Welcome to SPIERSview’s User Manual

[S]erial [P]alaeontological [I]mage [E]diting and [R]endering [S]ystem: Three-dimensional interactive viewer

Main Coding: Mark Sutton

Additional Coding: Russell J. Garwood, Alan R.T. Spencer

Documentation: Mark Sutton, Russell J. Garwood, Alan R.T. Spencer

SPIERSview is a stand-alone program for viewing and manipulating of three-dimensional models. It understands five different file formats, the first four of which it can also output.

t:@palaeoware

w:https://github.com/palaeoware.

Relevant references

Sutton, M.D., Garwood, R.J., Siveter, D.J. & Siveter, D.J. 2012. Spiers and VAXML; A software toolkit for tomographic visualisation, and a format for virtual specimen interchange. Palaeontologia Electronica 15(2): 15.2.5T

Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction and File Formats
• 2. System Requirements and Triangle Count
  • 2.1. System Requirements
  • 2.2. Triangle Count
• 3. Starting SPIERSview
  • 3.1. Opening a file
  • 3.2. Initial processing
• 4. Basic viewing and manipulation
  • 4.1. Moving, rotating and zooming
  • 4.2. Touch screen support
  • 4.3. Object visibility
  • 4.4. Stereoscopic 3D viewing
  • 4.5. Full Screen Mode
  • 4.6. Background Colour
  • 4.7. Bounding Box Mode
  • 4.8. Lighting
• 5. Anti-aliasing
• 6. Object Panel
  • 6.1. Selection
  • 6.2. Groups
  • 6.3. Position in object panel
  • 6.4. Object properties
• 7. Advanced Object properties
  • 7.1. Fidelity
  • 7.2. Transparency
  • 7.3. Shininess
  • 7.4. Island Removal
  • 7.5. Smoothing
  • 7.6. Resurfacing
• 8. Manipulating objects independently
• 9. Multi-piece datasets
• 10. Clipping panel
• 11. Lighting Panel
  • 11.1. Colour
  • 11.2. Light positioning
  • 11.3. Shadows
  • 11.4. Light power
  • 11.5. Light activation
• 12. Info panel
• 13. Saving and exporting
  • 13.1. SPIERSview compact and presurfaced files (.spv)
  • 13.2. SPIERSview finalised files (.spvf)
  • 13.3. VAXML/STL datasets
  • 13.4. DXF files
  • 13.5. Blender / FBX export (experimental)
  • 13.6. Screen Capture
• 14. Animation System
  • 14.1. Understanding Image Output
  • 14.2. Rotation and Zoom Settings
  • 14.3. Commands Applying Animation Steps
• 15. Scale and Measurement
  • 15.1. Scale Grid
  • 15.2. Point-to-Point measurement
  • 15.3. Rescaling objects
• 16. Update System
• 17. Appendix A - VTK Usage
  • 17.1. Introduction
  • 17.2. Fidelity Reduction
  • 17.3. Island Removal
  • 17.4. Smoothing
  • 17.5. STL reader
  • 17.6. PLY reader