Adding External Objects to Jim's 3-D Display
Jim can load objects into the 3-D display if they are defined
externally in files that describe the shape as a set of polygons. Jim
can load obects in these file formats:
Various tools in Jim can create VRML object files, including
the Brain Finder and the
the Fuzzy Connector. After a VRML file has
been created on disk, it can then be loaded into the 3-D display.
To add geometry defined in one of the formats above, files, select Load
from 3D file ...
from the File
menu of the 3-D Viewer:
A dialog will now appear, for you to select the 3D geometry file.

Select the geometry file that you want to display. Either click on the
button, or type in the path to
the geometry file name (and press return).
Note: geometry files tend to be quite large and can take a long
time to load.
If the geometry file contain suitable geometry that can be displayed by
Jim, then it will now appear in the 3-D display.
Note: Not all geometry files will contain geometry that can be
displayed, since they can describe other 3-D elements,
such as interactions and movement. If the VRML file does not contain
displayable geometric objects, Jim will pop up an error message.
You can change the appearance of the geometric objects displayed by changing
the following settings:
- Opacity. The opacity has a value between 0 (completely
transparent) and 1 (completely opaque).
Change the opacity using the opacity slider.

- Colour. The default colour with which the surface or outlines are
rendered is grey. To change the colour, click on the
button and select the new colour from
the colour chooser that will pop up.
Note: VRML allows the colours of individual geometry nodes (vertices)
to be specified, whilst setting the colour will set the colour off all nodes the
same. If you change the colour of a VRML object in this way, the per-vertex
colours will be lost and you would need to reload the VRML file to get them
back. For example, the VRML brain surface produced by the
Brain Finder tool has the colours of
the triangular mesh set to different shades of grey according to the depth
of the sulci.
- Surface shininess. The surface shininess has a value between 1 and 128.
Change the shininess using the
spinner.
- Render mode. Surface meshes loaded from a VRML file can be rendered as:
- A solid surface. Select a render mode of "Fill".
- A mesh of lines connecting the vertex points. Select a render mode of "Wire frame".
- A cloud of vertex points. Select a render mode of "Points".
The pictures below are a VRML brain surface extracted by the Brain Finder, and a Wavefront OBJ file
created externally.
If you click the
button, the
the objects will be removed from the 3-D viewer.