GIG reference manual

Release notes on GIG 3.1

____________________________________________________________________________________

These release notes give an overview of the 3DGO and GIGVIZ 3.1 software release from GIG Technology. This document contains the following chapters:

1. Improvements and new features

2. Platform specific release notes

3. Fixed bugs

4. Known bugs and workarounds

• The installation scripts have been replaced with a new installation tool that works directly from CD-ROM.
• The CD-ROM contains everything necessary to install GIG3DGO 3.1 as well as the GIG-VIZ product. The product numbers issued through the password installation procedure determine which product (GIG 3.1 or GIG-VIZ) will be used.
• An option has been added to install only those files necessary for rendering.
• A set of demo images and MPEG movies has been added to the CD-ROM. These can be viewed directly from CD-ROM without the need to install them.
• The nodelock file with the GIG password should now appear in the /etc directory. On some platforms that used to be the /usr/netls directory.

1.2 TextureEditor

• The Graphical User Interface of the TextureEditor tool has been reworked to be even more userfriendly. Next to the Texture Construction features, many default options have been installed to make the choice and application of a standard material especially straightforward.
• Many standard materials have been added to the predefined texture sheets. These textures include frequently used materials such as metals, glass, plastics, bricks and maps for sticking labels on objects.
• Errors that sometimes occur when building procedural textures are handled more gracefully (such errors can arise when trying, for instance, to put an 'RGB procedural map' into a 'value' field instead of a 'color' field).

1.3 Flipbook

• The tifflip commandline tool has been given a Graphical User Interface, which can be started from the Tools menu.
• The Flipbook GUI has some additional functions for choosing and selecting projects, animations and image files, and for setting playback frame rate, single step mode etc.

1.4 Converters

• The Euclid IGES converter has been replaced with a new, more general IGES 5.2 converter. This converter can be called from the Channels menu as well as from the command line (as igs_conv). It recognizes the IGES entities most commonly used for describing trimmed Nurbs surfaces (next to many less commonly used entities).
• A plug-in converter has been added for SDRC's IDEAS package. This tool integrates with the IDEAS program and can write geometry in a format readable by GIG.
• A plug-in converter has been added for the Varimetrix CAD system. This tool integrates with the Varimetrix program and can write geometry in a format readable by GIG. There is no Varimetrix plug-in for HP or Sun platforms.
• A Get Intercol option has been added to the Channels menu to read files in GIG's proprietary file format - such as written by the SDRC and Varimetrix plug-in converter tools.
• The OMF option in the (image) Converter tool has been implemented for HP, Sun and SGI. It can convert a set of tiff or tga images to a file in OMF 2.0 format. To check these files, a simple OMF previewer has been added to the show button in the Converter tool.

1.5 Miscellaneous

• Get config and save config buttons have been added in the general menu to save and retrieve ones favorite settings for cameras, background color, render settings, page size, grids, etc.
• Two new options have been added in the edit poly menu to speed up the wireframe display of polygonal models. The display points switch will cause all polygon models to be displayed as a point set instead of a wireframe model. The poly display input box determines the fraction of polygons in a model that is actually displayed on screen. These options are intended to help in modeling large polygon models on systems with low-end graphics; they do not change the model and have no influence on the raytraced images.
• Raysketch is now also possible in parametric raytrace mode.
• In Particles an option blend particles has been added. If this option is switched on, the particles will be rendered as if they were Sculpt objects, i.e. they blend together. Also, an option called self collision has been implemented. This causes particles of the same particle system to collide with eachother if the particle system is part of the current collision tag.
• The attributes menu now has the following new buttons:
  - invert to invert attribute properties without typing a formula
  - show filemap to show the available filemaps
  - edit map to enter the edit map menu
  This last menu allows for editing attribute properties which are maps. The edit map menu allows for transforming and projecting maps and will show transformation properties of maps like in the transform menu.
• Several buttons in the ProjectManager tool have been changed to reflect the file formats necessary for the new converter tools.
• Shortcut 'S' now resets subwindow settings.
• The RenderManager tool is currently being redesigned and will not be part of the 3.1 release.

