IRC log for #brlcad on 20120204

00:41.28 *** join/#brlcad jordisayol (~jordisayo@unaffiliated/jordisayol)
01:37.28 Maloeran This might be a stupid question... but why is BRL-CAD's ./configure trying to find OpenGL/OpenGL.h and -lopengl32? (rather than GL/gl.h and -lGL ) And hence apparently doesn't want to enable OpenGL
01:38.26 Maloeran (Trying to install on an Ubuntu laptop, hunting down missing -dev packages...)
02:13.21 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * r49223 10/brlcad/trunk/src/libged/trace.c: another unused vls
02:16.35 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * r49224 10/brlcad/trunk/src/libged/ls.c: and another unused vls masked by a bu_vls_init()
02:25.23 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * r49225 10/brlcad/trunk/src/ (113 files in 12 dirs): (log message trimmed)
02:25.24 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: replace 580 calls to bu_vls_init() with static initialization via
02:25.24 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: BU_VLS_INIT_ZERO. this eliminated the need for more than 100 conditionalized
02:25.24 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: inits, which in turn eliminates the risk that a vls might get used prior to
02:25.24 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: initialization (whereby it crashes). this improves memory management as well
02:25.24 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: eliminating the function call and memory allocation should the vls not actually
02:25.25 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: be needed; and it eliminates a memory leak if a vls were initialized but not
02:25.39 brlcad Maloeran: hey, long time no see .. not a stupid question but definitely misunderstood
02:26.37 brlcad Maloeran: it searches for OpenGL/OpenGL.h but *also* searches for GL/gl.h (and a variety of other headers found on various platforms), same for library searches too
02:27.25 brlcad undoubtedly a missing dev package, if you read the config.log and find the GL/gl.h header test, it will say why
02:28.27 brlcad more importantly, though .. if this is at all a recent source, you should be using the newer cmake build system instead of the configure-based autotools build system. mkdir .build && cd .build && cmake .. && ccmake ..
02:52.12 Maloeran Hey, long time no see indeed
02:52.38 Maloeran So you are moving away from autoconf and friends after all, nice
03:31.06 brlcad already done, few months back
03:32.53 brlcad took a few months to get a near-equivalent cmake build in place, but cliff bootstrapped a good setup
03:40.13 Maloeran Nice. I'm integrating my ball pivoting point cloud mesh reconstruction into Lee's VSL hence the need for BRL-CAD
03:44.10 Maloeran I'm not quite convinced that raytracing, gathering point and reconstruction is the best way to convert CSG geometry to triangles (the edges of a cube will appear rounded), but it's probably good enough, I guess
03:45.59 brlcad heh, that's funny
03:46.49 brlcad I implemented a proof of concept for that about 7 years ago
03:46.54 Maloeran Oh?
03:47.11 brlcad got it working, but then abandoned the project because I thought it sucked
03:48.15 Maloeran I'm sure there would be a much better way to generate surface points than raytracing, by inspecting the actual primitives. Or just converting each primitive to a triangle mesh and doing boolean operations on triangle meshes...
03:48.27 brlcad then erik worked on something similar about two years ago (again for lee), and came to similar results but after many more months trying to bring it up to production-quality
03:48.40 brlcad similarly abandonded
03:48.44 Maloeran What was the approach?
03:49.32 brlcad mine was a textbook marching cubes eval
03:49.33 Maloeran I think my point cloud mesh reconstruction code is very nice (very robust, extremely fast), but I'm not sure it's the right solution to the problem to begin with
03:49.43 brlcad like I said, just proof of concept reconstruction
03:50.00 Maloeran Marching cubes from point cloud data? You'll get rounded cubes too...
03:50.24 brlcad i saw that "yeah.. this can .. sorta work ..." but not for lots of types of geometry, not very robustly, and not well at all for flat surfaces and hard edges without a lot more work
03:50.43 Maloeran Yes, I see
03:51.48 Maloeran The ball pivoting algorithm was terribly unreliable and unstable too. It took about 2 months to fix the whole thing with a truly robust algorithm
03:52.52 Maloeran (including the time to write it multithreaded, algorithms built of atomic instructions for perfecty scalability, NUMA-aware, etc.)
