VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 26 2007 - 15:06:53 CDT

Hi,
  This is possible too, but adding new fonts also represents a fair amount
of work. For now, I'd prefer to complete the work that I've started and
see if that ameliorates the problem for most people, and we can go from there
if there's still a strong need for a better solution for text rendering in
the external renderers. I'm going to be out of the office for two weeks,
but I hope to get back to this when I return.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Sat, Jun 23, 2007 at 01:06:55PM +0200, Petrica GASCA wrote:
> 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
> > 

-- 
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