2. Platform specific release notes

2.1 SGI

• This release will run on IRIX 5.2 and 5.3.
• SGI machines with an R8000 CPU (i.e. IRIX 6.0 or higher) are not yet supported.
• The default executable uses the GL libraries. An 'X' only implementation is also supported.
• The Parallel Raytracer will use a maximum of 16 CPU's.
• The new Varimetrix converter has been implemented for SGI only.

2.2 HP

• This release will run on HP-UX 9.0.5 and up.
• The HP executable uses the PEX libraries. An 'X' only implementation is also supported.
• The 3.1 release for HP currently does not support flat-shading.
• ColorRecovery (a hard-/software combination by HP that allows 8 bit screens to display 24 bit images with minimal loss of image quality) is now supported.
• On 8 bit display systems where X color resource is very limited, the GIG interface can be limited to use as few as two colors (black and white). In these cases, it is usually enough to restrict the color use of the window manager. To reduce the amount of colors used by the HP VUE window manager, select the Color form in the Style Manager tool, select the Color Use form, and choose either "Low Color" or "Black and White". If you now start a new session the GIG interface should have enough colors.
  If, for some reason, SB_X_SHARED_CMAP has been set, then most of the available colors will be assigned to Starbase applications. Removing this environment variable should provide GIG with enough colors.
• Some of the older tools have not been ported to HP. This includes the tools from Kinetic FX (as in get_lifeforms), and the CMYK converter. Also, the 'w' keyboard shortcut (to make screendumps) will not work on HP.
• HP-UX does not yet support NxM type multithreading. Because NxM type multithreading is necessary to distribute a rendering task over more than one processor, this effectively means the Parallel Raytracer can run on one processor only.
• Installing GIG from CD-ROM requires a slightly different procedure, which involves linking 'HP CD-ROM type' files names to more common file names. Because of the way HP CD-ROM drives handle filenames, the GIG installation script makes a symbolic link for every file copied from the CD-ROM. Normally these symbolic links take 1K each on your harddisk. To use less space and have speedier link resolves, you can tell the OS to make smaller links. To do this: Start SAM (the system administrators tool), choose 'Kernel Configuration', choose 'Configurable Parameters', choose the 'create-fastlinks' option, choose the 'Modify Parameters' entry in the 'Actions' menu, set the value to "1" and press the OK button. Then, choose the 'Create a new Kernel' entry in the 'Actions' menu: this will reboot the system, after which new symbolic links are leaner and meaner. All of this should be done before installing GIG, because it will not affect existing links, only new ones.
• Sometimes, when working within the Organic or Particles tools, the camera windows dissapear whenever you do e.g.get solid tag. In this case: 1) Select the 'Style Manager' (with the painter stuff) from the bottom menu, 2) Select 'Window' from the Style Manager, 3) Turn 'Raise Window With Focus' off, 4) Keep the right mouse button pressed in an empty region of the screen and select 'Restart WorkSpace Manager' to apply the changes. (These are HP window manager commands, not GIG commands.)
• Machines with HP-UX 10.01 are sometimes missing a library file that should have been installed by default. If startgig aborts with the error message 'shared library /opt/graphics/common/libs/libdl.1 is missing' then install from the "Core OS, HP-UX 10.x, 700 series" CD, in the product "HP-UX MediaKit", in the subproduct " GraphicsCommon.Runtime" the fileset "SBDL-SHLIBS" (Display List Shared Libraries).
• HP users who want to add ELECTOGIG to their personal toolbox should choose the 'Create Action' in the PersonalToolbox, choose window type 'auto close' and enter "csh -c startgig" for the command.
• ELECTOGIG causes all X and PEX windows with the name 'gig' to be displayed without borders and menu bars. This means that the HP file-manager tool, when started from a directory with the name 'gig' (as is the name of the home directory for default installations) becomes quite unwieldy. To avoid this, use a non-default gig installation (i.e. as gighome or gig31).
• On HP, alt + right mouse button minimizes the current window, while alt + spacebar pops up the window nenu. On most other machines the window menu is popped up with alt + right mouse button.