03:53.04 brlcad lee seems enamored by the approach, but I guess I just fundamentally dislike the premise of point-sampling CSG
03:53.43 Maloeran So do I, it's not the right approach... unless your points are generated from the actual primitive surfaces
03:54.14 Maloeran If you have a cube, you should have points right on all the edges and corners, or your geometry gets messed up
03:55.02 Maloeran Maybe it's just a first step until a better point sampling method is implemented
03:55.15 brlcad you don't need point sampling -- you have perfect surface information
03:55.36 brlcad the real solution is to just construct the boundary information, then evaluate your boundaries
03:55.41 Maloeran Sure. You could convert to triangle meshes and perform boolean operations on triangle meshes
03:55.43 brlcad that's what we've been working towards
03:56.05 brlcad no no .. that's what we already do, it's terribly difficult to do robustly
03:56.10 Maloeran Oh? I see
03:56.32 brlcad polygonal boundary representation is only sufficient when your starting geometry is polygonal
03:56.57 brlcad that's where nurbs/brep come in (and why pretty much EVERY other commercial CAD system uses them)
03:57.00 Maloeran Well, a conversion to a polygon based representation has many advantages these days
03:57.10 brlcad you can still convert to polygonal
03:58.02 brlcad the issue is when the boolean is evaluated
03:58.07 Maloeran Can I ask what you mean exactly by constructing the boundary information, and evaluating boundaries?
03:58.51 brlcad so take two overlapping mathematical spheres in implicit form (point+radius) being unioned together
03:59.30 brlcad I can evaluate polys for both then join those two meshes, eliminate the interior faces, slice the boundary faces, etc
03:59.53 Maloeran That's what you presently do, and it's difficult to do robustly, right?
04:00.01 brlcad but the problem is that you're attempting to perform the boolean evaluation on already lossy data
04:00.11 brlcad very, np-hard iirc
04:00.46 brlcad it ends up being a search domain problem with an undefined solution with real geometry
04:00.49 Maloeran A different approach would be to generate points all over the spheres, then points precisely on the intersection disk between the two spheres, then reconstruct a mesh from these points
04:01.00 Maloeran That approach doesn't sound too hard
04:01.21 brlcad it's knowing that intersection disk
04:01.28 Maloeran My problem is mostly with the present point sampling method, raytracing...
04:01.30 Maloeran Oh.
04:02.04 Maloeran So you are saying that generating actual points for the intersection between 2 boolean primitives is difficult
04:02.10 brlcad point sampling the implicit definitely has better potential than trying to stitch a mesh that has already thrown away the curve of intersection
04:02.19 Maloeran I guess the primitives involved must be complex than the basic ones I have in mind
04:02.39 Maloeran must be more* complex
04:02.40 brlcad not saying that, but yes for many of the primitives it's insanely difficult
04:02.46 Maloeran I see.
