Up: Creating Geometry for Movies

Creating Geometry using FrontStage:

FrontStage is a Geomview external module that allows you to generate parameterized surfaces, and gives you control of such features as surface coloration, domain style, appearance characteristics, etc. It also provides a means of attaching "sliders" to values and will regenerate the surface when a slider's calue is changed. Furthermore, StageManager can cooperate with FrontStage to animate a surface that is being deformed. This is done by using StageManager to move a silder through a series of values, taking a frame for each value.

Start up FrontStage by selecting it in the modules list of the Geomview main panel.
Enter the formula for the parametric surface. Youd can specify additional coordinates in the Axes command that is part of the template.
You specify a parametric surface by providing an expression for each of its coordinates. The expression can depend on the parameters (these are listed along with their ranges and number of subdivisions at the top of the function definition).
Select the Update button to see your surface. Do this any time you have changed the function or one of the attributes in the menus and want to see the results of the change.
Use the Domain to specify the domain style you want to use.
Use the Color menu to specify the color style you want to use. If you define your own color function in the script window (using the Color {function} command), you will need to update the object before this function will appear in the Color menu.
Use the Appearance menu to determine the way Geomview will draw your object.
You can provide sliders in the slider window by typing in lines of the form:
```
   {name min max [init] [div]}
```
where name is the name of the variable to be associated with the slider (this can be used in the function defition), min is the smallest value for the slider, max is the largest value for the slider, init (if present) is the initial value of the slider, and div (if present) is the number of positions to allow on the slider (you may want to restrict this if you only want to allow integer values, for example).
Once you have the object represented as you want it, you can select the Save GCL item of the File menu to save a copy of the data as a GCL file.
Alternatively, you can use the Save option from within Geomview itself to save the object as an OOGL file.

Up: Creating Geometry for Movies

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Comments to: webmaster@geom.umn.edu
Created: Jun 03 1996 --- Last modified: Jun 03 1996