Hi all, I am considering writing a 3D visualisation package for R. Purposes: - Visualise 3 dimension data - Manipulate the data or series or any other object with the mouse as in any 3D software (3D Studio Max, Lightwave...) - Eventually display more than just 3D objects. Justification: - It's always interesting to plot data before performing any analysis - Manipulating (rotating, zooming) can give hints on critical facts blind analysis would take ages to reveal - Up until now, the best solution to display 4D or more objects is to use KATIA, which really is a CAD (Computer Assisted Design) software. It seems the workarounds chosen by this program are the best available. But KATIA was initially made by Dassault aviation to design Combat aircrafts... So it's extremely heavy and doesn't run on my K6-2 (to say the least). So I guess it would be a good thing to bring the KATIA method to R because few poeple have had the opportunity to use it despite its quality Questions: - Has anyone heard of such a thing already existing? - Who thinks this is a bad idea and why? - What other extensions or interests would like to see in such a project? - Is anyone interested in actually working on this project with me? Concise specifications: - If you want to know what gave me this idea, www.blender.nl. It's a 3D suite that's very similar to the more renowned ones, but it's extremely light (1Mo download) and it's free. You can create objects and move them around very easily. - It would be written with opengl or mesagl, either in C or in Fortran. Vincent. -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Before starting to write this, you might want to look at http://www.research.att.com/areas/stat/xgobi/ There is also a contributed R package (in CRAN) which (it seems) creates an interface between R and Xgobi. What is apparently missing is an RPM file for for the latest version of Xgobi. (And I can't even find the rpm for the old version anymore.) I originally got it because I wanted to do "parallel coordinate plots" (a feature of Systat, which I gave up when I gave up Windows). But then I discovered how to do them using matplot.* I find these better for visualizing three (or four, or ...) dimensional data than 3D plots, once you get used to them. *If you have a matrix m1 with each column a variable and each row a subject (say), then matplot(t(m1),type="l") will do it. Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jbaron -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
E97249 at edu.essec.fr writes:> Hi all, > > I am considering writing a 3D visualisation package for R. > > Purposes: > - Visualise 3 dimension data > - Manipulate the data or series or any other object with the mouse as in any 3D software (3D Studio Max, Lightwave...) > - Eventually display more than just 3D objects. >....> Concise specifications: > - If you want to know what gave me this idea, www.blender.nl. It's a 3D suite that's very similar to the more renowned ones, but it's extremely light (1Mo download) and it's free. You can create objects and move them around very easily.Take a look at the VTK visualisation toolkit as well http://www.kitware.com/vtk.html This has (a) dazzling pictures (b) language bindings with Tcl, Java, and Python, which might make it quite easy to integrate with the existing language embedding tools. (Notice "might" in that sentence...) There's some mumblebumble about patented algorithms inside VTK, but it seems you can just avoid installing/using them... The Copyright/license claims to be OpenSource of some kind. -- O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard Blegdamsvej 3 c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics 2200 Cph. N (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918 ~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk) FAX: (+45) 35327907 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
We are working on such a toolkit. Orca. http://pyrite.cfas.washington.edu/orca the R interface is in development, but it uses Java3d/VisAD for displaying. best, -tony -- A.J. Rossini Rsrch. Asst. Prof. of Biostatistics BlindGlobe Networks (home/default) rossini at blindglobe.net UW Biostat/Center for AIDS Research rossini at u.washington.edu FHCRC/SCHARP/HIV Vaccine Trials Net rossini at scharp.org FHCRC: M/Tu: 206-667-7025 (fax=4812) | Voicemail is pretty sketchy CFAR: W/F: 206-731-3647 (fax=3694) | Email is far better than phone UW: Th/F: 206-543-1044 (fax=3286) | Change last 4 digits of phone for fax -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
On Sat, 06 Jan 2001 14:47:55 +0100, you wrote:>I am considering writing a 3D visualisation package for R. > >Purposes: >- Visualise 3 dimension data >- Manipulate the data or series or any other object with the mouse as in any 3D software (3D Studio Max, Lightwave...) >- Eventually display more than just 3D objects.I'm in the process of writing a package which is somewhat less ambitious than what you seem to be hoping for, but it might give you some ideas. Mine is based on OpenGL; I'm planning on versions for Windows and X. There are OpenGL implementations for the Mac and OS/2 as well, but I don't know of any on other platforms; I don't have access to anything but Windows and X for testing, so I'm not planning to support anything else. Right now I've got a Windows-only version with the underlying code written in Delphi; later I'll simplify and rewrite in C for Windows, then do the port to X. If anyone is interested in a binary-only preview of the Windows version, I could send you one. I'm not ready for the translation yet; once it's in C, it'll be much harder to modify and debug, so I want to make sure the feature set is stable first. I've got no plans for more than 3 dimensions, though it wouldn't be hard to add, if you could decide how you wanted to select the projections. Here's the current INDEX file: This package contains routines for 3D graphics based on the OpenGL graphics library. See the opengl help topic for details. lines3d Draw a joined set of line segments segments3d Draw a set of separate line segments points3d Draw a set of points triangles3d Draw a set of triangles quads3d Draw a set of quadrilaterals text3d Draw text in 3D persp3d Draw a surface plot of a matrix (like persp) hist3d Draw a histogram of two variables (like hist) open3d Open a new 3D window close3d Close a 3D window clear3d Clear a 3D window setcolors3d Set the colors of a 3D object setnormals3d Set the normal vectors of a 3D object setpoints3d Set the coordinates of a 3D object settext3d Set the text of a text3d object axis3d Draw a single 3D axis axes3d Draw a set of 3D axes box3d Draw a 3D box around the plot mtext3d Draw marginal text on the plot title3d Draw titles and axis labels on the plot scale3d Create a 4x4 matrix to rescale translate3d Create a 4x4 matrix to do a linear translation rotate3d Create a 4x4 matrix to rotate begingroup3d Start a new group, returning the handle of the old one endgroup3d End a group, inserting it into an old one colorlist A list of color names and hex codes colorname.to.hex Convert a color name to hex code hex.to.rgb Convert a color hex code to a packed rgb integer color.to.rgb Convert a color to a packed rgb integer rgb.to.hex Convert a packed rgb integer to hex rgb.to.color Convert a packed rgb integer to a color name ThreeDHandle The default window handle Duncan Murdoch -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._