04:02.48 Maloeran Interesting
04:02.56 brlcad polynomial equations of nth order where n can be in the hundreds
04:03.29 brlcad the robust way to do it is convert those implicit spheres into explicit spheres using a spline-suface representation
04:03.44 Maloeran Well, that complicates things a little. I can understand why Lee would want to bombard a CSG object with billions of rays and just reconstruct the geometry
04:03.48 brlcad then perform surface-surface evaluation to evaluate the actual curve of intersection
04:04.15 brlcad you use the curve of intersection to trim the actual original surfaces, resulting in two trimmed surfaces joined by a curve
04:04.31 brlcad from there you can tessellate the two surfaces precisely to whatever resolution one desires
04:04.38 Maloeran Right
04:04.42 brlcad robust, fault and floating point tolerant
04:05.24 Maloeran That surface-surface evaluation sounds tricky with high degree nurbs and such
04:05.51 brlcad it is, but there are some pretty straightforward algorithms out there (and even the dead simple approaches work well enough)
04:06.17 Maloeran I can imagine doing it by bruteforce and converging
04:06.24 brlcad sure
04:06.32 brlcad even that is better than point-sample raytracing ;)
04:06.34 Maloeran If there's some better mathematical magic, I don't presently see it
04:06.40 Maloeran Agreed :D
04:07.00 brlcad for lower-order surfaces, you actually can evaluate the exact curve with some simple reductions
04:08.29 Maloeran Sounds good. It's probably a very complex approach given the wide range of techniques and specialized codes required to handle intersection between any kind of primitive
04:08.55 brlcad not as complex as one would think
04:09.17 Maloeran Ah perhaps... Though I feel I understand Lee a little better in his desire to just bombard billions of rays and get something "close enough"
04:09.28 brlcad getting a nurbs representation in place was a big step, but not as big as directly ray-tracing nurbs, which is done now
04:09.59 brlcad also done was the complex piece of turning each of our primitives into nurbs/brep geometry
04:10.22 Maloeran So every primitive is nurbs/brep?
04:10.32 Maloeran That would simplify things quite a bit
04:10.59 brlcad the only piece remaining (which is slated for later this year) is the surface-surface trimming evaluation
04:12.12 Maloeran I'm a little surprised that both you and Erik worked on something similar years ago
04:12.24 Maloeran And Doug at SURVICE also wrote a new marching cube implementation
04:12.39 Maloeran Then I was asked to write a fast ball pivoting based implementation
04:15.15 brlcad the other problem I have with the sampled approach is that it's inadequate for anything but visualization as there's no way to guarantee that you didn't change topology or miss geometry
04:15.35 brlcad at best you can say you think you got everything within some tolerance
04:15.56 Maloeran Exactly. You can say you didn't miss anything below X milimeters
04:16.21 brlcad if you're lucky and the implementation is sufficiently robust, you might be able to say topology seems to be consistent .. but you can't guarantee that
04:17.01 Maloeran I'm quite confident in my ball pivoting implementation... but I'm biased, and I certainly see your point
04:18.02 Maloeran I guess there's a point where details below a defined size of X can be overlooked for some purposes
04:18.06 brlcad the biggest practical problem I recall running into is how the algorithm responds to real geometry where there are cracks, voids, overlaps, etc
04:18.18 brlcad that and thin-walled geometry being a royal pain
04:18.37 brlcad sheet metal surfaces that are infinitely thin .. and absurdly common
04:18.44 Maloeran Yes, marching cubes have problems with that
04:19.09 Maloeran Ball pivoting has problems too, but of a very different nature
04:19.15 brlcad nods
04:20.13 brlcad so that's why I abandonded the approach 7+ years ago :)
04:20.48 Maloeran I wrote some automatic testing code, generating a big random point cloud kind-of thorus shaped, and I had it running for days on a 24 cores machines, doing thousands of runs to find any kind of error
04:20.57 brlcad I figured even spending just a couple months to get something working robustly enough was wasted time, time I could spend getting closer towards a provably robust, accurate, and the defacto industry approach
04:21.01 Maloeran So until proved otherwise, I remain confident in my code :)
04:21.17 Maloeran Ah yes, I can agree with that
04:21.44 Maloeran But I also see beyond VSL, good point cloud reconstruction code can find uses elsewhere
04:21.50 brlcad oh, I saw that "it 'could' work" even back then .. just not worth it to me :)
04:22.02 Maloeran Ah :)
04:22.17 brlcad worth it to lee, which is why he's kept pressing on
04:22.55 brlcad and if your work is as robust as he hopes, he'll finally have what he was looking for :)
04:23.18 Maloeran In some rare cases, the code can generate a topology that looks a little "weird", but certainly no holes, overlaps or any such error
04:23.22 brlcad surface reconstruction from point cloud data is very useful in itself, no doubt
04:24.06 brlcad hell, that'd be great functionality I've had in mind to add to brl-cad for a while, it's just such a limited domain
04:24.12 brlcad usually model acquisition
04:24.38 Maloeran Yes. Mark from SURVICE said they probably could use that in Metrology
04:24.50 brlcad and if you can get point clouds, you have a lot more surface information right in front of you :)
04:24.55 Maloeran (Instead of paying tens of thousands for software that doesn't always work that well)
04:27.11 Maloeran Completely different topic: compilation of OpenSceneGraph fails due to a lack of -fPIC, do you know their build system for the best way to plug that in?
