Glnemo: documentation

Introduction:

Glnemo respect the NEMO philosophy and it can be started from the command line. To get a list of all the options, use the following command:

or to have an exhausted list look at the online manual: man glnemo, or type

But glnemo is mainly a program with a user interface, and it can be started directly, with no parameters, as following: glnemo

The glnemo user interface is composed with a 3D view display area, a menu area, and a set of icons and short-keys.

Menu:

From the menu, it's possible to:

• to load a new snapshot:
  from the menu, select the entry File->Open File. It opens a file dialog selection box from where the user has to select the file to load.
  
  
  
• to connect to a running gyrfalcON simulation:
  from the menu, select the entry File->Open Network Connexion. It opens a dialog box:

  In the first selection field, give the IP address of the computer running a gyrfalcON simulation. In the selection field (Port), give the port communication number.




• to print the 3D view display:
  from the menu, select the entry File->Print Opengl Buffer. It opens a printer dialog box:
  



• to quit the application:
  from the menu, select the entry File->Exit or use the short-key CTRL+Q .

Visualization:

When the mouse cursor is on the 3D view display area, keyboard and mouse events can modify the 3D view display.

• mouse drag + left button:

  rotate 3D view around X or Y axis.

• mouse drag + right button:

  rotate 3D view around Z axis.

• mouse wheel:

  zoom in/out

• key + :

  zoom in

• key - :

  zoom out

• CTRL + mouse drag + left button:

  move display along X or Y axis.

• CTRL + mouse drag + right button:

  move display along Z axis.

Icons:

a vertical bar of icons is located on the left side of the windows. (see How to use the Graphic User Interface movie tutorial.)

Here is the description of each icons:

• or F:

  toggle display in full screen/windowed mode.

• or CTRL+R:

  reset 3D view coordinates (rotation and translation).

• or CTRL+A:

  Automatic zoom, it fits all the particles on the screen.

• or G:

  toggle a grid display.

• or R:

  open the particles selection and color dialog box.

• or O:

  open the options dialog box.

• or T:

  toggle between pan and rotation mode.

• or P:

  if the current NEMO snapshot has multiple time steps, it displays automatically all the next time step. If the current object is a gyrfalcON simulation, it gets from the simulation server a new time step.

• or L:

  reload the NEMO file.

• or S:

  take a screen shot of the 3D view display.

• or ALT+G:

  toggle gas like particles effect.

• or CTRL+P:

  open the printing dialog box.

• or M:

  open the animation dialog box.

Options:

A click on or press O key, opens the options dialog box composed with five tabs.

• Opengl:
  this tab modify the rendering OpenGL properties (see OpenGL options movie tutorial.)

  - Particles - group: check box [enable] activate the particles display. slide "size" modify the particles size. - Velocity vectors - group: check box [enable] activate velocity vectors display. slide "size" modify vectors length. "max" field, set maximum vectors length. - Effects - group: check box [blending] activate the color blending. check box [Depth Buffer] activate the OpenGL depth buffer. slide "Alpha Channel" modify the level of transparency. - Projection - group: select the projection type, Perspective or Orthographic.

• Transformations:
  this tab modify the zoom, rotation and translation value of the display.

  - Zoom - group: "Value" field, modify the zoom value. - Rotations - group: "X,Y,Z" fields, modify the rotation angle, respectively around X,Y and Z axis. - Translations - group: "X,Y,Z" fields, move particles respectively along XY,YZ and XZ plan.

  to confirm the modification, click [OK] or [APPLY] button.
• Grids:
  this tab modify the display parameters of the grid.(see How to display a grid and a cube movie tutorial.)

  - Dimension - group: "Mesh length" field, modify the size of grids meshes. "# Meshs" field, modify the number of meshes in the grid. - Active Grid Plane- group: check boxes [XY], [YZ] and [XZ] activate grid display respectively in the XY, YZ and XZ plans. nearby buttons allow to change grid color. - Cube - group: check boxe [cube] activate cube display. nearby buttons allow to change cube color.

