| | This Article | |
| |
| |
| | Share | |
| |
| |
| | Bibliographic References | |
| |
| |
| | Add to: | |
| |
Digg
Furl
Spurl
Blink
Simpy
Google
Del.icio.us
Y!MyWeb
| |
| | Search | |
| |
| |
| | |
Obliq-3D: A High-Level, Fast-Turnaround 3D Animation System
June 1995 (vol. 1 no. 2)
pp. 175-193
Abstract—This paper describes Obliq-3D, a high-level, fast-turnaround system for building 3D animations. Obliq-3D consists of an interpreted language that is embedded into a 3D animation library. This library is based on a few simple, yet powerful constructs that allow programmers to describe three-dimensional scenes and animations of such scenes. By virtue of its interpretive nature, Obliq-3D provides a fast-turnaround environment. The combination of simplicity and fast turnaround allows programmers to construct nontrivial animations quickly and easily.
The paper is divided into three major parts. The first part introduces the basic concepts of Obliq-3D, using a series of graduated examples. The second part shows how the system can be used to implement Cone Trees. The third part develops a complete animation of Dijkstra’s shortest-path algorithm.
[1] J.F. Blinn,“Jim Blinn’s corner: Me and my (fake) Shadow,” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 82-86, Jan. 1988.[2] M.H. Brown, Zeus: A System for Algorithm Animation and Multi-View Editing Proc. 1991 IEEE Workshop Visual Languages, pp. 4-9, Oct. 1991.[3] M.H. Brown,“The 1992 SRC algorithm animation festival,” 1993 IEEE Symp. Visual Languages, pp. 116-123, Aug. 1993.[4] M.H. Brown,“The 1993 SRC algorithm animation festival,” Research Report 126, Digital Equipment Corp., Systems Res. Ctr., Palo Alto, Calif., 1994.[5] Mark Brown and John Hershberger,“Color and Sound in Algorithm Animation,” IEEE Computer, vol. 25, no. 12, pp. 52-63, 1991.[6] M.H. Brown and R. Sedgewick, “A System for Algorithm Animation,” SIGGRAPH, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 177-186, July 1984.[7] M.H. Brown and M.A. Najork,“Algorithm animation using 3D interactive graphics,” ACM Symp. User Interface Software and Technology, pp. 93-100, Nov. 1993. Also appeared as Research Report 110a, Digital Equipment Corp., Systems Res. Ctr., Palo Alto, Calif., Sept. 1993. There is an accompanying video tape, SRC Research Report 110b. [8] L. Cardelli, “A Language with Distributed Scope,” Proc. ACM Symp. Principles of Programming Languages, pp. 286-297, 1995.[9] L. Cardelli,J. Donahue,L. Glassman,M. Jordan,W. Kalsow,, and G. Nelson,“Modula-3 language definition,” Sigplan Notices, vol. 27, no. 8, pp. 15-42, Aug. 1992.[10] B. Chang and D. Ungar, "Animation: From Cartoons to the User Interface," ACM SIGGRAPH Symp. User Interface Software and Technology,Atlanta, Ga., Proc. UIST'93, pp. 45-55, Nov. 1993.[11] M. Conway,R. Pausch,R. Gossweiler,, and T. Burnette,“Alice: A rapid prototyping system for building virtual environments,” Conf. Companion, CHI’94, pp. 295-296, Apr. 1994.[12] R. DeLine,“Alice: A rapid prototyping system for three-dimensional interactive graphical environments,” Univ. of Virginia, Dept. of Computer Science, May 1993.[13] E.W. Dijkstra,“A note on two problems in connexion with graphs,” Numerische Mathematik, vol. 1, pp. 269-271, 1959.[14] R.A. Duisberg,“Animated graphical interfaces using temporal constraints,” ACM CHI’86 Conf. Human Factors in Computing, pp. 131-136, Apr. 1986.[15] C. Elliot, G. Schechter, R. Yeung, and S. Abi-Ezzi, “TBAG: A High Level Framework for Interactive, Animated 3D Graphics Applications,” Computer Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH '94), pp. 421-434, 1994.