04:27.28 Maloeran I would fix manually but there are about 300 Makefiles
04:40.55 starseeker Maloeran: which version of OpenSceneGraph are you using?
04:41.54 *** join/#brlcad IriX64 (~kvirc@64.229.211.15)
04:41.55 starseeker They're CMake based, IIRC...
04:42.28 starseeker usually they build without too much fuss
04:42.44 Maloeran Trying to manually install the latest, my Ubuntu is too old and its packages are worthless ;)
04:42.58 starseeker heh
04:43.12 starseeker and the latest fails complaining about -fPIC?
04:43.15 starseeker that's surprising
04:43.20 Maloeran Yes... but -fPIC is already there and it complains anyway. Trying to figure out what's going on.
04:43.32 starseeker yeah, that doesn't sound right
04:43.57 Maloeran More precisely : "/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.4.3/../../../../lib/libavdevice.a(alldevices.o): relocation R_X86_64_32 against `alsa_muxer' can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC"
04:44.32 starseeker uh... that sounds like it's complaining about a system library - libavdevice.a
04:44.43 Maloeran Yes, sounds like I have to rebuild that
04:45.09 starseeker alsa is the sound architecture... you need sound support?
04:46.08 Maloeran Not at all, I'll try disabling that, thanks for the tip
04:46.53 starseeker Bob did some quick OpenSceneGraph tests with MGED's display manager, but we didn't see much in the way of performance improvement - are there some settings to turn on with OSG to get speed-ups?
04:47.49 Maloeran I'm totally unfamiliar with OSG, I'm just trying to build Lee's VSL on my laptop (for the last 3 hours ;))
04:49.53 brlcad Maloeran: on a related topic, any chance of getting your point cloud code open sourced and added to brl-cad? ;)
04:50.28 Maloeran That would be nice, but VSL is going to be open-source or not?
04:50.50 brlcad not
04:50.58 brlcad make it a stand-alone lib
04:51.07 Maloeran Ow.. but I don't think I own the copyright on that code
04:51.16 brlcad so to whomever owns it :)
04:51.54 Maloeran I'll ask Lee, I know Mark wanted to use it somewhere too
04:52.43 Maloeran I'm surprised VSL isn't going to be open-source, but I'm not too informed about the politics
04:52.52 brlcad if it was under contract, mark may have finagled gpr (gov purpose rights) in which case open sourceability is entirely mark's decision
04:53.23 Maloeran I see, I'll have to ask
04:53.25 starseeker Maloeran: just curious - you know anything about this? http://pointclouds.org/
04:53.28 brlcad if it's gov unlimited rights, then it's lee's call
04:53.51 Maloeran Never heard of it, starseeker, reading
04:54.48 Maloeran I know Lee made me investigate MeshLab months ago, their ball pivoting mesh reconstruction was terrible
04:55.10 Maloeran It was 400 times slower than mine, and it created tons of holes, overlaps
04:55.42 starseeker PCL claims to have surface reconstruction and are BSD licensed...
04:56.11 starseeker Maloeran: too bad about Meshlab, but then they're GPL so BRL-CAD can't snarf code from them anyway...
04:56.42 Maloeran Ah right. MeshLab is most horrible anyway
04:57.05 starseeker they can be handy when converting bot formats (stl, obj, etc.) - that's mostly what I use it for
04:57.12 starseeker and they're not a bad viewer
04:57.29 starseeker compiling it... sucks. royally.