• Hud:
  this tab modify the head up display.

  - Head Up Display - group: check box [enable] activate text display. - elements on HUD - group: each check boxes activate specifically an element display. - Colors - group: "Background" button modify background color. "text" button modify text color.

• Experimental:
  this tab adds an halo of gas effect around each particles (see How to activate gas like particles effect movie tutorial.) From this tab, you can also activate an octree mechanism to display high density area only. (see How to activate an octree movie tutorial.)

  - Gas like particles - group: check box [enable], activate gas like particle effect. You really need a fast video card with accelerated OpenGL drivers. slide "Texture size" increase gas effect around each particles. Higher will be the texture, and slower will be the 3D display. slide "Texture alpha color" modify the gas effect transparency. - Octree - group: check box [enable partitioning], activate an octree to sort particles in an hierarchical tree. Then it will be possible to display particles from different levels in the tree, allowing to display high density area. check box [display tree], activate the tree display itself. field "tree's level displayed", select how deeper you want the tree to be displayed.

Particle:

A click on or press key R, opens the selection and color dialog box. This box is divided in two part. The first one allows to select particles from indexes range (see How to select particles's range and color movie tutorial). The second one allows to select particles from list of indexes. The particles selected on each row will have the same color. Particles are displayed if the field visible is checked.

Selection by range of indexes: in the field first part, you have to give the index of the first particle. in the field last part, you have to indicate the index of the lst particle. in the field step, you have to indicate the sampling. BEWARE: the first particle has the index 0 !!. Selection by list of indexes: in the field filename, you have to give a filename which have a list of indexes. If you double-click on that field, it will open a file selection dialog box. The value for each of the indexes must be lesser than the maximum number of particles in the snapshot. the file must have the following structure: #p_index_list <--- (this is the header) index ... ... index

In the both case, a click in the 'color' field opens a selection color dialog box, allowing to change the color associated to the object.

Animation:

If you click on or if you press the key M, it opens the animation module dialog box. This module is still under development, and all the features are not implemented. The mechanism to create an animation is the following:

• all the keyboard and mouse events are recorded in a data base in memory.
• the program will re-play one by one each events, and will save on disk the rendered image according to the event.
• at the end, we have a set of images from where we can make a DivX program via an external program.

The animation module has several tabs:

• Record/Play:
  This tab manage the animation recording.

  - Animation Script File - group: From this group of options, you can load/save from/to a file, all the events (mouse,keyboard, etc..) recorded during an animation. a click on launch a dialog box to save or load an animation file. a click on starts a benchmark. Glnemo will try to display as fast as possible (depends on your video card) the animation recorded. At the end, a message windows pop-up with the number of frame per seconds. - Recording/Playing - group: a click on activate the recording of the mouse and keyboard events. After each new event, the #frame counter is incremented. a click on re-play the recorded animation. a click on stop the recording/playing of the current animation. a click on , is non yet implemented.... a click on , is non yet implemented.... the slide go directly to a recorded frame. [Reset] button, reset (erase) the animation recorded.

• Rendering:
  This tab manage the animation rendering.

  - Rendering frame location - group: in the field Directory, you have to specify where you want the rendered frames to be saved. check dir button, create the directory. in the field Basename, you have to specify the basename file of the images that will be saved. Every images will have the following name : frame.XXXXX.png, where XXXXX is an integer. - Output format - group: Not yet implemented. - Frame per second - group: Not yet implemented. - Render - group: start button, starts the simulation rendering. Once clicked, it becomes pause button which allows to stop the rendering. Then, Pause becomes Continue, which allow to restart the computation. Reset button, reset animation rendering process.

• Options:
  This tab manage the options used during the rendering process.

  - Playing/Rendering options - group: the option selected via the GUI will use all the options currently selected by the user, during the rendering process. the option selected from recording will use only the options selected and recorded during the recording phase of the animation.