LiveGraphics3D

What is it?

LiveGraphics3D is Java sourceware written by Martin Kraus that allows Mathematica graphics primitives (line, point etc.) to be displayed in 3D (well, 4D if you consider animations..).

It allows the User to rotate, zoom or strip components from the models. The models are written as Text or Zip files which can be made available via the WWW.

I first encountered LiveGraphics after I'd designed a model of a Toroidal Space Station. I wanted to look at it from every angle to get an idea how well light penetrated into the 'living space'. I struggled on with Mathematica for a while, usually putting in an {x,y,z} viewpoint that was nothing like where I expected it to be. Then I discovered LiveGraphics and realised it was the answer to my problem.

The ease with which the viewer/user can spin, zoom or 'deconstruct' an image were immediately appealing to me, and has given me a much better idea of the elements of my design that would work, and others that won't!

I was so impressed with the results of the first model that I decided to convert another image. There is an animated image (Gif) of the orbits of planets Mercury thru Jupiter, that I had completed some time ago. It includes the elliptical orbits that 'join' Earth with each other planet. The ability to strip components from the image is extremely useful, as it allows the user to remove the elliptical orbits and reduce the image to 'just the planets'.

I would strongly recommend anybody doing visual work with Mathematica to investigate LiveGraphics3D as the engine for drawing and working with the data/model. It also allows models to be presented on the net in much more useful form than the Gif files that Mathematica itself produces. I'm not sure if Wolfram has revamped web output ability in V 4.0 (I use V 3.0), but I doubt it.

LiveGraphic3D is free for non-commercial use, contact the author for details re commercial use.

Tips

I have a love/hate relationship with Mathematica, I find it very powerful and useful, and at the same time arcane and quixotic. This is probably exacerbated by the twin reasons that a) I am not in an environment where I can get advice from more experienced users, & b) I am such a poor mathematician!

Because of this I had a great deal of trouble getting the first models to work.

With ample use of the F1 key & reading of that 'door stopper' of a manual I sorted out most of the problems, but finally had to give in and email Martin on various points (Martin usually answers emails within 24 hours, a level of service I've found nowhere else on the net - many businesses should take heed of his example).

I have accumulated a few useful tidbits that may help others wanting to use this software.

Graphics Primitives

Often models will be made from notebooks where the user was originally plotting 'a picture'. Since it's easier to plot pictures in 2D, this is the natural tendency. Of course, Mathematica refers to Graphics 2D functions as simply 'Graphics', whereas Graphics3D is (inconsistently), refered to as 'Graphics3D'.

Check that your graphics primitives are, in fact, the 3D version.

Curly Braces

At one stage my model was failing because I had a group of Graphics elements that was enclosed in a list {g1, g2, ...,gn}. This caused no hiccups for Mathematica, but LiveGraphics would 'spit the dummy'.

Load your LiveGraphics3D model file into a text editor and check whether the very first character is a curly brace '{'. If it is, you need to alter your Mathematica NoteBook to get rid of it. Alternatively you might just delete the open curly brace '{', along with it's corresponding '}' in the text file itself.

Ensure your model is not enclosed by {}.

Zip Files

The later versions of LiveGraphics3D will also accept a Zip file in lieu of the Text file. I was recenty quite chuffed to shrink a 140Kb model file to just 24Kb. I advertised the model via UseNet but got complaints that it was failing on non-Windoze machines.

I issued all kinds of expletives at the Sun/Java folks for creating a cross platform execution environment that was 'obviously' not cross platform.

Fortunately, when I also received an email from a Windoze user who could not read the model, I stopped swearing and began thinking (which is often slightly more useful, though thoroughly less satisfying..).

I finally worked out what the problem was. I use WinZip 7.0, and as a matter of course, select the 'maximum compression' option. This is not a standard Zip format that can be read by all UnZipper's, it's a format specific to WinZip. Even more interesting, the Zip using 'standard compression' was only 24 Bytes bigger.

Always use 'standard compression' when Zipping your text model file.

In Conclusion

LiveGraphics3D is an invaluable 'add on' tool for visualising data produced by Mathematica. I look forward to creating further models of other projects and physics/astronomical demos. It also adds zing to any web page.

Happy modelling!

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