from the viewer to the mouse so it seems to face the viewer too Middle mouse button scales the menu movements up and down make the menu larger and smaller For one button devices the billboard mode and the scaling is not supported 40 Chapter 3 COVER COVER omove world oscale world view all stop headtracking ofly Onav apart manip aview opt Qmisc oClipPlane a Viewpoints Figure 3 3 Menu Positioning The initial position orientation size layout of t
131. torial map The windows layout consists of the following main parts 1 the Menubar section 2 1 2 the Toolbar section 2 3 3 the Visual Programming Area section 2 5 which is used to show and edit a module network 4 the Data Object Browser section 2 8 which contains a list of all available modules on a certain host sorted by categories 5 the statusline which shows the number of existing messages from the Controller modules and other COVISE parts and the last content 6 the Chat Line section 2 12 which is only visible in collaborative working mode 14 Chapter 2 The Map Editor 2 1 Menubar The Menubar contains all items to e manage a COVISE session e execute dataflow networks module maps e work in collaborative or distributed mode More details in chapter 5 e get help information 2 1 1 File Menu Most of the items in the File entry of the Menubar are also avaible in the Toolbar section 2 3 COVISE QtMaped tor vis File Execution CSCW Ma D New Ctri N zm Open Ctrl O E Save Ctrl S Gil Save as 3 Settings Ctrl T Snapshot Ctrl Alt P b Quit Ctrl Q Figure 2 2 File Menu e New allows you to generate new module networks from scratch The whole canvas will be cleared also the parameters in the Control Panel section 2 7 and all data objects are destroyed Added hosts will remain in the session e Open enables COVISE to load a previously stored module network including
132. tracking and 3D Pointer 0 0 0 0 0 20002 eee 38 3 12 Stereo Viewing LL 38 Lu ein 39 REE 40 oe eee ee aaa ee ee Aaa 44 FREE 45 aaa a eee eee ee ee ee eee ee 45 DI CONSE 559 99 9 9 39952 5994 5 954 9459322595595 46 STESSO TITO FT TOT TETTE TETTE TETTI TETTE TTI 4T 321 Probe x x4 49x30 9 9 xo RIS RE RekomoRom OR UR BOE CES 4 SX 4x meh 48 D ee a 48 32 53 ONEDSNOU ce siasa eee ILL 40 APS is iuris 50 4 The Renderer 53 41 Introductioli uomo bec hee BRE OSE ER RRM ERE HE EERE REE RE 53 4 2 Getting started a a llle sss 53 CT 54 4 3 1 Using the Telepointer oen 54 4 4 The Renderer s User Interface e 55 44 1 The Viewer Area oe 56 442 The Menu Balja s me oe RANA AR na 63 CETTE TTT ey Yess eee uae 5 5 9 80 L ebeeeataahip eee eee eee ee eee 81 ore eee oe ee eee eee ee eee ee ee be eee as 81 WTCC ERE ea eee SEEN eee E 81 5 Volume Rendering in COVISE 83 peepee ee RR 83 5 1 1 Transfer Functions LL 83 5 1 2 Rendering Techniquel 84 5 2 COVISE Modules se sos sw ox eo ee Remy Ra E ee 9 Eum a 84 5 2 1 Module ReadVolume ole 85 5 2 2 Module WriteVolume a ooa a a a a a a 86 a nanni 86 5 4 VR Render 03 Seek ea NRE 100 5 6 Acknowledgments LL 102 Contents 3 6 COVISE CE Collaborative Engineering 103 Hee anal 103 6 1 1 Architecture Summary 103 6 1 2 Distributed Computing 2000 104 6 1 3 Collaborative Working 0 a 105 T 1
133. ulation of objects are enabled disabled The default button label is snap and the default button location is in the part manipulation submenu SNAP is a TOGGLE button he default state is OFF Currently only the cuttingsurface and cutgeometry interaction supports snapping In CuttingSurface and CutGeometry interaction the plane orientation is corrected to angles which are multiples of 45 degree REMOVE In REMOVE mode objects can be selected with the pointer ray and can removed on button press The default button label is remove and the default button location is in the part manipulation submenu The button belongs to the button group Navigation The REMOVE mode indicated with a red pointer ray UNDO With UNDO the REMOVE actions are undone The default button label is undo and the default button location is in the part manipulation submenu UNDO is a function button To undo several remove actions press UNDO several times MOVE PARTS With MOVE PARTS a cetrtain object can be selected and re position re oriented The default button label is move parts and the default button location is in the part manipulation submenu The button belongs to the button group Navigation In MOVE PARTS mode the object which is closest to the pointer ray is selected and if the button on the 3D input device is pressed moved with the hand The movement is relatively to the position where the button is pressed 3 1 Animat
