Poly Panel Widget.

Invoked from Edit in Menubar or ALT-p

Uses Motif Widgets ( Choice, Toggle, Scale, Push ) to adjust properties of groups of triangles in your model.polys list.

Currently, all groups are read in as ascii *.tri files. (See Data Preparation).

Widget Name (Widget Type) --- description of function

Poly Lists (Choice)
-- select "triangle" to refer to all, else choose individual groups.
Poly Display (Toggle)
-- visibility toggle for current Poly List choice.
Draw Style (Choice)
-- select one of: Solid | Lines | Dots for selected group.
Line Width (Scale)
-- width in pixels if Draw Style is Lines or Points.
Overall Color (Choice)
-- select a color for the entire group, or use the individual triangle colors.
Surface Index (Push)
-- select a separate 'color' to control overall material properties.
-- IFF a multi-colored surface (see hints below).
2-Sided Style (Toggle)
-- enable different coloring of the inside and outside of a surface.
-- (see hints below).
Close Panel (Push)
-- dismiss the panel
Panel Help (Push)
-- show this help screen

Hints:

The `material' is the same for each triangle in a group, even though the individual vertices may have different diffuse colors. For groups where all triangles are the same color, or whose overall color has been set to a single index, the 'material' is the same as the Overall Color. For multi-colored surfaces, the default material is black (colorindex=13).

For multi-colored surfaces, the `SurfaceFinish' index controls the material's ambient, specular, and transparency properties. The 'color' of each vertex controls the diffuse `color' properties. An auxiliary program 'tri-a-tri' spits multi-colored surfaces so that each triangle is always one color (but yields more triangles). This creates sharp bands of color and is recommended for ray-tracing output. Otherwise, OpenGL blends the colors across the vertices. Depends on your preference.

For 2-sided surfaces, the triangles are drawn twice with coloring dependent on their normal vectors. If a single-colored surface, the 'outside' is the Overall Color, while the inside is colorIndex 9 (grey by default). If a multi-colored surface, the 'outside' is as usual, but the 'inside' diffuse color components darkened to a quarter of their original values and their SurfaceFinish index is set to 9. A *.tri file with multi-colored vertices causes a slight performance penalty. For improved performance for interactive drawing, set the Overall Color to some integer value and/or to line mode.

Also see other types of and general information on Control Panels.

Ribbons User Manual / UAB-CBSE / carson@uab.edu