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<TITLE>RE: [Chimera-users] graphics performance: amira v. chimera</TITLE>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>What's wrong with just using chimera? If it's just that it's too<BR>
slow, then please file a bug report and provide a sample data file.<BR>
<BR>
>> First of all I think Chimera is a great package and I highly recommend it, regularly.<BR>
>> It is one of the very few softwares that actually adheres to specifications correctly (eg VRML).<BR>
>> Not complaining about the speed, it is more than adequate for animation.<BR>
>> Appreciate the tradeoff on speed & quality, not clear on how you are doing it in opengl.<BR>
>> no bugs to report.<BR>
<BR>
>> after years of seeing most viz packages fail the same way on the opengl,<BR>
>> I am impressed that that you got it the best I have seen, short of ray tracing.<BR>
>> just surprised the commercial packages (at least 5 come to mind) that can't keep up.<BR>
<BR>
>> as for using chimera exclusively, I have to integrate software<BR>
>> (3dviz, photoshop, FCP NLE) depending on what users give me to start with.<BR>
>> be nice just to use only one...<BR>
>> I just try to figure out who is the best at what they are doing, and get data in and out of it.<BR>
<BR>
>> thanks, Matt<BR>
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<BR>
Typical transparency implementations require that the graphics primitives<BR>
be drawn in a back-to-front order. It sounds like amira is just drawning<BR>
the primitives in the order in which they are given in the vrml file, so<BR>
the transparency effect is haphazard. You would probably get better<BR>
results from a dedicated vrml viewer, like Octaga, BS Contact, Flux,<BR>
FreeWrl, etc. Chimera uses an alternate, 2-pass, transparency technique<BR>
that works well, but is not perfect (except within surfaces, where chimera<BR>
does depth-sort the triangles).<BR>
<BR>
Greg Couch<BR>
UCSF Computer Graphics Lab<BR>
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