134. use Probe select first the Probe button from the menu a red icon will appear If the pointer intersects a 2D object polygon or triangle strips and the button is pressed a label will show the coordinates of the intersection relative to the object plus scalar and vector data values at that point The plugin reads the PROBE2D attribute s of the grid object which indicate the name s of the data object s You can configure line length and text font of the label the format of the text and a default for the kind of data to be displayed e g TEMP in covise config section VRProbe VRProbe LabelLineLen 90 LabelFontSize 7 ScalarFormat s 4 93f VectorFormat s 4 3f 4 3f 4 3f DefaultSpecies TEMP e g if not specified Unknown Additional information e don t write anything into the PROBE2D attribute e add the following line in the section COVERConfig MODULE VRProbe The label will be shown until a new intersection will be selected or the Probe button will be unselected 3 2 2 Viewpoints A viewpoint defines the current position orientation and scaling factor of the scene The Viewpoints plugin allows to the user to load viewpoints from file and save them to file ot interactively define new viewpoints It offers a flight through all viewpoints or activated only one selected viewpoint The Viewpoint Plugin is activated if the line MODULE VRViewpoint in COVERConfig as for all plugins is available Viewpoint Definition
135. use this series of snapshots in order to generate a simple movie Example on SGI call mediaconvert and fill in the entries as shon below 64 Chapter 4 The Renderer Figure 4 14 MediaConvert Movie on SGI 4 4 The Renderer s User Interface 65 e Copy View The currently selected object is copied to a buffer from which other programs like IRIS Showcase can directly paste the 3D object into their application e Print It is possible to save the currently visible scene in an Postscript file or to send the postscript output directly to a printer The available printers are listed below in the printer list The output quality and print size in inches can be adjusted The page format can be chosen between landscape or portrait SreneViewer Printing Fage Output To Printer gt To File Print Quality High Draft Page Format A Portrait Landscape Print Size inches 8 337 hy 5 674 Figure 4 15 The Printing Menu e Read Save Camera Env Restore Save the camera environment 66 Chapter 4 The Renderer Viewing menu The viewing menu is shown in 4 16 e Pick Edit By default the renderer is in the View mode The viewer uses a virtual trackball to rotate the scene graph around the point of interest If you want to change the view of a scene but a specific object in respect to other objects you have to switch from the View mode to Pick Edit mode In Edit mode the outlined hand cursor changes to an arrow shape
136. uteTrace Filter CoverDocument IG Module E CropUsg Filter Cube Examples E CutGeometry Filter CuttingLine Filber CuttingSurfaceComp Filter G CuttingSurface Filter DerivOperators Tools DisplaceUsg Tools DomainDecomposibon VISIT E DomainSurface Filter DraftTube VISIT zi Data Object Browser Control Panel Figure 2 16 The catgory ALL Interacting with the Module Browser is done in the following ways 1 Clicking on the sign open close the corresponding category 2 Double clicking on a category name opens this specific category and closes all others 3 Clicking into the Visual Programming Area section 2 5 and typing allows to enter a search string All categories containing this string in the module name will be highlighted Icons of these module in the Visual Programming Area section 2 5 will also be highlighted To start a module its module name has to be dragged to the canvas A Module Icon section 2 5 1 on the canvas indicates that the respective program representing the module has been started and waits for its execution 2 5 Visual Programming Area Canvas 23 2 5 Visual Programming Area Canvas This canvas is used to show the module network Module icons that can be moves around and connection lines between module ports can be seen Executing a map visualizes the data using the Renderer window The execution of modules is indicated by highlighting the icon boundaries of curre
137. value is recommended 6 1 5 COVISE across Firewalls As shown in Figure 5 2 COVISE uses TCP sockets for communication with remote hosts A socket is defined by an IP address a port number and the protocol here tcp COVISE port numbers start by default at 31000 One can configure the start number in the file covise config using the keyword COVISE PORT in the section network 6 2 6 2 CSCW 107 Network 1 COVISE PORT 5000 For collaborative or distributed sessions across firewalls the firewall has to allow tcp connections to ports in both directions starting with the number defined in covise config You need as many ports as modules started during the whole session 3 for distributed sessions or 4 for collaborative sessions if you load several maps in a session each map needs new ports Depending on the execution mode the ports for rexec rsh or ssh have to be allowed For the execution mode manual no extra port is required Note If you use IP forwarding from your firewall to your local computer you have to make additional config urations Every host that wants to connect to your session has to know that you are behind a firewall and use IP forwarding Therefore you can tell COVISE not to connect to your machine but to your firewall instead This is done by adding an IP_ALIAS entry on every client side Assume your IP is 192 168 0 15 and your firewall has the IP 133 168 226 234 from the outside Then you have to add Network
