This is the homepage of K3Studio.
It is under construction but the project itself is in much better shape.
Author
The K3Studio
K3Studio is a universal workbench for 2d/3d modeling,
visualization and simulation.
The main topic is simulation and visualization of
automata networks, but it can be used for diagram drawing,
flowcharting, presentation, modeling,...
News
May 01 2002 - Version 0.98 released. Changes:
- KDE3 port
- pbuffers with NVidia
- many bug fixes and clean ups
Main technology keywords
KDE3, KOffice, OpenGL, Mesa3d, Python, SWIG.
About
The main focus of K3Studio is on 3d visualization of combinatorial graphs,
i.e. a set of nodes connected with edges. However, it goes much further:
- The objects (i.e. nodes and edges) can have an arbitrary shape, enabling
K3Studio to be used for 2d/3d vector and diagram drawing.
- K3Studio provides 3d object selection (with the help of off-screen
rendering
with fake colors) and all objects can receive user events, e.g. mouse enter,
key pressed, etc. This enables K3Studio to be used as a 3d GUI.
- Since the nodes can have their own functionality (::main() method) and the
edges can be viewed as connectors carrying messages between the nodes K3Studio
can, in fact, be used as a simulation workbench for automata networks.
- All the functionality, appearance and event handling is easily
programmable
and extendable with plugins. There are more than 15 plugins that come with the
application, some of which are quite usable, some are more for demonstration
purpose.
Other highlights include:
- The K3Studio user interface is very flexible and provides mechanisms
for "every" user need: from drag & drop and GUI, a command line with built
in Python, to C++ plugins.
- Multiple views/cameras support, each with separate opengl and lighting
models.
K3Studio is not, and does not want to be a clone of any commercial or free
product. It does not try to be yet another 3DStudio, Visio or another
"workalike".
K3Studio comes with following 19 plugins:
- 3DS for 3d studio .3ds models
- WF for .obj Wavefront models
- chemistry for molecule visualization (based on Rasmol)
- eda for electrical circuit design (based on gEda)
- elevation grid - elevate image, Caley table, terrain (DEM)
- extrusion - Bezier tube, polycylinder, screw (based on GLE)
- graph - GML graphs, adjacency table
- hull - convex hull, rbox (based on QHull)
- kivio stencils
- lattice
- layout - 2D: circle, GraphPlace, LEDA/AGD; 3D: random, particles, Bourke, spiral
- movie - animated gifs
- nurbs - curve, circle, sphere, Cobb patch, plane,
revolve, sweep (based on NURBS++)
- orb
- shapes: sphere, cube, cone, cylinder, torus,
{tetra|icosa|dodeca|octa}hedron, disk,
triangle, polygon, text, load, image,
vector, line, orthogonal line, tube, spiral
- super quadrics - ellipse, ellipsoid, teardrop
- text 3d - true type fonts (GLTT)
- vrml (needs OpenVrml)
- x3 - X11 Window System on texture
Status
Release 0.98 is quite complete as for functionality,
internal design and interfaces. It can be considered alpha.
The main things missing for 1.0 release are:
- documentation - HELP NEEDED
- locatization - HELP NEEDED
- bugfixing
Of course _any_ contribution, interest or questions are welcomed.
Many (all?) of the plugins need to be improved and actively maintained.
Motivation
I have started to write this system for simulation and visualization
of automata networks, notably automatic groups. Further I am
interested in visualization of lattice structures and simulation
of fields on various lattices.
Building
Required, Preliminaries
Pyhon 2.x is required for building and running.
Note that K3Studio is a quite big project (it is maybe the biggest koffice
application) and uses a lot of external libraries,
some of which are necessary (kde3, glut, (lib)python2.0, readline)
while others are optional (nurbs++, gle, libvrml97, qhull, gltt & freetype).
History
- 05/01/02 K3Studio 0.98
- 01/22/01 K3Studio 0.97
- 12/04/00 K3Studio 0.96
- 11/11/00 K3Studio 0.95
- 02/22/99 Glace 0.10
Long ago it was called Glace and I published only one release in Feb 1999.
It was version 0.10 still available on
http://zaboj.vse.cz.
Download
Source
The K3Studio 0.98 source
k3studio-0.98.tar.gz.
The K3Studio plugin skelet source
k3studio-plugin-skel-0.98.tar.gz.
Misc
X3vfb 0.10 - X virtual frame buffer server, binaries for linux/i386
and part of source. You need this to play with X server on texture
x3vfb-0.10.tar.gz.