S2PLOT pre-viz of galaxy collision

[fjsummers]

This is a public thank you for S2PLOT.

For HST's 18th anniversary today, we released 59 images
of galaxy interactions. It is a great collection of images
and worth checking out.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/16/

As a visualization to accompany the images, I took
a galaxy collsion simulation and matched it to five
of the images. I run the simulation, pause it, rotate
to match the observed geometry, and cross-fade to
the observations. I think the effect is really cool, but
my opinion is obviously biased.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/16/video/d/

The S2PLOT libraries were of great help in pre-visualization.
I was able to quickly write a custom application for viewing
the simulation data in 3D. In just one afternoon, I Iearned
enough of S2PLOT to create a basic app that can view the data
as points, rotate in 3D, and output the camera coordinates and
orientation to the screen. Since my render code is in C, having
C libraries for pre-viz was a perfect fit. This quick app made
finding the correct camera position for matching simulation to
observation much easier.

I could see using S2PLOT to write a complete camera choreography
program, as exporting data to Maya (which has brilliant camera
controls) is often too cumbersome or time-consuming for quick
turnaround projects. Nothing fancy is needed, just keyframe setting
and spline interpolation. But I don't know enough S2PLOT yet.
Anyone else here interested in such an app?

Thanks to the S2PLOT folks for releasing their software. I don't
know if I'll see you at ADASS again this year, but I'll buy you a
beer if I do.

Frank Summers

[David Barnes]

Hi Frank,

thanks for the message. Great to hear S2PLOT was useful to you for
the pre-viz work you describe. Great results too!

We do have a package that allows basic camera path construction, and
spline interpolation. In fact, we've also been able to run camera
paths saved from 3D Studio Max by our animators "upstairs".

When I'm back from vacation, I'll make it my priority to get the
camera path code to you. It's an open source set of "extensions" to
S2PLOT that we're hoping to make available via something like
sourceforge I guess.

Cheers - David.