138. w on the scene is computed This is called head tracking Currently only one user can be tracked Other users don t have the correct view of the scene and therefore they have the impression that all objects are slightly distorted This effect is minimized if they try to stand close to the user with the tracked glasses and try to look into the same direction as the one with the tracked glasses The location and orientation of the 3D input device which the user holds in his hand is measured through a sensor in the input device The input device usually has one two three buttons One button Is used to indicate a selection On a three button device the other two buttons are used to switch the navigation mode without using the 3D menu With the virtual laser beam which seems to come out of the 3D input device also remote objects can be reached for example buttons in the 3D menu Using COVER with the mouse COVER can also be used with the mouse The viewer position is then fixed to the position defined in covise config COVERConfig TRACKING_SYSTEM MOUSE VIEWER_POSITION lt x gt lt y gt lt z gt The interaction possibilities with the menu and the 3D scene are described in the following chapters 3 1 2 Stereo Viewing For the stereo projection two images are generated one with the perspective of the right eye and one with the perspective of the left eye The stereo glasses show only the appropriate image to each eye Like stereo viewing
139. x or will refuse the request sending a message to user x 124 Chapter 6 COVISE CE Collaborative Engineering A special situation is with the userb who does not not have an user interface In this case he will try to connect to userl read from covised and will become automatically an active member of the rooms which are defined by userl Room 1 user 1 and include him as member The non GUI covised will also be used if there is a firewall between host1 and host5 for example and hostb can be used as host userl opens a secure shell ssh on host5 launches covised without GUI but with an argument host The connection between daemons will be done and a COVISE session will add automatically userb as host If the host is defined in the covised file the daemon could also be started automatically by a command in the file as shown in the example file for user4 computeServer But the final goal of the users is to have a collaborative COVISE session It will be launched by the master does not matter the number of active members which will press a button attached to the room The controller crb and MapEditor will be launched and if there are already some active members a crb command will be generated as in manual AddPartner and will be transmitted through the directly opened connection to their covised which will launch the crb and everything will work as in old collaborative covise As soon as there are new active membe
140. ypes e 8 bit per voxel scalar data e 16 bit per voxel scalar data usually only the most significant 12 bits can be displayed by the graphics hardware e 24 bit per voxel RGB data 8 bit are stored for each color component e 32 bit per voxel RGB scalar data the scalar value is used as a look up into the opacity transfer function and for rendering the color components are multiplied by the resulting value Module ReadVolume 5 2 COVISE Modules 85 File Extension Description rvf Raw Volume File xvf Extended Volume File avf ASCII Volume File tif tiff 3D TIF File 2D TIFF not supported dat Raw volume data no header automatic format detection rgb RGB image file SGI 8 bit grayscale only pgm Portable Graymap file P5 binary only ppm Portable Pixmap file P6 binary only In COVISE Volume data can either be computed at runtime or it can be read from disk using the module ReadVolume This module reads standardized VIRVO volume files as well as sequences of 2D slice images Volume files can be created by the module WriteVolume 5 2 1 Module ReadVolume Figure 5 3 shows a typical COVISE network to read a volume file and display it in the renderer It accepts several volume data types and it can load a series of 2D images and merge them to a volume dataset Files types are distinguished exclusively by the suffixes of their file names Figure 5 3 Map with ReadVolume to read volume datasets from disk The following file

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