[Kde-announce-apps] Zhu3D 2.9.4

[Heinz van Saanen]

Name: Zhu3D
Version: 2.9.4
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 equation
systems 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.

Besides the built in functions and constants you
can define your own ones. These user defined
functions can have an arbitrary amount of
parameters, can be nested or even be recursive.
For special purposes the function 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/Vista
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 and support for OpenGL
>=1.2. The latter can be a software implementation
like Mesa. The qmake easily can be taylored for
special needs, what supports packagers.

HW-REQUIREMENTS:

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.
A complete Windows version is available - special
thanks to Victor Fernandez, who is hosting this!


Have fun, Heinz van Saanen

Changelog:
 What is new in 2.9.4

- Replaced solver parser with an adapted version
of the Warp parser. Solving stays precise, but
transparently handles all user defined functions
too now instead of just the built in ones
- Added examples
- Small supplements in the html-docs
- Small GUI-changes for
consistence/intelligibility
- Updated Chinese and French html-helpfiles.
Special thanks again to Yanqing and Henri Girard
for maintaining these translations

What was 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. User defined 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

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