04:57.40 Maloeran Eheh
04:58.05 starseeker has pondered feeding points into PCL from raytracing to see what they can do, but it's not been a high priority
04:58.06 Maloeran I'm not finding how to disable sound in OSG, do you have another tip in reserve?
04:58.23 starseeker um. which component is failing?
04:58.36 starseeker (i.e. what are you trying to build when the linker fails)
04:58.41 Maloeran osgdb_ffmpeg.so
04:58.56 starseeker maybe video support?
04:59.02 starseeker FFMPEG is video
04:59.11 Maloeran Under osgPlugins-3.0.0, so it's probably not essential
04:59.44 Maloeran Exactly. Except I'm not finding how to disable it, I never bothered to familiarize myself with the build systems (I mostly hate them)
04:59.56 starseeker you're using cmake-gui?
05:00.08 Maloeran ./configure && make
05:00.15 starseeker erm
05:00.29 starseeker I'd suggest installing cmake, if osg supports it
05:00.44 starseeker Ubuntu does have a CMake package, even if it's a bit old
05:01.19 starseeker I'll stand a lot better chance of helping you if you're building with CMake ;-)
05:01.32 Maloeran Okay :), let me try this
05:01.56 starseeker downloads latest osg
05:02.47 starseeker Maloeran: too bad you hadn't run into PCL before, was hoping you might have some insight into it - now I'll have to do some work :-P
05:02.47 Maloeran Interesting little thing, this cmake-gui
05:02.55 Maloeran Sorry :D
05:05.16 starseeker hmm. well, if it does need ffmpeg you may need to build that from source
05:05.19 Maloeran I can change paths but that doesn't help much. I guess I'll reinstall ffmpeg with more -fPIC
05:06.25 starseeker Maloeran: if you go with the CMake build, you'll probably need to replace all the FFMPEG_* variables with the values for your local build of ffmpeg
05:06.40 starseeker configure might give you some options
05:07.05 Maloeran Yes I saw. Running an outdated Ubuntu and having to install everything manually is a lot of trouble actually
05:07.15 Maloeran I have been installing packages manually for 3-4 hours
05:07.22 starseeker you *might* be able to set FFMPEG_ROOT from the get-go, e.g. cmake .. -DFFMPEG_ROOT=/my/ffmpeg/install
05:07.36 starseeker Maloeran: ``Erik would tell you to upgrade to FreeBSD :-P
05:08.09 starseeker finds Gentoo a good step in the BSD direction without losing all his Linux frame of reference...
05:08.57 Maloeran Yes, my desktop runs Gentoo, it was a bad call to try Ubuntu on the laptop
05:18.04 Maloeran Wonderful, with the latest ffmpeg, OSG just spits out a bunch of compilation errors
05:18.31 Maloeran I think I'll just carry my desktop to keep working on the week-end :)
05:31.06 starseeker or upgrade your laptop OS :-)
05:35.18 starseeker hmm - looks like PCL takes advantage of qhull
05:35.41 starseeker really needs to bug the qhull author about his license (or figure out if it's compatible as-is...)
05:40.03 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * r49226 10/brlcad/trunk/ (include/bu.h src/libbu/str.c): add a bu_strcasecmp companion for bu_strcmp.
05:41.08 starseeker brlcad: did we ever decide if qhull's license is OK for our use?
05:46.39 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * r49227 10/brlcad/trunk/include/bu.h: add a BU_STR_SIMILAR() macro for converting the return value from bu_strcasecmp() into a boolean. future version may wrap a different function if it's expanded to disconsider insignificant whitespace too.
05:51.03 Maloeran I looked at the website, there doesn't seem to be much of a license in the legal sense
06:14.57 brlcad starseeker: my relatively brief reading is that qhull seems fine
06:15.05 brlcad I don't see any new terms that lgpl doesn't already require implicit or explicit
06:15.31 brlcad I'd expect to see some serious feature already using it, not just planned, before it gets integrated though..