2.3 Sun

• This release will run on Solaris 2.4 (SunOS 5.4) and up.
• On UltraSparc workstations, an executable will be installed that has been optimized for the Ultra. Users are advised to run GIG under the OpenWindows window manager. The CDE (Common Desktop Environment) window manager on Sun Ultra has been known to cause problems; for example, the color sheets of the GIG TextureEditor tool will appear in black and white. These problems are not specifically related to GIG products.
• The default executable uses the PEX libraries. An 'X' only implementation is also supported.
• The 3.1 release for Sun currently does not support flat-shading.
• The Parallel Raytracer will use a maximum of 16 CPU's.
• Some of the older tools have not been ported to Sun. This includes the tools from Kinetic FX (as in get_lifeforms), and the CMYK converter. Also, the 'w' keyboard shortcut (to make screendumps) will not work on Sun.
• Sometimes, when working within the Organic or Particles tools, the camera windows dissapear whenever you do e.g.get solid tag. In this case: 1) Select the 'Style Manager' (with the painter stuff) from the bottom menu, 2) Select 'Window' from the Style Manager, 3) Turn 'Raise Window With Focus' off, 4) Keep the right mouse button pressed in an empty region of the screen and select 'Restart WorkSpace Manager' to apply the changes. (These are Sun CDE window manager commands, not GIG commands. If your Sun has an OpenWindows window manager, this note does not concern you.)
• On UltraSparc workstations, the camera windows may have a very high gamma value.This can be adjusted by setting an environment variable. The variable should get a value between 0 and 1, where the default value equals to 0.5. So to lower the gamma value of the camera windows (make them look darker) you could give the command:

   setenv GIG_GAMMA_FACTOR 0.25
   

  Followed by the command startgig. If you want to set the variable on the same value everytime you start gig, you can put this command in your ~/.cshrc file.

