Is there any value in using 3D to visualise a Family Tree?
Ian
I have recently been experimenting with applying standard 3D
visualisation to give a different perspective in viewing a Family
Tree.
I would like to share the progress thus far, and also to ask for any
opinions as to whether or not people see any merit in this approach.
In brief, the objective is to use three dimensions rather than two in
order to be able to provide a different perspective on a family's
wider relationships.
Some of the benefits seem to be that you can readily visualise lateral
relationships at the same time as ancestors and descendants. Also,
more complex relationships such as multiple marriages are clearly
shown.
A major indirect benefit is that because we are laying individuals out
on a time-line - any anomolies in dates (whether typing errors or
otherwise) do stand out and can be readily identified and corrected.
In our case these would almost certainly have gone un-noticed for some
time.
On the downside, it takes a little practice to be able to move through
the tree in 3 dimensions (especially for those of us not brought up
with games consoles!) and large trees do require a relatively modern
PC to be able to handle large numbers of objects in the 3D world.
In terms of technology, there is an application (currently coded in
VB) to parse the Gedcom file and produce a standard x3d (xml based)
file. X3D is a mature standard for representing 3D worlds, and has
several freely available viewers that can be used to see the tree.
To give you a better idea I have a temporary website with more detail
at http://tree3d.webng.com
I look forward to reading any thoughts,
Ian
Dallan Quass
> To give you a better idea I have a temporary website with
> more detail at http://tree3d.webng.com
>
> I look forward to reading any thoughts,
This is very nice! You may also want to check out the following for another
approach. Can't say that I like it better than yours, but it's worth
looking at.
http://www.metaportaldermedienpolemik.net/blog/Blog/2007-01-16/rhnav%20-%20r
hizome%20navigation%20used%20to%20create%20genealogy%20motion%20graphics
--dallan
http://www.werelate.org/wiki/User:Dallan
Ian
> This is very nice! You may also want to check out the following for another
> approach. Can't say that I like it better than yours, but it's worth
> looking at.
>
> hizome%20navigation%20used%20to%20create%20genealogy%20motion%20graphics
Thanks for the suggestion - I see that they are using a force-based
algorithm which seems similar to the approach I decided to adopt when
laying out the individuals. There is also another project I am aware
of - @rbre ( http://arbre.km2.net/ ) - that is using 3D to represent
data slightly differently.
The primary challenge, as I see it, is to make best use of the third
dimension to help make complex family tree networks easier to
comprehend and properly appreciate. There is a way to go yet, and I
wouldn't claim that the examples I have shown at the moment are much
more than a first step on this journey.
Nevertheless, I can clearly see some obvious next step improvements
in order to make the 3D representation easier to navigate and digest,
so I hope that with a few iterations, we can evolve the idea of a 3D
representation into something that adds some positive value in the not
too distant future.
- Ian
Dallan Quass
gratitude from LDS family history consultants, here's a much-needed program:
I'm a family history consultant and the director of a family history center
for the LDS Church. Last year each of the youth in our ward came to the
family history center (spread out over several weeks) to research a name
that they could take to the temple. We're using New FamilySearch (nFS), so
the youth had to register with nFS, find someone in their tree who did not
already have work done, do some research on the internet and/or call their
grandparents to get some vital data for the person, and submit them.
The goal was to show the youth that family history isn't something that
requires oodles of time to do, especially at the beginning - to give them a
quick sucess. The idea of giving someone a quick success applies not only
to the youth, but is helpful to anyone who is thinking about getting
involved in family history work.
For youth whose families had not done a lot of genealogy in the past, this
was a fantastic experience. Nearly all of those youth were able to
register, do the research, and prepare someone for temple work in less than
an hour and a half. This is much simpler than the old approach.
But for youth whose families had done a lot of genealogy in the past, this
was a frustrating exercise in wandering up and down their tree looking for
someone who had not already had work done. The problem is that the tree
view in nFS displays a pedigree and which of the people in that pedigree may
need work done, but if your family has done genealogy in the past, chances
are that all the people in your pedigree have already had their work done.
And researching back another generation in the pedigree is not going to
happen in an hour and a half. So I started looking for children and
grandchildren of direct-line ancestors that may have been skipped. But this
required a lot of extra navigation, and I had to keep careful track of which
lines we'd already gone down and which we had not.
So here's the program that would be enormously useful: Given someone's login
to nFS, nagivate up and down their tree (say X generations up, Y generations
down, and maybe even go back up again for descendants' spouses) looking for
people who need to have work done, and display a set of links to these
people so that the user could look at the people found and start to research
them.
-dallan
Scott
hoping there's a good 3d version possible to show an entire family
tree at once, not centered around an individual. I started
AppleTree.com (http://www.appletree.com) to show the family tree of
the world. You can check out my visualization on the homepage. I'm
actively improving it, but you can see my attempt at showing every
kind of relationship all at once. It's only 2d for now. I'll be very
happy to adopt a 3d model if it can fully show everything in a more
understandable fashion that is easily navigable and I can show paths
between individuals.
Timelines in the tree I'm not so concerned about, you can represent
timelines with colors and other methods easily in 2d. Relationships,
however, might be easier seen in 3d.
If anyone is interested in a beta login, send me an email.
On Feb 2, 7:07 am, Ian <ian.vid...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi Dallan
>
> > This is very nice! You may also want to check out the following for another
> > approach. Can't say that I like it better than yours, but it's worth
> > looking at.
>
> >http://www.metaportaldermedienpolemik.net/blog/Blog/2007-01-16/rhnav%...
> > hizome%20navigation%20used%20to%20create%20genealogy%20motion%20graphics
>
> Thanks for the suggestion - I see that they are using a force-based
> algorithm which seems similar to the approach I decided to adopt when
> laying out the individuals. There is also another project I am aware
Mark Nafe
todd.d....@gmail.com
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BeyondGen" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to beyondgen+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to beyo...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/beyondgen.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.