06:16.03 brlcad rather specific algorithms to just toss in without regard to our own api and duplicate functionality
06:20.57 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * r49228 10/brlcad/trunk/include/bu.h: rename to BU_STR_EQUIV for equivalence since it's slightly less ambiguous (but shortened to match BU_STR_EQUAL length).
06:22.15 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * r49229 10/brlcad/trunk/src/ (5 files in 3 dirs): propagate BU_STR_EQUIV() where strcasecmp() was being used
06:24.10 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * r49230 10/brlcad/trunk/HACKING: bu_strcasecmp() and BU_STR_EQUIV() instead of stricmp()/strcasecmp()
06:46.45 *** join/#brlcad juanman (~quassel@unaffiliated/juanman)
07:03.40 Maloeran In case anyone was curious, the -fPIC error was caused by a direct reference in assembly in ffmpeg, and the latest OSG can only compile with a ffmpeg 6 months old
10:29.41 *** join/#brlcad jordisayol (~jordisayo@unaffiliated/jordisayol)
12:52.10 *** join/#brlcad csanyipal (~csanyipal@185-169-85-95.dynamic.stcable.net)
12:52.22 csanyipal Hi,
13:00.10 csanyipal can one make an aeroplan with brlcad and after that to investigate it's aerodynamic attributes?
13:00.27 csanyipal a model of aeroplan, of course..
13:45.58 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * r49231 10/brlcad/trunk/src/ (28 files in 21 dirs): since 'new' is a reserved c++ keyword, avoid using it throughout our code. one step closer to being able to compile everything as c++ sources.
13:53.42 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * r49232 10/brlcad/trunk/src/mged/ (chgview.c sedit.h): what? eliminate evil unused global strings
14:36.37 starseeker brlcad: oh, I wasn't planning on snarfing it in now - just wanted to be sure condition 3 requiring name, date and reason for modification to be present if changes were made, wasn't over and above LGPL requirements
14:37.13 starseeker if it is, no point in even investigating qhull without first trying to discuss the license question with the author
14:37.26 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: 03brlcad * r49233 10/brlcad/trunk/src/remrt/remrt.c: straggler bu_vls_init() to = BU_VLS_INIT_ZERO conversion
14:39.08 starseeker csanyipal: um... we don't have much in the way of tools specific to aerodynamic analysis - my understanding is that's a rather specialized sort of analysis
14:43.31 starseeker a quick look around the web turns up XFoil from MIT... http://web.mit.edu/drela/Public/web/xfoil/
14:44.43 starseeker from the finite element perspective there's also http://sourceforge.net/projects/elmerfem/ (GPL) which seems to have some active development...
14:46.20 starseeker there's CEASIOM, but it's not open source... http://www.ceasiom.com/index.php
14:50.29 starseeker might be something of interest here: http://www.dept.aoe.vt.edu/~mason/Mason_f/MRsoft.html
14:53.51 *** join/#brlcad juanman (~quassel@unaffiliated/juanman)
14:54.54 starseeker csanyipal: if you have access to Rhino, this might be of interest: http://wiki.mcneel.com/developer/scriptsamples/airfoil
14:55.05 starseeker BRL-CAD can import 3dm files
14:56.33 starseeker also http://sourceforge.net/projects/xflr5/
14:56.59 starseeker (might be more friendly than xfoil)
14:57.44 starseeker (intended for model aircraft though)
15:01.48 starseeker original NACA report on airfoil shapes... http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19930091108
15:04.18 starseeker and the "5-digit" report... http://hdl.handle.net/2060/19930091610
15:43.24 brlcad starseeker: that clause is interesting, but I didn't read that condition as conflicting lgpl requirements
15:43.59 starseeker um. so the notion of *requiring* something like ChangeLog updates isn't an issue?
