ITG Technology Development:

Visualization Technology

The ITG is active in developing small applications and techniques for enabling the visualization, manipulation, analysis and presentation of scientific data. Often these take the form of data translation packages that take scientific data from one application and convert it into a format readable by programs such as Softimage 3D, Softimage XSI, and Alias|Wavefront's Maya. Once the data is inside one of these professional animation and rendering packages, users have the ability to animate and visualize their data, with final output for still images, videotape, DVD, Quicktime, and others easily produced in the VMIL. Other project examples include Entomon, which is a stereographic viewing program that can be used to view SEM specimens, AFM data, and other information in 3D.

Software Packages

top2maya	Automatic conversion of 2D topographical data into Maya, with lighting, animation and stereo visualization options
Entomon	Stereographic Viewing Software for the SGI
mol2soft	Converts molecular data from MACCS format (.mol) to Softimage 3D
mol2xsi	Converts molecular data from MACCS format (.mol) to Softimage XSI
mol2mel	Converts molecular data from MACCS format (.mol) to Maya
dot2mel	Converts molecular data from MACCS format (.dot) to Maya pointcloud data
molSlicer	Automates Boolean intersections and differences to be performed between molecules created with mol2mel and either a simple 8-point cube or a more complex 64 point cube