>I can think of at least two interfacing views that would be very useful:
>
>1. A "furniture view", where 1 unit = 1 meter, one axis points up, one
>coincides with the line where the back wall of the room meets the floor,
>and the other points away from the wall. This would be useful for quickly
>placing furniture-like objects in a room so they're on the floor and next
>to the wall. (Or hanging pictures, for that matter.)
>
This would correspond to what I would call a standard coordinate
system (X-Y-Z)
>2. An "icon view", where the object must fit in a 1x1 box, one axis is up,
>one faces right, and one faces out of the screen. This would be useful
>when we have libraries containing objects of vastly different sizes, and we
>want to display a bunch of them on the screen for the use to choose from,
>in rows and columns.
>
This could be done with a simple scale by the viewing program on
the fly without too much overhead (get bounding box, scale by 1/box).
>Other interfacing views can be defined as the need arises for different
>domains, e.g. "chemistry view," using angstroms, "galactic view", using
>light-years, "Sim City view," where 3 units = 1 city block, etc.
>
again, too complicated. Also, how am I supposed to know where all
of my models will end up and all the possible views that will be needed?
>The idea is that the interfacing views encapsulate whatever native
>coordinate system the designer has chosen to use for implementing the
>object; the native coordinate system should be inaccessable outside the
>object's definition. So, an object designer can use whatever coordinate
>system is convenient.
>
see again what I said above. this could be taken care of by one
transform at the beginning of the model's definition.
>Also, support for any particular interfacing view is optional. For
>example, someone designing a starship object would want to leave the
>furniture view out, which would immediately indicate to users who
>accidentally try to put a starship in a living room that they're doing
>something silly. (Of course, you can always use another view and scale it,
>if you want to put a starship in a living room anyway - a model starship,
>perhaps.)
>
That sort of makes the interfacing view unnecessary anyway.
Kevin
kevin@unitcircle.org zine@unitcircle.org
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