[Kde-announce-apps] Zhu3D 2.9.2

[Heinz van Saanen]

Name: Zhu3D
Version: 2.9.2
Type: Scientific
Depend: Qt 4.x
License: GPL
More Info:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=43071

Description:
 With Zhu3D you interactively can view and animate
functions, isosurfaces and a further independent
parametric system. Numerical solutions of an
equation system can be found with a precise and
reliable adaptive random search. The OpenGL-viewer
supports zooming, scaling, rotating and
translating as well as filed lightning or surface
properties. Special effects are transparency,
textures, fog and motion blur.

Beside the built in functions and constants you
can define your own ones. User defined functions
can have an arbitrary amount of parameters, can be
nested or even be recursive. The parsers support
if-conditions and boolean operators.

You have up to eight independent lights or
spotlights, background settings, miscellaneous
wire-modes or global illumination models. Pictures
are rendered as PNG, JPG, PDF or PostScript and
can be of arbitrary size. For textures Zhu3D
recognizes nine common formats. Isosurfaces can be
visualized with different volume-based algorithms.

Zhu3D runs under Linux/Unix, Windows 98-XP and Mac
OS X and is localized for English, German,
Spanish, French and Chinese. It supports different
CPU's as well as different API's like KDE, Motiv,
Gnome or Windows. All settings can be changed
dynamically at runtime. The application comes with
extended help files and a lot of examples.

COMPILING:

All you need is Qt 4.1 or later and support for
OpenGL 1.2, what can be a software implementation
like Mesa. The qmake easily can be taylored for
special needs, what supports packagers.

HARDWARE:

For basic viewings even an old and slow PC without
hardware accelerated OpenGL is sufficient.
However, enabling goddies like animation, big
textures and especially motion blur is a challenge
for every GPU out there. On the other hand
isosurfaces with dense meshes need a lot of
CPU-power.

VERSIONS:

Whatever ends with an odd number, is considered as
"pre". Those versions are not intended to be
unfinished or buggy, but my testing capabilities
are limited to my own HW/SW-configurations. So
especially packagers may wait for an even number.
This happens after a significant amount of
downloads and no major problems reported. A
complete Windows version is available - special
thanks to Victor Fernandez, who is hosting this!

WINDOWS VISTA:

As probably most of you, I did not install the
marvellous Vista. Anyhow I would be interested, if
Zhu3D works with it as it should. A newer Windows
version is online now. If you can test it, please
give me a short e-mail notice.


Have fun, Heinz van Saanen

Changelog:
 What is new in 2.9.2

- Added a spreadsheet for user defined items. So
you can freely define your own constants and
functions as you need it. E.g you can formulate
Einsteins law as the function
energy(mass)=mass*c^2 now. Functions can have an
arbitrary amount of parameters and can be nested
with other functions or constants. As things can
get quite complex now, it is highly recommended to
look at the new examples
- Enabled if-conditions, boolean expressions and
recursions for the OpenGL parsers and user defined
items
- Added examples for simple and complex user
defined items
- Added examples for if-conditions and boolean
operators
- Added examples for recursions
- Added menu "File/New" for a comfortable default
starting point
- Small changes in menu entries/GUI to reflect
real meanings better
- Added/updated Chinese and French html-helpfiles.
Special thanks again to Yanqing and Henri Girard
for maintaining these translations
- Updated Spanish GUI/html. Special thanks again
to Victor Fernandez for maintaining this
translation
- Some code clean-ups/restructuring/size reduction
- Adaptions in the Warp-parser for enhanced
"Zhu3D-compatibility"
- Replaced the "Open" icon for a consistent
KDE-like look and feel
- The French html was ugly when shown with
internal browser. Fixed
- Some polishing/corrections in the docs and the
examples

What was new in 2.9.0

- Replaced recursive OpenGL-parser with the
bytecode-version from Warp. With some additional
tuning the average speed gain is between
300%-500%. Especially important for costly
isosurfaces on slower machines
- Raised upper limit for isosurface grid
- The parser syntax changed slightly. E.g:
2X*SIN(XY) must be written as 2*x*sin(x*y) now
- To stay compatible added all missing functions
to the Warp-parser and introduced the $ sign for
constants there
- New parser functions are: floor(), ceil(),
cot(), csc(), sec()
- Added new functions to recursive parser, which
is still in use for solving due to it's precision
- In parameter mode the Z-grid buttons
consequently are disabled now
- Some code shrink measurements
- Completely reworked examples for new syntax
- Loading a zhu-file always starts with a blank
viewer window now. This avoids worrying
intermixing of old/new views during build up
- Small changes in menu entries/GUI to reflect
real meanings better
- Improvements/updates for Chinese and French
GUI-translation. Special thanks again to Yanqing
and Henri Girard for maintaining this translations
- Enabled the nicer Zhu3D-logo in GUI/menu entries
too now
- The combobox under "Settings/General/Language"
did not retranslate it's own language entries
immediately. Fixed
- Clean ups in ./src for readability and
unifications

NOTE: The packages below may be behind the
original src.tar.gz of course.