[Tugindia] 3D Graphics in PStricks

[Kapil Hari Paranjape]

Hello,

On Sun, Aug 01, 2004 at 07:06:49PM +0530, Habeeb Basha Syed wrote:
>  Is it possible to draw 3 dimensional graphics in Latex using
>   PS tricks or any other package..

It is not clear what you mean by "3-D graphics". Since TeX deals with
the printed page (which is two-dimensional) you probably mean some 2-D
projection of a 3-D image.

Secondly, you need to specify what 2-D format is going to be used for
printing/presentation. Since you mention PS-tricks let us assume that
you mean "postscript".

Finally, (but most importantly) you need to specify your 3-D image. This
could be done in a number of different ways (see for example 
http://www.linuxartist.org/3d/3d.html).

To create your document you need to render (in postscript) this 2-D
projection of the 3-D specification. You will find a number of programs
at the link above that will perform such a rendering.

Perhaps your question is whether there is an extension of the PS-tricks
graphics description language that allows you to specify a 2-D
projection of a 3-D image and thus use TeX+dvips to perform the
rendering directly.

Short Answer: Not as far as I know.

Longer Answer: I believe it should be possible to tweak PS-tricks,
metapost or other TeX/LaTeX graphics languages to produce 3-D but it
will take some work. Probably the usage of 3-D images among TeX users is
not large enough to motivate people to undertake this task. You may
think otherwise --- hint, hint :-)

Regards,

Kapil.

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