9.5 Details of the Mathematica->Geomview Package

The OOGL.m package uses the external program math2oogl to convert Graphics3D objects to OOGL format, because a compiled external program is able to do this conversion many times faster than Mathematica.

The converter will sometimes handle colored SurfaceGraphics objects correctly that Mathematica does not handle correctly, which means that Geomview[object] sometimes works where Show[object] will give errors.

The converter supports the Polygon, Line, and Point graphics primitives, RGBColor Graphics3D directives, and SurfaceGraphics objects with or without RGBColor directives, and lists of any combination of these. It silently ignores all other directives.

The Mathematica to RenderMan conversion is actually a two-step process: Mathematica->OOGL (math2oogl), and OOGL->RenderMan (oogl2rib).

In the WriteOOGL and WriteRIb commands, filename can either be a string containing a filename, an OutputStream object, or a string starting with a ! to send the output to a command. Object can be a Graphics3D object, a SurfaceGraphics object, or a list of these.

The packages work best with Mathematica 2.0 or better. With version 1.2, the Geomview display is always on the local host.