How to visualize a graph/network in 3D - graph

I am working with networks which vertices are nodes of brain areas with specific coordinates.
I need to visualize these networks in a 3D enviroments in order to improve the understanding of my results.
Up to now I have tried to plot them using rglplot of igraph library in R, but the result is not so good in truth.
Currently I am plotting them using projection on each pair of axis (XY, XZ, YZ).
Futhermore I also have tried several tools like gephi, but it seems that 3D is not really supported.
There is some tool or software for visualizing a network in a 3D space?

It turns out that in fact Gephi supports 3d display of graphs, only to see the effect you have to pan the graph in the Overview Pane by keeping you mouse's scroll wheel pressed! Also the rotation options are limited to rotating on the x-axis
See the example below for the Les Miserables graph laid out with the Force Atlas 3d algorithm
You can also set the coordinates from within the Data Laboratory with the aid of the Data laboratory helper plugin. See a screenshot below

Related

How to create 2D slices of 3D object model in Qt?

I'm currently rendering a 3D model (Wavefront .obj format) in my Qt program. Right now, I'm rendering the model using Scene3D in QML, and I'm able to get it to display in the viewing area. What I would like to do is have a user click on the model and generate a 2D cross section of the slice that I would like to plot on a different window. I'm quite new to 3D rendering, and a lot of Qt documentation isn't very descriptive. I've been reading Qt documentation, experimenting, and searching online with no luck. How can I create 2D slices of a 3D object Model in Qt 3D, preferably in QML? What Qt libraries or classes can I use to achieve this?
Unfortunately, the fact that models are stored as a set of surfaces makes this hard. QT probably doesn't have a built in method for this.
Consider, for example, that a model made of faces might be missing a face. What now? can you interpolate across that gap consistently from different angles? What about the fact that a cross-section probably won't contain any vertices?
But, of course, it can be solved. First, just don't allow un-closed surfaces (meshes with holes). Second, for finding the vertices of your cross-section, perform an intersection between every edge in your model and the plane you're using, and if there's an intersection, there's a point there. Third, to find the edges, look at the list of vertices, and any two that are from an edge on the same polygon in the mesh should be connected by an edge in the cross section. To find which direction the edge should go, project the normal of the polygon onto the plane your using. For filling, I don't really know what to do. I guess that's whatever you want it to be.

Map 3D point cloud onto surface then flatten

Mapping a point cloud onto a 3D "fabric" then flattening.
So I have a scientific dataset consisting of a point cloud in 3D, this point cloud comprises points on a surface that is curved. In order to perform quantitative analysis I however need to map these point clouds onto a surface I can then flatten. I thought about using mapping tools sort of like in the case of the 3d world being flattened onto a map, but not sure how to even begin as I have no experience in cartography and maybe I'm trying to solve an easy problem with the wrong tools.
Just to briefly describe the dataset: imagine entirely transparent curtains on the window with small dots on them, if I could use that dot pattern to fit the material the dots are on I could then "straighten" it and do meaningful analysis on the spread of the dots. I'm guessing the procedure would be to first manually fit the "sheet" onto the point cloud data by using contours or something along those lines then flattening the sheet thus putting the points into a 2d array. Ultimately I'll probably also reduce that into a 1D but I assume I need the intermediate 2D step as the length of the 2nd dimension is variable (i.e. one end of the sheet is shorter than the other but still corresponds to the same position in terms of contours) I'm using Matlab and Amira though I'm always happy to learn new tools!
Any advice or hints how to approach are much appreciated!
You can use a space filling curve to reduce the 3d complexity to a 1d complexity. I use a hilbert curve to index lat-lng pairs on a 2d map. You can do the same with a 3d space but it's easier to start with a simple curve for example a z morton order curve. Space filling curves are often used in mapping applications. A space filling curve also adds some proximity information and a new sort order to the 3d points.
You can try to build a surface that approximates your dataset, then unfold the surface with the points you want. Solid3dtech.com has the tool to unfold the surfaces with the curves or points.

a planet in openGL: vector data or texture mapping?

I am completely new to 3D and started with Jeff Lamarche's tutorials as an introduction to openGL ES for iPhone, then so far, I am able to draw a spinning sphere, which will the base of my application.
What I want to do is render a planet Earth, thanks to 2D GIS vector data (polygones, lines or points with latitude/longitude or x/y coord).
I want to be able to turn different layers on/off and maybe able to identify an object that wold be touched.
My questions are :
would it be easier to rasterize my vector data to use them as image texture or apply the vector data onto the sphere (keeping in mind that I want to turn on/off the layers, the touch-enabled objects being optional)?
would it be easier to use a software like blender to draw the planet and add the layers rather than starting with the sphere I already have (procedural sphere)?
do the export tool from blender to opengl work well?
This kind of question is difficult to answer in general. Technically your intention sounds a lot like if you would like to write a program like Google Earth or KDE Marble. Since you're referring to GIS data you will require very high resolution. Textures only make sense for limited resolution data.
GIS applications usually work using hybrid approaches where some vector data are rendered directly (roads, waters, borders), while others are rendered to texture and the texture, or more accurately texture tiles, being used as caches, for example for building outlines in dense cities or the like. However data as it comes from say OSM can be directly rendered as vector data, since they are not very dense.

3D mesh to particle cloud conversion

I need to convert arbitrary triangulated 3D mesh to cloud of particles that are uniformly spaced.
First thought was to try find a way to fill one 3D triangle. And then fill each triangle of mesh, removing duplicated particles on edges, but that's just hard and too much work. I was hoping for some more-math way.
Can anyone point me to an algorithm which can help me do my task correctly... well, at least approximatively?
Thanks
There are two main options:
Voxelization of mesh. Easy to implement the conversion of mesh to voxels, but it's inaccurate since uniform spacing cannot be achieved: distance between cubes can be x, x*sqrt(2) or x*sqrt(3) depending if neighbor cubes are in same plane and adjacent.
Poisson disk sampling on surface. Hard to implement and lack of research material and code, but mathematically very correct. Some links:
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=135760
http://web.mysites.ntu.edu.sg/cwfu/public/Shared%20Documents/dualtiling/index.html
You could convert the TIN to raster using a GIS package or software such as R, then retrieve one point at the center of each pixel representing the value. (Example in ArcGIS)
EDIT: If the irregular 3D mesh has multiple heights per {x, y} a similar approach would be to sample the mesh using a voxel "grid" and keep one value per voxel. GRASS GIS has the functionality to take the vertices of the TIN (3d mesh) and convert them to voxels, then back to a regular 3d cloud.

Generating 3D TV stereoscopic output programmatically

Do you know what would be the best approach to generate 3D output for one of these new "3D ready" televisions from software. Our application have some nice 3D visualizations, we want these to look nice.
Also, how feasible is it to generate it from a Flash (Flex) app.
I believe that the gaming and 3DTV industries have paved the way for you. As long as your app already outputs 3D visualizations, it may just be a matter of installing a driver. You can get started with this NVIDIA 3D Stereo User’s Guide, but I believe there's tons of other stuff out there if you look.
See also the answers to this question.
3D televisions can display 3D output only for images shot in 3D. This means "intended for simulated 3D," not just a two-dimensional projection of a 3D image.
Stereoscopy is produced by generating two completely separate images per frame (one for each eye) in which the foreground objects are offset to simulate a 3D image. You cannot take a 2D image and make it into a 3D image, the source frames must be produced as 3D frames from the beginning.
More information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_television
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscopy

Resources