IGUANA: A high-performance 2D and 3D visualisation system

The IGUANA project has developed visualisation tools for multiple high-energy experiments. At the core of IGUANA is a generic, high- performance visualisation system based on OpenInventor and OpenGL. This paper describes the back-end and a feature-rich 3D visualisation system built on it, as well as a new 2D visualisation system that can automatically generate 2D views from 3D data, for example to produce R/Z or X/Y detector displays from existing 3D display with little effort. IGUANA has collaborated with the open-source gl2ps project to create a high-quality vector postscript output that can produce true vector graphics output from any OpenGL 2D or 3D display, complete with surface shading and culling of invisible surfaces. We describe how it works. We also describe how one can measure the memory and performance costs of various OpenInventor constructs and how to test scene graphs. We present good patterns to follow and bad patterns to avoid. We have added more advanced tools such as per-object clipping, slicing, lighting or animation, as well as multiple linked views with OpenInventor, and describe them in this paper. We give details on how to edit object appearance efficiently and easily, and even dynamically as a function of object properties, with instant visual feedback to the user.