VMD-L Mailing List

From: Jay Shore (Jay.Shore_at_SDSTATE.EDU)
Date: Sat Jun 23 2007 - 09:31:40 CDT

Maybe I do not understand all of the issues. But, Pov-ray and megapov both
support text. Megapov¹s support is more extensive.
Why not just use their capabilities instead of drawing your own letters?
I apologize if I am completely missing something.
Jay

> Hello,
>
> I read your conversation, and although I am not that familiar with image
> processing, I was wondering if in a image renderer (like POV-Ray) wouldn't be
> possible to implement text like the one we see on digital displays (watches
> for eg). It could be implemented using small cylinders which intersect. That
> way I think we needn't worry about ends that don't match up perfectly in the
> file text format.
> Personally I don't need state of the art fonts, and this would be a sufficient
> solution for people who need lots of labels in lots of files (unfesable with
> further image processing tools).
>
> Petrica
>
> On 6/22/07, John Stone <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 22, 2007 at 03:26:00PM -0400, Axel Kohlmeyer wrote:
>>> > don't know, whether i mentioned that before, but can you comment about
>>> > how feasable it would be to have a mechanism to load external graphics
>>> > on top of, e.g., a rectangle? i remember we were discussing leopard
>>> > skin patterned VDW reps at some time...
>>
>> Bill-boarded fonts would work for renderers that can do both texturing
>> and also have a provision for handling an alpha channel to modulate the
>> texture, but this is as frought with difficulty as doing it by simulating
>> lines, since each renderer has differences there. I'll likely have more
>> to say about that after I have the volumetric textures working in
>> Tachyon and POV-Ray.
>>
>>> > the reason for this would be, that the typical 'wire style labels' are
>>> > not always very readable, and writing a label externally (e.g. with
>>> > GIMP) can produce more readable text and a proper background so the text
>>> > stands out, i can see plenty of ways to use something like this, up
>>> > the the point of changing the text/graphics in each frame.
>>
>> Yes, I agree.
>>
>> John
>>
>> --
>> NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
>> Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
>> University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
>> Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu Phone: 217-244-3349
>> WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/ Fax: 217-244-6078
>>
> 

-- 
Jay Shore
Associate Professor
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
South Dakota State University
Brookings SD, 57007
phone: (605) 688-6356
fax: (605) 688-6364