15:45.13 brlcad copyright doesn't allow you to claim ownership of something you didn't write, so requiring changes be annotated fulfills that requirement (outside of lgpl)
15:45.22 brlcad i.e., it's something you have to do anyways in some form
15:45.31 starseeker ah. hadn't considered that
15:45.55 starseeker so I guess the only problem spot would be requiring a notation about the reason for the mod
15:46.03 brlcad I mean, I wouldn't bet the farm on it, but the intent is pretty clear to me
15:46.49 brlcad the real question would be if someone downloaded brl-cad that had code from it included, could they comply with both
15:46.56 starseeker nods
15:47.00 brlcad and I'm thinking that they can
15:47.44 starseeker doesn't look to be viral either, if I'm understanding it right - i.e. linking in libqhull doesn't propoagate those requirements to all code
15:48.03 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: 03starseeker * r49234 10/brlcad/trunk/src/other/CMakeLists.txt: whoops, get the lib dir symlinks too.
15:48.24 brlcad doesn't even require source, if I recall
15:48.47 brlcad just IFF you provide source code, you have to make it clear what you've changed
15:49.11 starseeker nods - so pretty much like Apache then - we can't mix it straight in, but we can use it
15:49.52 brlcad still, the fundamental issue also comes back to what they provide that would be more useful than another less complicated lib or even a more minimal subset that we'd write ourselves
15:50.29 brlcad convex hull is a function someone could write in a day
15:50.41 brlcad and wouldn't require data massaging
15:51.09 starseeker doesn't know for sure - just keep seeing qhull pop up when things like triangulation come into play
15:53.12 starseeker Shewchuk's Triange code is a definite no-go - crappy licensing
15:54.43 brlcad qhull's main feature is for supporting convex polyhedra, which is basically a form of our arbn primitive
15:56.13 starseeker wonder what PCL is using it for then
15:56.52 brlcad convex hull undoubtedly
15:56.58 brlcad or delauney triangulation
15:57.46 brlcad given a set of 3d points, get the convex hull, you build up a surface
15:59.06 *** join/#brlcad KimK (~Kim__@209.248.147.2.nw.nuvox.net)
16:00.07 brlcad by itself though, it's just a solution in search of a problem ... :)
16:00.26 brlcad now pcl, that's more interesting and immediately useful ;)
16:01.23 starseeker sure - but I'm guessing pcl's features would probably require qhull's presense, based on my attempt to compile it last night
16:01.40 starseeker hence the qhull question :-)
16:02.27 brlcad from what i read, it's not required
16:03.13 brlcad but I could still see them using qhull under the hood for point cloud processing .. "get me a bounding surface around these points"
16:03.29 brlcad part of pcl's segmentation feature
16:05.39 starseeker nods - k. My initial thought was they were probably using it to triangulate the point cloud into a mesh, but I admit I didn't look closely
16:06.03 starseeker pcl looks to be a mean compile... yay C++
16:06.04 brlcad that'd be why you'd get a bounding surface around points, gives a mesh
16:06.43 starseeker ah, right
16:06.58 starseeker doesn't normally think in terms of meshes as bounding surfaces :-)
16:07.14 starseeker usually come up in geometry conversion questions
16:07.15 brlcad it's fringe interest .. getting it to play with our points primitive would be the main use, and that's not a great modeling interface
16:07.58 starseeker was thinking raytrace to get points -> stuff into PCL -> get back bot...
16:08.09 brlcad yep
16:09.13 brlcad that's the whole discussion from last night
16:09.42 brlcad sure you can do that ... but is it actually less work (to do it well, reliably, robustly) than implementing surface-surface intersections? I think not
16:10.24 brlcad it's data explosion, a sampled approximation, you throw away everything you know about the geometry's structure and then try to recreate it .. .wtf? :)
16:10.59 starseeker heh
16:11.19 starseeker sure - was thinking more of the case of a scanner barfing a point cloud than our own geometry
16:11.53 brlcad yeah, that's the main usefulness to us
16:12.33 brlcad metrology equipment, lidar, vulcan
16:13.15 starseeker even there, would be better to get a NURBS surface than a mesh...
