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| NEWS Section |
| Nov 08/2004 |
SpringDanceBeta22: this version wasn't intended for release; however, it's got some improvements and pretty much everything works.. so out into the world it goes. You can now create new JointSets but not yet change color or size independently. Look for some substantial progress here in the not-too-distant future. Another notable advance since Beta20 is VRML Export. This continues to be refined. A step-through freeze frame has joined the standard freeze. This is just the beginning of SpringDance movie making capabilities. Some default settings have been changed from a world-building orientation to model-building. These include background, rotation style, and interation speed. As one always hopes with newer versions, a number of small bugs have been repaired.
| Mar. 16/2002 |
The much delayed SpringDance Beta20 is out. (Yes finally).
Here are the major changes:
The first thing you will notice is the new. I like it because of all the features it doesn't have. Features like blue gradients that block out your desktop, and the please wait while we show you our logo screen. Nor does it ask you to shutdown all programs and reboot your computer nonsense. This little piece of sanity was made by the same guys that did winamp. Like so many good things, it's free and open Source. Right on! Thanks guys for helping me, ahhum, pimp my stuff. (any bugs in the installation process you see are mine, most likely caused by my own unfamiliarity with Nsis)
There is a completely reworked manual (thanks again to John Braley). but I just made the install section is obsolete. (Sorry John)
Spring stresses in your models can now be shown in three modes: The new banded mode, the old thick red / thin blue mode and just the bands colors without stress mode.
Spring dance can now export to the .
The RWX export got reworked as promised.
Download
SpringDance Beta20 here.
| Jan. 06/2002 |
Happy new year, and happy birthday to the SpringDance project! SD is now one year after the initial conception.
The new physics engine is now complete except for the odd bug, so please send me bug reports. With the new physics engine it is possible for EIG to walk, and I have included several walking EIG examples in the download. This is very cool to see.
In the next version I will be adding several new export formats and updating the the old RWX export.
As usual you can get both Manual and SpringDance19 by going to the Download page.
K-Meleon is a light open source browser for windows that is an offshoot of mozilla's (netscape's open source browser) with all the bloat removed. Its fast light and standards compliant. What has this to do with SpringDance?
Of course, in the spirit of open source software, I could not leave well enough alone and I created 3 throbbers for K-Meleon it using SpringDance and the good folks who make K-Meleon have posted them on their page. Look for the "Elastic solid" and "Polimorphic solid".
Even if you don't use k-meleon, if have
something that can view ".AVI" files you will be able to see what they
look like as that's all they are, tiny avi movies.
| Nov. 9/2001 |
I have a heavy update to SpringDance this
time around. I have reworked the physics engine and in the process
added gravity and a ground object. There is something about visceral
about gravity, which which gives eig a reality it doesn't have when its
just floating in space. You can try it out by turning on the new physics
panel. (ctrl-alt-P or tools|show physics panel) I'm not
completely satisfied with the way it works but its getting there.
I'm sure I would have made more progress if not is largely do to time I
had wasted just throwing a virtual tetrahedron around. I think you will
enjoy this version even if its a little buggy, I know I did.
John Braley has come through again and added more sections to the manual.
As usual you can get both Manual and SpringDance16
by going to the Download page.
(note: The "iterations" slider and "surface
friction" in the physics aren't implemented. )
| Sept 30/2001 |
This version's major new features are:
| Aug 28/2001 |
With a version numbering scheme inspired by Triscadecaphobia, Beta version 014 is out and ready to be downloaded. I concentrated on chasing and squashing bugs this time around so I believe this is should be a much more stable release so get it while I am still under the delusion that it is relatively bug free. :) By user request: I also added a freeze motion feature.
Special Thanks go to to John Braley, did
some much needed editing on the manual.
| Aug 20/2001 |
The new version of SpringDance (beta012) has a really cool new feature that I call "skin". A skin allows you to fill in the spaces between the springs with polygons and can really change the look of your models, making the structure much easier to see. Be warned this is feature is still in the early stages of development and there still are a few bugs to squash. Check it out in the download section. Report any bugs you find to me.
We had one new person try to access the
Sunday chat session using a mac without any luck. It looks as if
the mac version of Yahoo instant messenger doesn't support voice which
is too bad, nor does it support conferences.
| Aug 5/2001 |
It's been a while since i updated the news section so there is lots to talk about.
The Spring dance Beta011 is now out. Yes, after a short break I'm back. I'm working more user requested features. Go to the download section to give it a try. There are lots of features added since Beta005.
Spring dance has a new and home at ShapeOfSpace.org.
