LabVIEW 3D Picture Control Evaluation Software Discussion

[rolfk]

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@rakahmed wrote:
Thanks, Eriq for your informative reply. If I can make Labview to read the 3D file in any format, can I do the later part, ie., have 2D rendered image from the file in any required orientation/projection from it ? It would be nice if you please refer to any documentation as well. Thanks again for your nice cooperation.

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I think Eric was refering to the possibility of integrating 3DMax as ActiveX control into a LabVIEW front panel. That assumes that 3DMax does support ActiveX control but if it does it would be the least complicated solution (albeit certainly not trivial).

LabVIEW is not a 3D renedering application and has only limited 3D capabilities. If you have a WGL file you can usually read it in with the 3D Toolkit and even anymate it to some extend but that is about it. Of course you could convert your 3DMax file into a WGL file and go from there. But 3D rendering is a very complicated business and so are the different file formats. Most 3D file fromat converters I have seen are not able to convert more complex scenes reasonably well, but I haven't seen the really expensive ones so they might exist.

All in all LabVIEW is not a 3D rendering package and most probably never will be! It has some limited functionality that allows you to load in certain 3D formats and display them but not much more. If you want full featured 3D rendering capabilities and can't go the ActiveX route I'm afraid you won't be very happy with the solution you can come up with unless you intend to really write a comprehensive LabVIEW VI library for generic 3D rendering. But that would be a major project in itself and then several other envrionments would be easier to work in than LabVIEW.

Rolf Kalbermatter

[rakahmed]

Thanks, Rolf for clarifying the things. Now I probably understand the situation.

Regards
Rakib

[Nandha]

rolfk wrote:

I think Eric was refering to the possibility of integrating 3DMax as ActiveX control into a LabVIEW front panel. That assumes that 3DMax does support ActiveX control but if it does it would be the least complicated solution (albeit certainly not trivial).

LabVIEW is not a 3D renedering application and has only limited 3D capabilities. If you have a WGL file you can usually read it in with the 3D Toolkit and even anymate it to some extend but that is about it. Of course you could convert your 3DMax file into a WGL file and go from there. But 3D rendering is a very complicated business and so are the different file formats. Most 3D file fromat converters I have seen are not able to convert more complex scenes reasonably well, but I haven't seen the really expensive ones so they might exist.

All in all LabVIEW is not a 3D rendering package and most probably never will be! It has some limited functionality that allows you to load in certain 3D formats and display them but not much more. If you want full featured 3D rendering capabilities and can't go the ActiveX route I'm afraid you won't be very happy with the solution you can come up with unless you intend to really write a comprehensive LabVIEW VI library for generic 3D rendering. But that would be a major project in itself and then several other envrionments would be easier to work in than LabVIEW.

Rolf Kalbermatter

I don't mean to barge into this conversation, but i think what rakahmed meant is not highly comlex 3D rendering feature in labview just like in software like 3D studio Max. Instead, it is just an already simple rendered 3d object that labview already provide, which we can easily get from the "render scene" into "picture control"  and capture that particular configuration of 3D display into the 2D image, Actually i myself would like to know how Labview can capture picture from 3D picture control into 2D image (bitmaps).

I hope this can clarify the problem.

Thanks

[rolfk]

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@Nandha wrote:

I don't mean to barge into this conversation, but i think what rakahmed meant is not highly comlex 3D rendering feature in labview just like in software like 3D studio Max. Instead, it is just an already simple rendered 3d object that labview already provide, which we can easily get from the "render scene" into "picture control"  and capture that particular configuration of 3D display into the 2D image, Actually i myself would like to know how Labview can capture picture from 3D picture control into 2D image (bitmaps).

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If that is really all there is to the problem it would be fairly simple. Display whatever scene it is you want and then invoke the Get Image method for the Picture Control. This will give you a LabVIEW cluster with all the data to construct a bitmap from with the various image format functions.

Still it won't allow you to import *.3ds files directly.

Rolf Kalbermatter

Message Edited by rolfk on 05-01-2008 11:36 AM

[travispape]

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shawn wrote:
Ooops- after receiving some help, I was able to discover something about the 3D Picture Control.  When using a Camera Controler with
LabVIEW 7.1\vi.lib\addons\picture3d\CameraManager\controller\Create Camera Controller.vi,
A VI is dynamically called.  This means any built application needs to include the dynamically called VI:
LabVIEW 7.1\vi.lib\addons\picture3d\CameraManager\controller\CatchPicCtrlEvents.vi

Once I added this VI to my build spec (as a dynamic VI), the built application works fine.

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I'm having similar trouble with LabVIEW 8.5.1 trying to build a stand-alone app that uses a 3D Picture Control.  Everything works fine in the development system. 

When I build an app the image shows up, but I can't move the camera using the mouse.  I tried including CatchPicCtrlEvents.vi as a dynamic VI, but that didn't fix the problem.  Is there something else I need to include in the build?  My searching in LabVIEW help and the forums is letting me down on this one. 

Thanks,

Travis

[kavonjoon]

hi all,

I am using version 8.5, and I am wondering if there is a way to plot a series of points in the 3d picture control

I have x,y,z vectors that represent a series of points and I have plotted them with the 3d curve graph. I also have a sphere that i plotted as an object with the 3d picture control. What i need is to be able to display both in the same place. Is there anyway to do this?

[Nandha]

Sorry man, i don't think there is a way to plot a vertex into the 3d picture control,

But let me give you a suggestion, you could make a very small sphere and put it as dots, and with a proper algorithm you could generate series of sphere by just giving inputs as coordinate, you just have to work more for this one.

Hope it helps.

[kavonjoon]

so i did what you said I displayed all the points i needed as small 3d spheres. The problem is that i have multiple thousands of points to plot, so the program gets really slow and interacting with the 3d picture display is very laggy. Is there anyway around this, or does anyone know a better way to accomplish what i want? thanks.

[Ben]

I have not touched the 3d picture since before it was an official release.

But back then I drew lines by creating a series of very thin cylinders where the axis was co-linear with the line and the radius of the cylinder was line width.

You can easily do both lines and shperes in the 3d graph. Is there apecific reason you need the 3d picture?

Ben

[Nandha]

So, lets get back to the initial problem here.

You want to draw 3d sphere with lots of dots, in that case, i don't personally think that you should use 3d picture control. It is true that when you draw lots of object in labview 3d picture control, the computer gets slow.

So, instead of using 3d picture control, why dont you use 3d plot instead, it is pretty fast. You can also make a sphere in 3d plots, by means of mesh. But incase you want to add a texture on the sphere, i really don't know if you can do it in 3d plot. 3D capability in labview is not that great, but easy to use. So if that doesn't work, i would suggest you to write the program usign OpenGL API in C++.