16:14.06 brlcad if you're starting with points, there's not much difference
16:14.28 brlcad you could extract nurbs from mesh, or mesh from nurbs, either derived from point cloud
16:16.13 starseeker true
16:22.04 brlcad that's basically what geomagic does, which comes with most scanners
16:22.44 brlcad and you'd be hard-pressed to implement something better than them without device drivers
16:23.27 brlcad that said, you know it's on our must-do this year to implement bot->nurbs right? if you're looking for a fun project ;)
16:25.28 brlcad and nurbs->mesh
16:30.03 Maloeran Is anyone familiar with Lee's VSL source here?
16:35.29 starseeker Maloeran: nope, sorry :-/
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17:11.56 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: 03starseeker * r49235 10/brlcad/trunk/doc/docbook/resources/other/standard/ (3 files in 2 dirs): Will need some tweaks to the docbook resources setup. This will break things temporarily, but need to change files then move them.
17:17.12 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: 03starseeker * r49236 10/brlcad/trunk/doc/docbook/resources/other/docbook-schema/docbook-5.0.tar.bz2: Another change-before-move commit
17:42.11 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: 03starseeker * r49237 10/brlcad/trunk/doc/docbook/resources/other/ (19 files in 6 dirs): Move some docbook stuff around
17:44.03 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: 03starseeker * r49238 10/brlcad/trunk/doc/docbook/resources/other/ (docbook-schema/ standard/svg/ standard/xsl/): Remove empty dirs
17:45.09 brlcad some exciting possibilities with gsoc 2012
17:46.12 starseeker cusses out the article TEMPLATE.xml file... why did you suddenly stop validating???
17:46.23 starseeker not just the last few commits, either...
17:46.35 brlcad huh, validated when I added it I thought
17:46.40 brlcad at least it spit out html
17:46.59 starseeker yeah, it generates html - I tried enabling the xmllint validation
17:47.08 starseeker sort of "strict flags for docbook"
17:47.44 starseeker oh, wait - is that that new example file you added?
17:48.04 starseeker oh, OK - no wonder, I probably hadn't hit it with xmllint
17:48.07 starseeker phew
17:48.13 starseeker nevermind, carry on
17:49.00 starseeker if you're curious, variable is BRLCAD_EXTRADOCS_VALIDATE
17:49.13 starseeker (marked as advanced for now - set it to ON and you'll see why...)
17:52.04 starseeker eventually, once we get our xml cleaned up, I'd like to tie the default setting of BRLCAD_EXTRADOCS_VALIDATE to the overall strict compilation variable
17:52.36 brlcad ah, okay
17:52.44 brlcad it was pulled together by hand so no surprise
17:54.04 brlcad yep and concur, the same reasons and maintainability benefits for adhering strict applies to xml "code" too :)
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18:10.11 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: 03starseeker * r49239 10/brlcad/trunk/src/other/libpng/projects/vstudio/pngstest/: empty directory
18:28.55 CIA-48 BRL-CAD: 03starseeker * r49240 10/brlcad/trunk/ (3 files in 3 dirs): Turn on the distclean rule. This should be a real distclean, working both in and out of the source directory. Needs more testing. Currently is only likely to work with systems using Makefiles
18:33.46 starseeker cool - http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2012/01/data-and-code-open-sourced-from-googles.html
18:38.10 starseeker brlcad: it will take more testing, and I'm sure it's not the fastest distclean in the world, but hopefully that will do the job
18:38.33 starseeker suddenly in-src-dir development of BRL-CAD becomes viable again :-/
18:38.36 starseeker sort of
18:49.45 csanyipal starseeker: Thanks!!
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22:25.06 starseeker hah - cool, Leslie (former GSoC organizer) has a chapter in the open-advice.org book
22:44.10 starseeker heh - awesome lines from Rich Bowen
22:44.17 starseeker paraphrase:
22:44.38 starseeker "This is the true laziness - not merely shirking work, but doing the work once so well that it never has to be done again."
22:46.04 starseeker programmer zen :-)
22:56.49 starseeker this Open Advice book is actually really cool
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