davilcox@uok.UUCP (02/10/86)
I have recently found the MOVIE.BYU package on one of the computers
here. I printed 160 pages of documentation on it.
Is anyone in net land familiar with this?
I want to know if it is worth spending my time that I should be
studying trying to weed through the docs.
thanks a lot,
David Cox
University of Oklahoma
1400 Asp box 909E
Norman, Oklahoma 73026
(405) 325-3956
ihnpf!okstate!uok!davilcox
If I really exist, these are my opinions.farhad@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU (Farhad Pezeshgi) (08/08/86)
Hi, I am a new user so bear with me. I would like to find some info about Movie BYU. I would appriciate any info that you might have about its performance and also how one can get a copy of it. Thank You. Farhad.(Please send it to me personally).
hurf@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU (Hurf Sheldon) (08/13/86)
In article <756@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU> farhad@Shasta.UUCP (Farhad Pezeshgi) writes: >Hi, > >I am a new user so bear with me. > >I would like to find some info about Movie BYU. I would appriciate any info >that you might have about its performance and also how one can get a copy of >it. > > Thank You. > Farhad.(Please send it to me personally). Please post answers to this question - Plasma's Director saw the results of this program in Japan & would like us to explore it a little - he was very impressed Hurf Sheldon Arpa.css: Hurf@ionvax.tn.cornell.edu Lab of Plasma Studies 369 Upson Hall phone: 607 255 7267 Cornell University Ithaca, N.Y. 14853
hays@omssw1.UUCP (Kirk Hays) (08/15/86)
In article <877@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU> hurf@batcomputer.UUCP (Hurf Sheldon) writes: >In article <756@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU> farhad@Shasta.UUCP (Farhad Pezeshgi) writes: >>Hi, >> >>I am a new user so bear with me. >> >>I would like to find some info about Movie BYU. I would appriciate any info >>that you might have about its performance and also how one can get a copy of >>it. >> >> Thank You. >> Farhad.(Please send it to me personally). > > Please post answers to this question - Plasma's Director saw the results >of this program in Japan & would like us to explore it a little - he >was very impressed > > Hurf Sheldon Arpa.css: Hurf@ionvax.tn.cornell.edu > Lab of Plasma Studies > 369 Upson Hall phone: 607 255 7267 > Cornell University > Ithaca, N.Y. 14853 I used to maintain this program at Northern Arizona University. I believe it was version 5.2 at that point, and was available for a license fee of about $1500 from the computer science department at Brigham Young University, which is in Utah (Provo or Salt Lake City, I can't remember which). Of course, since I don't work for those folks, these recollections are hearsay. It was written entirely in a reasonably portable FORTRAN, and had practically no comments imbedded in the code, but was easy enough to maintain if you understood the basic algorithms. Performance was abysmal, and code size was huge, but that may have been the particular FORTRAN I was using. I was running it on a Honeywell DPS-870, the top of their mainframe line in 1982. Since I graduated from college, I haven't looked at any FORTRAN, and I haven't worked with any graphics software at all, so this is about all the help I can give you. Regards, Kirk Hays =============================================================================== DISCAIMERS!?! We don' need no stinkin' DISCLAIMERS! ===============================================================================
noel@cubsvax.UUCP (Noel Kropf) (08/16/86)
<food for line-eaters>
I have some experience with installing and using movie.byu, and a few minutes
to relate my impressions. Let me say that we also wrote some of our own
software for surface triangulation from contours and for rendering of smooth-
shaded surfaces before we got movie, so we have a basis for comparison.
The version we used was the VAX distribution tape of 1984 or 1985. I
know of a more recent SUN version and a mini-movie intended for < 32bit
machines but have no experience with them. BYU is good about distribution
and runs training courses. In my experience they aren't very
reachable for phone support.
Movie.byu is written in FORTRAN, the code is somewhat understandable
and sparsely commented (as I recall). It is fairly large in terms
of source lines.