Weekly voice meetings are heald on sundays
at 4:00 pm MST on Yahoo's instant messenger service. Add rbf_jitterbug
to your contacts list.
| Mar 9/2001 Looking good |
The Spring dance Beta005 is now out. I haven't kept a list of all the new features but there are lots. Here are the highlights:
- SaveAs now works.
- The centering function has been reworked
to make it much more useful.
- Most of the common functions are assigned
to function keys and accelerator key sequences.
- Most of the functionality of joint sets
and Spring sets is now in place.
In short except for muscle springs and exporting (to RWX, VRML POV Ray), you can now do most of the things you did in struck with SpringDance now.
I have been experimenting with the idea of having some predefined default spring sets and I am quite pleased with the results. When you start a new object, not only do you the tetrahedron but you get a predefined set of springs as well. I think having a few example sets makes this concept much easier to comprehend. All i need now is input on what the best set of default springs would be.
I have been meeting almost every sunday with the user base on Firetalk, unfortunately this program is going the way of the Dot Com and the dodo bird before it. Firetalk has put its user base on notice that it will be pulling the plug on the service. This last week Jim Morrisett has been comparing features of the various free conference services. It looks like the best free voice conference he as found so far is Yahoo Messenger.
Email me if you are interested in joining
the chat and don't know where it is.
| Feb 15/2001 It's Alive! (and its moving) |
Lots has happened in the last month, most of it is under the hood, low level stuff. In the last few days, I have managed to get springdance iterating and moving so it now it lives up to it's moniker. It was quite a thrill to see the springs animate for the first time!
Peter Adderley has sent some pictures, (Stereo pairs, no less) of what he built within an hour of downloading the program so have a peek. You can download the newest stuff here. It's worth downloading it to see it move, static pictures don't do it justice.
Next on my agenda is getting a few of the really basic features finished so we can start showing this to teachers and new users get some quality feedback. It is already at the point now were the basic concepts of EIG can be demonstrated in SpringDance.
Also I should mention that the early testing that was done has paid off in a big way. I have managed to get performance improvements over the earlier test versions and in most cases the frame rates are now 25% to 100% higher than with SDTest4. This is despite SDTest4 had many features to speed up rendering of static scenes at the expense of dynamic ones and the new code is designed to render dynamic motion. Also I now a good feel for how SpringDance will perform on different kinds of hardware.
The video card installed on your machine
can make a huge difference. The Diamond Viper 550 card I have can
out perform basic video hardware cards by almost 10:1. I don't want to
sound like a commercial for Diamond, the lesson here is that good video
hardware can make a huge difference. You don't have to go out and get the
hottest video card on the market, getting what was hot 6 months ago will
work almost a well and be much cheaper. Gamers of course know that having
a good video card can make a huge difference, but the speed differences
of video hardware is for the most part lost on the general public. Having
such a disparity in the rendering speed of different machines will make
development challenging. SpringDance will need to both work well with slower
hardware, yet still be able to take advantage of the improvements
fast rendering can hardware can offer.
| Jan 13/2001 Chat Invitation |
The result has been a series of test programs much like the little one I have already placed on the web. Each deal with different aspects of SpringDance such as performance, loading of EIG files, and the display of a IVM/XYZ grid.
I will be hanging out next Sunday on Firetalk, to discuss the future of SpringDance, and I would like to invite you to join me. The specifications of are still very much open and this is a great time to air your ideas before things get coded and are hard to change.
I hope to chat with you there.
Program:
(http://firetalk.com/)
Forum: eLearning | SpringDance
When: 3PM MST - Sunday January 21
If you can't use Firetalk, join us using
fluidiom.
| Jan 8/2001 First EIG Loaded |
John Braley (AKA:Tau, AKA: the who Snelson really doesn't want to mess with) did a really nice job with this EIG. Although at first glance is looks like the Snelson trigonal tower, it is wired up in a very un-snelson like way. Note the Y shaped connecting "cables" in-between the "rods". Although im a long way from implementing muscles and movement in SpringDance, if you load this up in Struck, it animates in a very lifelike way.
Please go easy on the program. It is really fresh code and report any problems you may have.
One reason for this test is to get some some quantitative performance numbers, so this test has a frames per second (FPS) counter. If you want to help please load the caltrop and report the FPS along with your video card type, color depth and processor type and speed.
This is my performance data.
FPS = 26
Video card= Diamond Viper 550
Video Driver= NVidia Riva TNT
(you can find this under: control panel/ system/ device manager/
display adapters)
colorDepth= hiColor 16Bit (control
panel/ display/ settings/ colors)
CPU=Celeron 330Mhz
Memory=64MB.
| Jan 4/2001 A new beginning |