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GVLware Distribution:
	Bob  - An interactive volume renderer for the SGI
	Raz  - A disk based movie player for the SGI
	Icol - Motif color editor
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Do you have a Silicon Graphics Iris?  Are you drowning in data?
	So are we. :)

The Army High Performance Computing Research Center (AHPCRC) has been
developing a set of tools to work with large time dependent 2D and 3D
data sets.  In the Graphics and Visualization Lab (GVL) we are using
these tools along side standard packages, such as SGI Explorer and the
Utah Raster Toolkit, to render 3D volumes and create digital movies.
A couple of the more general purpose programs have been bundled into a
package called "GVLware".

GVLware, currently consisting of Bob, Raz and Icol, is now available
via ftp.  The most interesting program is probably Bob, an interactive
volume renderer for the SGI.  Raz streams raster images from disk to
an SGI screen, enabling movies larger than memory to be played.  Icol
is a color map editor that works with Bob and Raz.  Source and
pre-built binaries for IRIX 4.0.1 are included.

To acquire GVLware, anonymous ftp to:
	machine	- ftp.arc.umn.edu
	file	- /pub/gvl.tar.Z

To use GVLware:
	mkdir gvl ; cd gvl
	zcat gvl.tar.Z | tar xvf -
	more README

Some Bob features:
	Motif interface, SGI GL rendering
	Renders 64 cubed data set in 0.1 to 1.0 seconds on a VGX
	Alpha Compositing and Maximum Value rendering, in perspective
	    (only Maximum Value rendering on Personal Iris)
	Data must be a "Brick of Bytes", on a regularly spaced grid
	Animation, subvolumes, subsampling, stereo

Some Raz features:
	Motif interface, SGI GL rendering
	Loads files to a raw disk partition, then streams to screen
	    (requires an empty disk partition to be set aside)
	Script interface available for movie sequences
	Can stream from memory, like NCSA XImage
	
Some Icol features:
	Motif interface
	Easy to create interpolated color maps between key points
	RGB, HSV and YUV color spaces, multiple file formats
	Communicates changes automatically to Bob and Raz
	Has been tested on SGI, Sun, DEC and Cray systems

BTW:	Bob  == Brick of Bytes
	Icol == Interpolated Color
	Raz  == ? (just a name)


Please send any comments to
	gvlware@ahpcrc.umn.edu

This software collection is supported by the Army Research Office
contract number DAALO3-89-C-0038 with the University of Minnesota Army
High Performance Computing Research Center.


Ken Chin-Purcell

P.S.  For those without data, a sample volume is located in the same
archive directory as GVLware.  The file mol.150x150x150.Z is a 
brick of bytes 150 on a side of the electron density function
of a molecule.
