Version 0.3, Jan. 12, 2015
Homer is a program to visualize computer simulations data (typically Molecular Dynamics data) in an easy manner. It is developed to replace Yaplot, mainly because Yaplot's code depends on X, which can make it hard to install on a recent machine. Homer is thus mostly a clone of Yaplot, based on the same idea of a simple set of commands interpreted to render an intentionally basic representation of 3D data.
Homer is still in development stage, so some bugs or early design flaws are to be expected :) Also, so far not all of Yaplot features are available. As of v0.3, Yaplot-style command files containing lines, sticks, circles, polygons and texts are processed by Homer. The layer, color and radius commands are supported. Most display features offered by Yaplot are available, the only notable exception being the perspective control. Also the possibility to display multiple input files is still very primitive in Homer. As an original feature, on can translate the field of view.
Homer needs a Python 2.7 interpreter and the numpy and PySide packages. You can install these packages individually or get them through a Python distribution like Anaconda or Enthought.
You can run Homer as follows:
$ python path_to_homer/src/homer.py your_command_file
Currently, Homer supports the following subset of Yaplot's data format:
| Command | Result |
|---|---|
| Empty line | New frame |
| @ [0-9] | Set the color of following objects (see default color palette below) |
| y [1-12] | Set the layer of following objects |
| r x | Set the thickness/radius of following objects to x |
| l x1 y1 z1 x2 y2 z2 | Draw a line from 1 to 2 |
| s x1 y1 z1 x2 y2 z2 | Draw a stick (line with thickness) from 1 to 2 |
| c x y z | Draw a circle centered on x,y,z |
| p n x1 y1 z1 ... xn yn zn | Draw a n-point polygone |
| t x y z s | Print text string s on x,y,z |
| tt s | Print title string s |
Default colors:
| Index | Color |
|---|---|
| 0 | Qt.black |
| 1 | Qt.gray |
| 2 | Qt.white |
| 3 | Qt.green |
| 4 | Qt.yellow |
| 5 | Qt.red |
| 6 | Qt.blue |
| 7 | Qt.magenta |
| 8 | Qt.darkGreen |
| 9 | Qt.cyan |
User can override this default palette. Just create a file called `homer_palette.py" in the directory where you launch homer. In this file, you can define a color palette as, for example:
from PySide.QtCore import Qt
from PySide.QtGui import QColor
color_palette = [ Qt.black, Qt.gray, Qcolor(200,200,200,100), ... ]
The number of colors is unlimited. Colors must be Qt colors.
| Command | Result without prefix | Result with number i prefix |
|---|---|---|
| Mouse left-button drag | Rotate field of view | - |
| Shift + Mouse left-button drag | Translate field of view | - |
| Tab | Reset rotation and translation | - |
| * | Zoom in | - |
| / | Zoom out | - |
| + | Increase opacity | - |
| - | Decrease opacity | - |
| n | Next frame | Move forward by i frames |
| p | Previous frame | Move backward by i frames |
| N | Forward movie | Framerate i |
| P | Backward movie | Framerate i |
| Space | Stop movie | - |
| g | Move to the first frame | Move to frame i |
| G | Move to the last frame | - |
| [F1 - F12] | Switch on/off layer [1-12] | - |
| v | Switch on/off top left information text | - |