3D animations in METAPOST (version 1.0, superseded) =================================================== This directory contains a set of files allowing the creation of animations in metapost, and especially animations of 3-dimensional objects, such as polyhedra. The files contained in this distribution are: Changes History of the macros inputs: 3d.mp 3D macros poly.mp Polyhedra definitions animpoly.mp Example of animation driver contrib Contributions (currently only by Denis Barbier) doc Subdirectory containing the formatted metapost files as well as the code for the figures It uses Ulrik Vieth's formatting macros for mft. There is also a paper describing how an animation can be created. examples Some animations produced with the 3d package (other examples are in the contrib directory) tugboat Files used for the production of the TUGboat paper. (Courtesy of Mimi Burbank.) README This file README.bin Explains where to find the binaries. HOW TO CREATE AN ANIMATION -------------------------- Details are given to produce the standard animation under UNIX, with the binaries listed in README.bin. For other architectures, you may have to adapt the write_script macro in the 3d.mp file. 1) create a directory and copy the three .mp files from the inputs directory to it. 2) apply metapost to animpoly.mp ; this will create 100 files named animpoly.101, animpoly.102, ..., animpoly.200. It will also have created a script file named create_animation.sh 3) copy the gifmerge utility (as well as programs such as pnmcut,...) in this directory or let it be reachable through PATH. 4) apply sh to create_animation.sh; this will create the animation; first the metapost outputs are converted to gif, then they are collated with gifmerge. 5) the result is animpoly.gif which is a GIF89A animation file; it can be viewed under netscape or simply with a program like xanim. Denis Roegel (roegel@loria.fr) 8 April 1998 ============================================================================ Binaries required by the 3D package ----------------------------------- As it is, the generation of animated gifs requires the following programs: awk gs (ghostscript) pnmcut ppmquant ppmtogif gifmerge These executables are not part of that distribution. The first two are widely available on UNIX. The three p* programs are part of the NETPBM toolkit. You can find this toolkit on the web through any search tool. And gifmerge can be found at http://www.iis.ee.ethz.ch/~kiwi/GIFMerge. I have no idea how to port all this on other architectures, but I assume there are similar tools for PCs or Macs. I'd be interested to get feedback and details so that i can include instructions in future releases of my package. Denis Roegel, 8 April 1998