3. Fixed bugs

• 1538: Attributes, Edit-map: map-size does not reset when selecting a new object.
• 1537: In render-options on HP workstations: 'in all' text is visible.
• 1535: Camera COI, the camera always has the local axis of an object as COI.
• 1528: TextureEditor: HSV input boxes do not accept parameter names.
• 1524: GIG out of swap/ cannot fork on Indies with 32 MB.
• 1511: Nurbs demo version does not say it is only a demo version.
• 1506: Nurbs, get eps: does not work on HP workstations.
• 1502: TextureEditor: rendering hangs after replacing material of object in an animation.
• 1501: GIGVIZ: press keyboard shortcut 'a' results in Intercol error.
• 1500: Organic Demo: error when rendering the sample file 'tear-drop'.
• 1498: Texture-editor: image-maps whose name end with a number are not usable (SGI/HP).
• 1490: Converter: 'show' sometimes repeats after clicking the image.
• 1486: TextureEditor: grab texture from animation works only 1st time. (SGI/HP).
• 1479: Raytracer: bad pixels in spline-skin (SGI/HP).
• 1477: Solid-construct, particles, cone: old format causes crash.
• 1465: The hourglass icon does not appear everywhere during Particles, convert.
• 1461: TextureEditor: clean-up map removes all variables.
• 1459: TextureEditor: crash after using 'edit-map' and renderwindow (HP & SGI).
• 1457: TextureEditor: crash in 2d_color_brick (HP).
• 1456: TextureEditor: add parameter problem (HP).
• 1452: Demo project, tube-particles has no camera-settings.
• 1447: Get igs: Nurbs surfaces with open knot-vectors are not handled correctly.
• 1444: Attributes, wrong input in edit-map crashes GIG (SGI).
• 1437: Converter: pressing 'delete' after choosing a directory gives no error message.
• 1435: Converter: warning texts do not fit pop-up windows (HP & SGI).
• 1434: Converter: pop-up windows not visible (Sun/Axil).
• 1430: Window borders appear around GIG (Sun/Axil).
• 1427: MPEG player stops on Sun with 'broken pipe' error message.
• 1426: Freeforms: ff grids and show x y z don't work.
• 1424: HTML pages need update.
• 1423: Tools: flipbook & flowmotion do not work.
• 1419: Organic: 'branches' and 'connect solid' show wrong cursor.
• 1407: Installation: pressing the quit button generates TCL error (HP).
• 1405: Installation: missing picture 'fut_scen.tif'.
• 1404: Installation: unknown field in tiff-images.
• 1403: Corrupt files in demo_prj/3DGO.
• 1397: OBE images feature funky scrolling.
• 1395: Installation with icon skips install prompt.
• 1393: Installation: update forgets to install the gig binary.
• 1392: Installation: after update the 'Cancel' button should change to 'Exit'.
• 1387: TextureEditor: selecting 'files' in texture preview hangs.
• 1385: Tools: tifmerge does not work on HP.
• 1384: Text "ANICAM" hits text "(C) 1996 GIG" (HP).
• 1379: TextureEditor: apply a texture to multiple tags at once.
• 1376: Bug on selecting a main menu button after selecting 'safe-area' in camera menu.
• 1374: Magnify (in camera menu) messes up the safe-area line.
• 1369: Gigbatch rendering crashes with imported Varimetrix file.
• 1367: TextureEditor, menu button, save as option: confirm button does nothing.
• 1366: TextureEditor: shows wrong texture after error.
• 1364: TextureEditor: Map labels do not fit their frame.
• 1357: Delete (& end) keyboard buttons does not work (HP).
• 1354: TextureEditor: loss of cursor.
• 1352: Converter: no 'No write access' message.
• 1351: Converter: changing directory when converting say 20 files causes mess.
• 1349: Online Help: toolsMenu/mapsMenu.html file missing.
• 1348: DXF out routine in Channels menu should mention it wants evaluated models.
• 1347: Reset all button does not work on HP.
• 1340: TextureEditor: explanation window flashes.
• 1339: TextureEditor: subtitles in explanation on HP are hardly visible.
• 1332: Pro/E converter ignores the answer given to 'Does the surface form a Solid?'.
• 1331: HP standalone installation does not work.
• 1330: HP 9000/800 series are not recognized by any scripts using 'uname -m'.
• 1327: Reset all doesn't reset field render & motion blur settings.
• 1326: Crash in targa routine.
• 1311: RaySketch mode throws away one line of the image.
• 1302: Local spotlights are not rendered in alternating fields.
• 1278: Install script crashes after becoming root with su root instead of su - root.
• 1276: Problems with animated lights on HP.
• 1275: Freeform Patch does not render correctly after adding more control points.
• 1274: RaySketched animations crash after some 20 frames on HP.
• 1267: Problems with animated local spotlights.
• 1262: Local hash adress stack overflow during autotag on a eps imported file.
• 1258: TextureEditor's 'fix event' is broken.
• 1257: TextureEditor crashes when adding a bumpmap.
• 1256: TextureEditor's mapsequence bug.
• 1254: HP's .login file does not recognize HP machines.
• 1251: Key in back op MP machines not correct.
• 1248: Tutordemo, still 'glass' has render errors.
• 1241: Problems with animated spotlights on HP.
• 1231: Multi-processor rendering on a 4-processor Sun is as fast as one-processor rendering.
• 1226: Certain Nurbs surfaces crash when rendered with an optimized executable.
• 1222: Sun: overlay planes do not show anything.
• 1221: RaySketch starts in wrong window.
• 1217: Particles, the Transparent Fire tutorial crashes.
• 1215: Glass attribute on polygons causes crash.
• 1184: Intercol files cannot be read with a standard customer password.
• 1112: General mapparameter/sequence bug.
• 1082: Radius animation in gig_anibatch's light function does not work correctly.

