VMD-L Mailing List

From: Petrica GASCA (petricag_at_gmail.com)
Date: Sat Jun 23 2007 - 06:06:55 CDT

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
>