Re: Pseudo3D by distorting the bounding box

Hi,

formulas: Sorry, I don't do this usually, so it will not be quite
usable. In fact it's just a thought. I don't know, if it would display
correctly and in the sense intended.

* expand/contract the referenced path to meet width and height of the
element's bounding box
* P(x,y) an undistorted point of the element
* A displayed point P'(x', y') will depend on the deviations of the
bounding box from the border of the referenced path
* If the two deviations, say, at the top and at the bottom are equal, y'
= y, same for left/right and the x axis
* otherwise x' = x + (deviation_left - deviation_right), y' = y +
(deviation_top - deviation_bottom)

It is quite probable, that one has to take the x deviation for y into
account, since there can be dependencies for complex paths (leading to
some kind of convergence calculation). That's not respected by the above
instructions. Also for twisted paths, spirals and so on, I guess you'll
have a hard time to define the deviation clearly.

On implementor's side in the linear case (see below) it should be
possible to look at how, e.g., GIMP is doing it for pixels or,
for a simple example in SVG (only trapezoids), Inkscape's plugin
"perspective.py", usually living at /usr/share/inkscape/extensions or
%ProgramFiles%\Inkscape\share\extensions. It does it with a simple
python based geometry library (~250 lines code).

The path structure would not neccessarily be conserved (the "non-linear
case"). Consider some "waving path" like a "rectangular" with sinusoid
curves as borders as the source for the distortion. Then a distorted
"normal" rectangular would take on this shape, hence the linear borders
get "waved". This, however, is not implemented in any of the above
examples. But I think, it would be a very powerful feature.

For sake of implementing, the feature could be restricted to a path with
four straight lines, but I think, it would hugely diminish the power of
the idea.

Best,
Manuel

Dr. Olaf Hoffmann schrieb:
> Having some experience already with 3D transformations
> and different projections from 3D to 2D, I'd like to ask some
> questions or to give some suggestions about this, just to 
> get a personal impression:
>
> Maybe it would already help to have some formulas to see,
> how such transformation can be implemented?
>
> If you have it for some examples or even some simulations,
> how this works this could help. For example PHP-scripts doing 
> the  transformation and presenting the result in current SVG,
> this could be already used to explore the behaviour
> and possible difficulties and applications ...
>
> Especially do this conversions conserve the structure
> of the path (straight lines are still straight lines or points,
> cubic beziers are converted just in other cubic beziers 
> just by conversion of points and control points etc) or
> does it create completely new paths, a viewer has to
> calculate for each device pixel?
> I think, with such a simple approach the viewer has
> not to care in a specific way about the rendering order
> as this happens for non trivial 3D-2D projections?
>
>

Received on Monday, 1 September 2008 19:06:28 UTC