3.2 Tools

• gig_conv can now handle tiff input for normal and strip-based tiff (not yet tiled tiff - use tiff2tga here).
• igs_conv can now handle IGES 5.2 entities.
• get_dxf works for Viewpoint models.
• get_obj works for Viewpoint models.
• get_stl works for .stl files.

4. Known bugs and workarounds

• 1520: TextureEditor on HP in some cases hangs when slider is set to zero.
  On HP machines, certain textures may cause a hang of the program when one of their parameters is exactly zero. While precautions have been taken to prevent this by setting the slider limits slightly above zero, it is still possible to type in exactly zero. Therefore, it is safer on HP machines to use the sliders instead of typing in values for parameters.
  
• 1504: Nurbs models created through 'get eps' cannot be modified.
  Nurbs models that have been created through the use of the get eps button in the NurbsModeler can causes a crash if their control points are manipulated. It is suggested to use the get eps channel from the Channels Menu instead.
  
• 1316: Files imported with get intercol and combined with group can crash when rendered.
  Workaround: use union to combine imported models.
  
• 1229: GIG can crash when trying to load a font with a file name extension.
  Workaround: rename the fonts to filenames without extensions.
  

Sometimes during the use of the TextureEditor, the cursor can disappear. Press < Escape > to get it back.

4.3 Lack of swap space on SGI workstations (bug 1551)

Because of a peculiarity of the SGI operating system, virtual swap space is not cleaned up from time to time. This can result in out of swap space or cannot fork child process error messages. Especially the configuration of swap space on SGI Indy workstations with 32 MB internal memory is known to cause problems. (At least 100 MB swap space is recommended to run 3DGO or GIGVIZ.)

If out of swap space or cannot fork child process error messages appear on an SGI workstation, the first thing to do is to check whether virtual swap is switched on. As root, type:

chkconfig

chkconfig vswap on
/etc/init.d/swap start

cd /
mkdir /swap
/usr/sbin/mkfile 1m /swap/swap1

/sbin/swap -a -p 5 -v 204800 swap1

/swap/swap1 swap swap  pri=5,vlength=204800 0 0

The evaluation of GIG models to polygons is known to cause problems, especially when applied to complex freeform models (rotations, extrusions) in combination with boolean operations. A new facetter (evaluation tool) is currently being developed.

4.5 Color management with 8 bit graphics

Color management on systems with 8 bits graphics has been improved. The interface in tools such as Organic and Particles will not turn into black & white anymore. However, one or two buttons might get an unexpected color under certain circumstances.
There is one exception: when switching between Organic and Particles directly, the interface will turn into black & white only. The obvious workaround in this case is: first go back to GIG, and then select the tool of choice from the tools menu.

4.6 Font file names on HP

On HP workstations it is possible that the default installation of GIG can not read the font files (as necessary for, e.g. get eps). The problem is caused by the distinction between the fontname and the fontfilename.

The workaround: rename the Postscript fonts on HP systems. This can be done in the following way:

• Become superuser.
• Go to the fonts directory

  /usr/lib/X11/fonts/type1.st/typefaces

• Execute:

  grep FontName *.pfa

  You should get a list like:

  UTBI____.pfa:/FontName /Utopia-BoldItalic def
  UTB_____.pfa:/FontName /Utopia-Bold def
  UTI_____.pfa:/FontName /Utopia-Italic def
  UTRG____.pfa:/FontName /Utopia-Regular def
  

• Now, link the fontfiles to the proper fontfilenames like this:

  ln -s UTBI____.pfa Utopia-BoldItalic.pfa
  etc.