Native 3D widgets in PVSS 3.6 - technology overview Piotr Golonka CERN IT/CO-BE FWWG meeting 07 Decem ber 2006 “Native” widgets: EWO ● PVSS EWO – “Extended Widget Object”, in PVSS 3.5 – A dynamic library, loaded by PVSS0ui ● Compiler compatibility! – Uses Qt/3 framework ● Qt 3.3.6 – Requires commercial license for development on Windows ● qmake-based, portability-assuring build system ● QWidget base class ● Slots, signals, properties – out of the box ● The variety of Qt features available out of the box – Database access, XML, networking/web, OpenGL, – Needs to follow some conven tions ● Example of an “EWO” code available in the api/ folder In quest of 3D... ● Silicon Graphics: two standards for 3D graphics API – OpenGL ● Open, “industry standard” ● Hardware-accelerated on all graphic cards nowadays ● Low-level functions – Shaders, nodes, planes – OpenInventor ● Higher-level, object-oriented, extendable framework API (C/C++) – Scenes, spheres, cubes, cameras, animators – User-interaction and event handling ● Viewers and manipulators ● Object picking, selecting, highlighting ● Uses OpenGL for low level ● Bindings to windowing system : Xt, Windows, Java, ... OpenGL and OpenInventor ● OpenGL: a part of your operating system! ● OpenInventor... – Open specification – many implementations possible – COIN3D (www.coin3d.org) ● Portable: Windows, Unix, Linux, Mac, *BSD ● Open Source (GPL) or “Professional Edition” – Open Source available on ALL platforms! ● May use a variety of windowing system bindings - “extensions” – native Windows - SoWin – Cocoa on MacOS - Sc21 – X11/Xt on UNIX - SoXt – Qt (any supported) – SoQt ● We tried COIN+SoQt on Win dows and Linux – Compiled from sources, not a big effort: two DLLs COIN3D: OpenInventor API implementation COIN3D/SoQt application SoQt: rapid development... #include <Inventor/Qt/SoQt.h> #include <Inventor/Qt/viewers/SoQtExaminerViewer.h> #include <Inventor/nodes/SoBaseColor.h> #include <Inventor/nodes/SoCone.h> #include <Inventor/nodes/SoSeparator.h> int main(int argc, char ** argv) { QWidget * mainwin = SoQt::init(argc, argv, argv[0]); SoSeparator * root = new SoSeparator; root->ref(); root->addChild(new SoCone); SoQtExaminerViewer * eviewer = new SoQtExaminerViewer(mainwin); eviewer->setSceneGraph(root); eviewer->show(); SoQt::show(mainwin); SoQt::mainLoop(); return 0; } Missing pieces ● 3D Geometry Shapes (a`la GEANT) – Already provided by the IGUANA project (CMS Visualization) ● They use Coin3D/SoQt as well; support ? ● Some problems with compilation on Windows need to be resolved ● Data source – May use Qt's SQL module to query them from a database – Load VRML or OpenInventor files (“Caching”? Simpler code) ● Dynamic loading of the OI shape extensions possible “on the flight” ● Parse the data and create the scene ● Add PVSS infrastructure for widget control – Properties, signals, etc – Picking and selecting objects, interface to PVSS Technologies to pick up... ● EWOs – Build system (qmake-based) ● Already set up! – Architecture for EWOs: relatively easy ● Passing data/events between PVSS and C++ code of the EWO – Qt: some basic concepts ● Open Inventor – “The Inventor Mentor” - available in the CERN library – Most bulky part; need to pick up some concepts – Plenty of examples on the web ● DB Connectivity – Qt: relatively intuitive PVSS GEANT Geometry Shapes for Open Inventor EWO SoQt Coin3D Qt Open Inventor ● We've gone already quite far – Integration of technologies ● Build system, development environment ● Compiled COIN3D, SoQt into DLLs, ported IGUANA parts – Evaluation of technologies ● Portability ● Availability on both platforms – Simple “proof of concept”: ● embed a viewer into an EWO ● The development may be done as a “standalone program” at first, then “wrapped” into an EWO ● How much to do remains? It depends....