Zhu3D 3.1.8

[Heinz van Saanen]

Name: Zhu3D
Version: 3.1.8
Type: KDE 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. The costly isosurface tessellation
automatically supports multicore CPU's.

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 3.1.8

- Syntax errors in function editor and user-item
spreadsheet are highlighted red now
- Substantial code shrink/simplification
measurements throughout parsers, iso-tessellation,
OpenGL, spreadsheet and solver parts. This reduces
memory footprint and executable size
- Added security checks for solver
- Raised minimum requirements to >= Qt 4.2
- Updated/shrinked language files
- Polishing examples

What was new in 3.1.6

- Optimized Gui-response for viewer redraws after
a benchmark run
- Added comfort function "Reset lights only"
- Enabled textures for isosurfaces now. Note that
texture mapping as a matter of principal never can
be as perfect as in the other modes. Nevertheless
interesting effects are possible
- Modifications in the Warp-bytecode optimizer.
This decreases the memory footprint and Intel ICC
compiles without warnings now
- Added security check when an "unsane" number of
user defined functions is added
- Code clean ups/simplifications in the texture
module
- The cross position showed correct absolute
values, but suppressed negative signs. Fixed
- Enabled/disabled flags where not set correctly,
when a file with multipe textures was loaded.
Fixed
- When in point mode, iso tessellation may start
an unneccessary and empty thread under some
circumstances. Eliminated
- Updated docs and ui-files. Special thanks again
to Yanqing and Henri Girard for maintaining
Chinese translations
- Some optical fine tuning for logo, Gui, examples
...