
              Release Notes
              Amira(tm) 2.1
              March, 2000


Introduction


  This document describes changes and improvements in version 2.1 of the
  Visualization and Geometry Reconstruction System Amira(tm).
 
  The most noticeable change in Amira 2.1 is the support of the 
  Microsoft Windows(tm) platform. The Unix and Windows versions of Amira 2.1 
  provide the same functionality and an almost identical user interface.



Supported platforms
  

  - Microsoft Windows NT4, 95, 98
    (with OpenGL supported graphics cards)
  - HP Visualize with HP-UX 10.20 (fx4, fx6 graphics)
  - SGI Irix 6.5.x (all SGI graphics cards)
  - SUN Solaris 2.7 (Creator 3D, Elite 3D graphics or better)
  - Linux (RedHat 6.x, Suse 6.2)

  Details about Software and Hardware configuration are given 
  in the section "System Requirements" in the Users Guide, included
  in the distribution and available at http://www.amiravis.com.



Changes and Improvements


  - The interactive image segmentation editor (GI) has been 
    significantly improved. Improvements include: 

      + real-time switching between different orientations
      + simultaneous editing in multiple orientations
      + support for non-uniform voxel sizes
      + support for stacked image fields, i.e. variable slice distances
      + improvement of the "Magic Wand" tool
      + new threshold dialog.

  - Full geometry reconstruction pipeline for image data with variable
    slice distances (including LabelFields, interactive segmentation,
    resampling, and surface generation).

  - Material names and colors in tetrahedral grids, surfaces and LabelFields
    can be edited interactively now. All parameters and materials can be
    fully accessed via a script interface. Parameters can be organized
    hierarchically now.

  - The interactive crop editor now supports all types of fields with
    regular coordinates, i.e. vector fields and color fields in addition
    to scalar fields.

  - Support for hexahedral grids and fields:
      + unstructured hexahedral grids and scalar as well as vector fields 
	defined on these grids can be processed
      + different file formats supporting hexahedral grids:
        AmiraMesh, AVS UCD (ASCII and binary), Fluent/UNS
      + module to convert between hexahedral and tetrahedral grids
      + GridVolume module for hexahedral grids (including pseudo coloring)
      + Isosurface module for hexahedral scalar fields
      + many standard modules (including DisplayISL, Oblique Slice, 
        PlanarLIC) supporting hexahedral data.

  - In all modules derived from HxViewBase (e.g. SurfaceView, GridVolume,
    GridBoundary) elements can now be selected by drawing contours in the 
    viewer -- in addition to the box-based selection mechanism.

  - Online documentation can be searched for keywords now.

  - Colormaps are stored along with TIFF files, in LabelField export.



New Modules, New File Formats


  - module to compute contours from LabelFields

  - module for printing text annotations in the viewer

  - module for computation of distance fields

  - module for smoothing triangular surfaces

  - completely revised module for generation of tetrahedral grids: grids
    can now be generated on-the-fly without using the batch queue -- with
    improved performance and better grid quality

  - module for shearing stacks of image slices

  - the PlanarLIC module now can use an independent scalar field for
    pseudo-coloring

  - DXF and ASCII export for line sets; stacked contours can be written
    to separate files.

  - DXF file format supported for surface data (read and write)

  - STL reader for surface data (ascii and binary)

  - support for bmp, png, and eps image file formats (2D and 3D image
    data, eps write-only)

  - support for 16 bit 2D TIFF files

  - support for Altair's HyperMesh(r) file format (read and write)

  - support for Plot 3D file format (read and write)



Compatibility with Amira 2.0


  - Amira 2.1 can read all data files created with Amira 2.0.

  - The handling of materials and parameters in AmiraMesh(TM) files 
    has slightly changed. Therefore problems may occur if AmiraMesh(TM) 
    files written with Amira 2.1 are read back into Amira 2.0.

  - The scripting interface has changed slightly. Therefore networks
    written with Amira 2.0 may not always load into Amira 2.1 in the
    expected way. Correct or rebuild such networks and save them 
    again in Amira 2.1.



More Information and Contacts:


  http://www.amiravis.com
  http://www.tgs.com


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Amira and AmiraMesh are trademarks of ZIB Berlin and Indeed -
Visual Concepts GmbH, Berlin. Open Inventor is a trademark of Silicon
Graphics Inc. Microsoft, Visual C++, Windows, Windows NT and Win32 are
either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. 
TGS and IVF are trademarks of Template Graphics Software Inc. 
HyperMesh is a registered trademark of Altair Engineering GmbH.
