MS and Related Applications Announcements

	 Boston University Modeling System (MS) Release 3.1
	 --------------------------------------------------

Version 3.1 of MS, the Boston University 3D modeling and graphics library,
and several new and updated MS based applications have been installed
on the Pub cluster: bu-pub, bass, the Sun 3 workstations, and the SGI
Personnel Iris workstations; the CM Sun front ends: bu-conx and bu-cony;
and the Graphics Lab IBM RS/6000s. Installation on other SCV machines
will be posted to the appropriate "msgs" as they occur.

The following summary highlights the changes and enhancements and provides
some pointers to additional documentation.

		   MS Library V3.1 Highlights
		   --------------------------
Many changes have been made in the MS library. A new, greatly enhanced
and expanded manual, "The MS Reference Manual - Version 3.1" may be
purchased at the reception desk in Information Technology, 111 Cummington
Street. A reference copy of the manual is also available in the Computer
Graphics Laboratory and and in the Physics Workstation room (PRB, Room 586).
Brief on-line manual pages are also available for "ms" and "ccms" using
the Unix "man" command.

The following lists notes the most significant changes in the new version of
MS. A more detailed description can be obtained by issuing the Unix command
"help ms" and selecting the topic "RelNotes_3.1".

  o Larger polygonal models supported
  o Solid texture mapping of polygonal objects
  o New object class, PATCH, to support bicubic surface patches
  o Cubic interpolation for objects of type CURVE
  o PostScript device driver
  o Improved SGI device driver
  o Ability to read compressed geometry and image files
  o Ability to read and write geometry files from standard i/o
  o New Geometry file "magic number"
  o Ability to close image files without reading or writing an image
  o HSV color specification supported
  o Better overall illumination control
  o Object "picking" supported
  o New device subsystem routines for "menu"/"button" devices
  o New X widget devices for valuators and buttons: XDIALn and XBUTTONn
  o Pixel sized particles supported
  o Better line drawing in virtual frame buffers
  o Correction to antialiasing routine name
  o Change in required arguments to ms_copdev and ms_aopdev routines
  o Shading error corrected in polygons with precomputed face normals

			   MSTTY V3.1
			   ----------
A new expanded version of "mstty", the command language interface to
the MS library, has been installed. (An earlier Beta version of this
program based on release V3.0 had been available for some time as
"mstty3"). While the internal structure of this program has been
completely revamped the most noticeable changes to the user are
that there are many new and modified commands, more than 50 new ones;
that a semicolon separated list of commands may be entered on a single
line or enclosed in braces to form a compound command; and that a
an arithmetic expression can be entered anywhere a numeric values is
expected by enclosing the expression in parenthesis. Most C arithmetic
expression can now be used in "mstty". For example, the following is
a valid command line:
  repeat 180 { rotate x (3+0.2*sin(&I)); rotate y 3; render }

A new on-line "man" page is available for "mstty". A printed and
bound copy is also contained in the document "MS Applications"
which may be purchased at the reception desk of Information Technology.

			   MOTEL
			   -----
Motel is a Motif based interface to MS which offers a "point and
click" option for the most commonly used MS commands and operations.
The full "mstty" command language is also available from within Motel.
Other features include a built-in help system, a curve editor,
cascading menus for object selection in the MS object tree, and
a property sheet panel for setting an object's surface characteristics.
In addition to the built-in help system, an on-line man page is available.
This latter document is also available in the publication "MS Applications"
which may be purchased at the reception desk of Information Technology.
Motel is currently only available on the Sparc machines.

			MS Applications
			---------------
A set of packaged applications based on MS has also been installed.
Most of these applications provide an interactive, window based
interface and require either an X Windows or GL based workstation
or display.
	o MSVU
	    A simple interactive (point and click) MS object viewer
	o SURFVU
	    A simple interactive (point and click) program for viewing
	    2D grids of data as height surfaces.
	o CONTOUR
	    A program for constructing contour curves in MS geometry file
	    format from a 2D grid of data.
	o ISOVU
	    A program for creating and optionally viewing isosurfaces from
	    a 3D volume of data.
	o VOLVU
	    A program to view a 3D volume of data by slicing away sections.
	o MOLEC
	    A simple program for creating and/or viewing objects composed of
	    spheres, e.g. molecular models.

On-line "man" pages are available for all of the above programs.
Printed and bound versions of the manual pages may also be found
in the document "MS Applications" which may be purchased at the
reception desk of Information Technology.
Most of this applications are not available on the Sun 3 workstations.