Open 3D Scientific Visualization Toolkit

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Open 3D Scientific Visualization Toolkit

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday January 22, 2005 @03:07AM from the look-what-we-done dept.

Mark Leaman writes "The Science Museum of Minnesota has just announced an online community site for scientific visualization, including thier Open 3D Visualization Toolkit that includes Blender and the GIMP as part of the core development tools. Frustrated with a lack of consolidated resources and discussion about open-source, scientific visualization development tools, the Science Museum of Minnesota's Learning Technologies Department decided to develop their own."

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Re:K-POW by HardeH · 2005-01-22 03:36 · Score: 3, Informative

Maybe you should give VTK, OpenDX, VisIT or Paraview a try, all of which are just some of the scientific visualisation community's tools of choice (and hey, they're OSS, mostly cross-platform as well).
Re:K-POW by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-22 03:45 · Score: 2, Informative

You should take a look at VPython -- Simplest 3-D visualization that I know of (and it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux).

http://www.vpython.org/
Not the only one by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-22 03:59 · Score: 2, Informative

Frustrated with a lack of consolidated resources and discussion about open-source, scientific visualization development tools
This the point where I remind people of OpenDX, which is the open sourced IBM Visualization Data Explorer. DX used to be an extremely expensive commercial product, but it's been open source for a couple of years now.
It's very good. If you're into scientific visualization it's worth examining.
Re:Come on, can't we have a autogenerator for VRML by deepsky · 2005-01-22 04:00 · Score: 2, Informative

> VRML is a proprietary, closed model
Proprietary? VRML is an ISO/IEC standard.
Re:Open Data by pedroloco · 2005-01-22 04:45 · Score: 2, Informative

As far as NASA planetary datasets go, try the Planetary Data System

Some of the USGS topo datasets are available from the EROS Data Center. Some free datasets are available for download.
The following software is available: by Wills · 2005-01-22 04:59 · Score: 3, Informative
Open-source Visualisation software:

"[We, the Science Musuem of Minnesota,] are frustrated by a lack of consolidated resources and discussion about open-source, scientific visualization development tools"

Counter-examples:
- OpenDX - powerful data visualisation software
  - Open source but downloading requires you to register and to acknowledge their patents. This software became open-source in 1999
  - as first discussed here on Slashdot (why does Slashdot still use the same old Slashcode which even after 7 years of development still destroys the nesting of all its archived articles after 2 weeks???)
- Vis5d - has a unique interface for explicit 5d data visualisation
  - Open source but development has ceased.
- Webwinds - 3d data visualisation software
  - Open source, Java.
- LinkWinds - 3d data visualisation software
  - Open source but restricted download and development has ceased.
- OpenQVIS - 3d realtime volume visualisation on commodity desktop computers
  - Open source.
--
Scroogle
1. Re:The following software is available: by drauh · 2005-01-22 08:52 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  MayaVi is also quite nice. And it's Python.
  
  --
  This is a tautology.
OpenDX and MayaVI by Noksagt · 2005-01-22 06:33 · Score: 2, Informative

I think OpenDX is a bit more than just a tool-kit. It also has a great GUI for doing visualization, without the need for too much coding (somewhat analagous to LabView, I suppose). I have found I really like MayaVI, which is a GUI for VTK. MayaVI/VTK are python scriptable, which is great.
Re:Come on, can't we have a autogenerator for VRML by luwandah · 2005-01-22 09:45 · Score: 2, Informative

Actually there is an open viewer for molecules. It's called Rasmol http://www.umass.edu/microbio/rasmol/ and many source files can be downloaded from their site.