[16] K.P. Herndon,R.C. Zeleznik,D.C. Robbins,D.B. Conner,S.S. Snibbe,, and A. van Dam,“Interactive shadows,” ACM Symp. User Interface Software and Technology, pp. 1-6, Nov. 1992.[17] P.M. Hubbard,M.M. Wloka,, and R.C. Zeleznik,“UGA: A unified graphics architecture,” Technical Report CS-91-30, Brown Univ., Dept. of Computer Science, Providence, R.I., June 1991.[18] M.A. Najork and M.H. Brown,“A library for visualizing combinatorial structures,” Proc.’94 Visualization, pp. 164-171, Oct. 1994.[19] M.A. Najork,“Obliq-3D tutorial and reference manual,” Research Report 129, Digital Equipment Corp., Systems Res. Ctr., Palo Alto, Calif., Dec. 1994.[20] L. Ramshaw and J.B. Saxe,“From quadrangular sets to the budget matroids,” Research Report 134a, Digital Equipment Corp., Systems Res. Ctr., Palo Alto, Calif. (forthcoming).[21] L. Ramshaw,“Introducing the budget configurations,” Research Report 134b, Digital Equipment Corp., Systems Res. Ctr., Palo Alto, Calif. (forthcoming).[22] C.W. Reynolds,“Computer animation with scripts and actors,” ACM Computer Graphics (SIGGRAPH’82), vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 289-296, July 1982.[23] G.G. Robertson, J.D. Mackinlay, and S.K. Card, "Cone Trees: Animated 3D Visualizations of Hierarchical Information," Proc. ACM Conf. Human Factors in Computer Systems (CHI 91), ACM Press, 1991, pp. 189-194.[24] G.-C. Roman,K.C. Cox,C.D. Wilcox,, and J.Y. Plun,“Pavane: A system for declarative visualization of concurrent computations,” J. Visual Languages and Computing, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 161-193, June 1992.[25] J.T. Stasko and J.F. Wehrli,“Three-dimensional computation visualization,” 1993 IEEE Symp. Visual Languages, pp. 100-107, Aug. 1993.[26] J. Stasko, “Tango: A Framework and System for Algorithm Animation,” Computer, vol. 23, no. 9, pp. 27–39, Sept. 1990.[27] P.S. Strauss,“BAGS: The Brown animation generation system,” Technical Report No. CS-88-22, Brown Univ., Dept. of Computer Science, Providence, R.I., May 1988.[28] M. Zmuda, M. Rizki, and L. Tamburino, "Approaches to Synthesizing Image Processing Programs," Proc. IEEE National Aerospace and Electronics Conf., vol. 3, pp. 1,054-1,059, 1991.[29] P. Strauss and R. Carey, “An Object-Oriented 3D Graphics Toolkit,” Computer Graphics (Proc. Siggraph), Vol. 26, No. 2, July 1992, pp. 341-350. More information is available via the World Wide Web at http://www.sgi.com/Technology/Inventor.html. [30] J. Ton, J. Sticklen, and A.K. Jain, “Knowledge-Based Segmentation of Landsat Images,” IEEE Trans. Geoscience Remote Sensing, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 222-232, 1991.[31] A. Tal and D. Dobkin,“GASP—a system for visualizing geometric algorithms,” Proc.’94 Visualization, pp.149-155, Oct. 1994.[32] L.R. Wanger,“The effect of shadow quality on the perception of spatial relationships in computer generated imagery,” Symp. Interactive Three-Dimensional Graphics, pp. 39-42, Mar. 1992.[33] R.C. Zeleznik,D.B. Conner,M.M. Wloka,D.G. Aliaga,N.T. Huang,P.M. Hubbard,B. Knep,H. Kaufman,J.G. Hughes,, and A. van Dam,“An object-oriented framework for the integration of interactive animation techniques,” Computer Graphics (SIGGRAPH’91 Proc.), vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 105-112, July 1991.
Index Terms:
3D graphics; 3D animation; information visualization; algorithm animation; interpreted language; embedded language; scripting language.
Citation:
Marc A. Najork, Marc H. Brown, "Obliq-3D: A High-Level, Fast-Turnaround 3D Animation System," IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 175-193, June 1995, doi:10.1109/2945.468402