-rwxr-x--- 1 noel 258594 Apr 16 1985 command.f*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 noel 26390 Apr 16 1985 compose.f*
-rw-r--r-- 1 noel 34662 Apr 16 1985 device.f
-rwxr-x--- 1 noel 149146 Apr 16 1985 hidden.f*
-rwxr-x--- 1 noel 166702 Apr 16 1985 mosaic.f*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 noel 26897 Apr 16 1985 movlib.f*
-rwxr-x--- 1 noel 140973 Apr 16 1985 section.f*
-rwxr-x--- 1 noel 21793 Apr 16 1985 title.f*
-rwxr-x--- 1 noel 235563 Apr 16 1985 utility.f*
Our Makefile in part:
display: command.o hidden.o device.o grin.o f_to_c.o movlib.o ${GRLIB}
f77 -o display command.o hidden.o device.o grin.o movlib.o ${GRLIB}
mosaic: mosaic.o device.o grin.o movlib.o ${GRLIB}
f77 -o mosaic mosaic.o device.o grin.o movlib.o ${GRLIB}
compose: compose.o device.o grin.o movlib.o ${GRLIB}
f77 -o compose compose.o device.o grin.o movlib.o ${GRLIB}
title: title.o
f77 -o title title.o movlib.o
utility: utility.o movlib.o
f77 -o utility utility.o movlib.o
all: display mosaic compose title utility
We use movie to take 3-D objects (nerves and other neuroanatomical structures)
represented by stacks of contour boundaries, convert them to triangular
surface-patch representation (using the MOSAIC program),
and to DISPLAY them with translucency, color,
shadows, etc. on an 8-bit deep raster display.
It was fairly easy for me to write a driver for my display (Grinnell).
Reconfiguring movie for the large objects (10s of thousands of points)
we use was a bit of a pain as the array sizes were all numeric constants
and interrelated and documentation of what to change was only so-so.
(are they using PARAMETERS yet?).
In general the programs are highly interactive (read lots of typed commands,
in a fairly hairy multi-level command hierarchy) which gives you the control
you need but it takes a LONG time to get nice pictures out. You can speed
up computation by previewing at 256x256 resolution, but you can expect
to spend 10-15 minutes on a VAX 780 to calculate a moderately complex
color picture at 512x512 (doesn't matter how many shades).
All input and output files are ASCII and human-readable. This means they
take up a lot of space and are easily transportable.
We never tried to animate sequences of views, but I gather this works
fairly well if you have the CPU/human time to do it. We never used TITLE
to insert text or COMPOSE to join model files together, preferring to
join them in ASCII form before feeding to movie.
Our version had some bugs regarding shadows and translucency was hard to
get right. I believe they have fixed their bugs and are continuing to
develop the system.
I will be happy to give more info on what I know if it is relevant...
what kinds of things do you want to know about?
You can get a book from them describing the operation of the programs
for some amount of $$. I will post their address if you want.
--
--
-- Noel Kropf {philabs,rna}!cubsvax!noel 914-739-7655
-- cubsvax!noel@columbia (Internet, ARPAnet)
-- 1002 Fairchild; Columbia University; New York NY 10027
--
-- I love a tasty tune - una salsita saborosa !neighorn@percival.UUCP (Steve Neighorn) (08/20/86)
In article <756@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU> farhad@Shasta.UUCP (Farhad Pezeshgi) writes: >Hi, > >I am a new user so bear with me. > >I would like to find some info about Movie BYU. I would appriciate any info >that you might have about its performance and also how one can get a copy of >it. > > Thank You. > Farhad.(Please send it to me personally). > > Please post answers to this question - Plasma's Director saw the results >of this program in Japan & would like us to explore it a little - he >was very impressed > > Hurf Sheldon Arpa.css: Hurf@ionvax.tn.cornell.edu > Lab of Plasma Studies > 369 Upson Hall phone: 607 255 7267 > Cornell University > Ithaca, N.Y. 14853 During my senior year at Portland State University, I brought up MOVIE.BYU on the school's VAX 11/780 (4.2BSD) using a Tektronix 4107 terminal. The movie.byu system includes many nice features such as multiple light sources, hidden-line removal, contour shading, letter construction, 3-D support, anti-aliasing, etc. I realize that most of these are pretty standard on graphics software these days, but my reason for working with the package was to 1) get experience bringing someone elses software up on another computer, 2) write terminal drivers given input specifications, 3) create additional documentation for general users on the PSU computer, and 4) take a long hard educational look at the source code. My experiences with the system and the people at BYU are very good. When I had technical questions I was usually able to get a response from someone down in Utah. The sources have *some* commenting, and the documentation that comes with each program is enough to get you started using them and get a feeling for the interdependacies between each part of the system. I would be glad to send you names, addresses, phone numbers, additional information on MOVIE.BYU if you would like. I'm only an email away... -- Steven C. Neighorn tektronix!reed!percival!qiclabs!neighorn Portland Public Schools "Where we train young Star Fighters to defend the (503) 249-2000 ext 229 frontier against Xur and the Kodan Armada"