TextureEyes is a QuickDraw™ 3D application which illustrates how various textures like pictures, movies, or live video can be mapped onto 3D objects and viewed from any postition.
This application was developed at Apple and uses standard toolbox calls from the QuickDraw™ 3D and QuickTime™ shared libraries. It was inspired by a sample application I began writing at the QuickDraw 3D Developer’s Beta Kitchen and has evolved over time.
Requirements
This application only works on a Power Macintosh computer with QuickDraw 3D and QuickTime installed. A setup for video input is optional. This application, as with all QuickDraw 3D applications, works best when run on a monitor set to thousands or millions of colors. Installing a QuickDraw 3D graphics accelerator board in your PCI based system will also greatly improve performance as well as running the application on a faster Power Macintosh.
Using this application
Select one of the geometry models in the Model menu or open a 3D model file in 3DMF format with the Open command to view more complex 3D models. The geometries in the menu are trigrid and box geometries. For an easier way to open 3DMF files, drag them directly from the Finder into the application's window. Note that any model imported from a 3DMF file must be created with UVs parameters if you wish to see textures on the model.
You can apply different PICTs, QuickTime movies, or live video on the model’s surface by choosing the Picture, Movie, or Video options from the Texture menu. Some of the pictures can produce very realistic looking results, especially on more complex models. Movie files may also be dragged from the Finder into the application's window to play them as animated textures. If you experience problems dragging in movies and the Macintosh Easy Open dialog comes up prompting you to select an application to play the movie try removing the “Macintosh Easy Open Preferences” from your Preferences folder in the System Folder and try again.
To add live video textures on a model simply connect a video camera or other video source to the video input of your computer and select the Video menu option. This is possible with systems like the Power Macintosh 8500 or other AV equipped PowerPC computers.
When using the built-in geometries, the Geometry and Face menu items in the Texture menu allow you to map the texture across the entire geometry or on the smaller facets that make up the trigrid geometries.
The Animation menu has an Auto Rotation option to stop and start the model continously spinning if is has been put in motion by clicking and dragging anywhere within the window. Choosing the Background Color… menu option lets you change the window’s background to a color appropriate for the model.
Double-clicking in the window causes the model to explode into many small triangles and reassemble again. This is only possible with trigrid models selected from the Model menu.
Many thanks to Pablo Fernicola the QuickDraw 3D lead engineer for his expertise with this new technology and Peter Hoddie for his assistance with QuickTime.
