ZINDAIJI : An Astronomical Many-body Simulation Visualizer


ver. 0.999 (2009/02 updated)

Zindaiji is Windows PC software for visualizing astronomical many-body simulation data.
It allows intuitive exploration of many-body simulation data and easy creation of images and movies.
Zijdaiji is named after a location name near Mitaka Campus, National Observatory of Japan,
This simple document explains the basic usage of Zindaiji.

Purpose

Zindaiji was developed to create 3D movies for NAOJ's 4D2U theaters, but it can also be used as a GUI for viewing many-body simulation data.
By reading in a files with particle positions, speeds and radii in sequential order, Zindaiji can display the simulations results as they evolve in time from any view point. These visualizations can be saved to a series of images or an AVI file. It is also possible to generate left and right eye view movies for 3D visualization.

Unique Features

Zindaiji helps researchers visualize large many-body simulations with an intuitive GUI. It also creates high quality movies suitable for theater presentations. However, it is not typical 3D graphics software designed to render objects with a variety of shapes in 3D.
Zindaiji is designed to display, points, spheres, planes, textures, background images, and other small ornamental details efficiently and beautifully.

System Requirements

Windows 2000 or Windows XP operating system.

*Note*
Zindaiji English version is developed very recently, and the developer is Japanese, so that its ENGRISH is not good.
The application and documents will be polished off by a bilingual collaborator in future.
Sorry for my poor English.

*1.How to install Zindaiji.

Unzip ZindaijiExe3.zip ZindaijiExe7.zipto any folder. Click particlemovie2.exe to start Zindaiji.
Zindaiji requires several dll files. Most of them are zipped in the distribution file.
If some error occurs which says that some dll files are missed, please get them from www and install them.

*2.Read Sample file

*Note*
Sample files are packaged 4D2U-sample CD-R only now.
Not on www, sorry.

Zindaiji can read both ascii- and binary- data file sequence. In Sample\ folder, there is two very simple sample files with position data of 5 particles.

SampleData000.txt
SampleData001.txt

Select File>Open New Data..., and open "Dataload Configuration dialog".

Select "SIMPLE TEXT" in the left listbox, and check "Data Sequence" check-box option. Then, push "Load Data..." button to open file-select dialogbox, and choose SampleData000.txt.

Dataload Configuration Dialog

If data is successfully loaded, 5 dots and other objects such as camera path or coordinate axes are shown in main display window.

Check "sphere" option at "Display Option Window" to render these particles as spheres.

Display Option Window

You can control the view point by mouse-dragging at main window, and you can control time by a slider or buttons in "TimeRun Window".
The particle positions are automatically interpolated between time steps.

*3. Ascii File Format

Each file must have header information and main data. The contens of the sample file SampleData000.txt is as follows. 
0
6
0 0 0 0 0 0 0.1 0
1 0 0 0 0 0 0.1 1
2 0 0 0 0 0 0.1 2
3 0 0 0 0 0 0.1 3
4 0 0 0 0 0 0.1 4

First line is time, next line is particle number, and the following is main particle information.
x y z vx vy vz radius ID, of particle 0
x y z vx vy vz radius ID, of particle 1
... and so on.

You can edit the order of header information and main particle information in "Dataload Configuration dialog". Push "HeaderGRM" or "BodyGRM" button in "Dataload Configuration Dialog" to open "Grammer Configuration Dialog".

Grammer Configuration Dialog (BodyGRM)

You can edit the order of data to load in this dialogbox.
If data which is not used for visualization exists in the file, set dummy to the corresponding position.

*4. Binary File Format.

Since N-body data is usually very large, binary file format is often used. Select "SIMPLE BINARY" in "Dataload Configuration dialog" and you can load binary file(s).
Binary file format is very much like ascii-format except that each data is written in binary (integer and float).

You can also edit the order of header information and main particle information in "Grammer Configuration Dialog".
These editted "grammer" for data loading can be saved or loaded as a grammer file (*.grm)

*Note*

The data reading routine is not foolproof. Loading wrong data type can freeze the application. Please be careful.

*5. Read Binary Sample File.

Sample0??.bin are sample binary files with particle number N~10^5. This data is actual simulation data for the Moon formation.

The file consists of binary data sequence such as,

time(float) particle-number(int) x(float) y(float) z(float) vx(float) vy(float) vz(float) radius(float) ID(int) x(float) y(float) z(float) vx(float) vy(float) vz(float) radius(float) ID(int) ... and so on.

To be more specifically,

7B D0 16 42 81 2E 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 B2 9D AF 3E 00 00 00 00 5B D3 AC BF 81 95 93 3F 17 B7 51 39 34 80 F7 BE EE 7C 1F BF 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 3F 35 3E 3F 00 6F 81 3C 00 00 00 00 E7 1D A7 3C C1 A8 94 3F D0 44 D8 BB .....

(The proto-Earth (particle 1) is set to the origin, so that several 00s appears in the data. Note that the coordinate axes are set to the center of the data, so that the axes do not pass (0, 0, 0).)

The order of data is default one, so that you are not have to edit the order of the data to load.

Select File>Open New Data..., and open "Dataload Configuration dialog". Select "SIMPLE BINARY" and check "Data Sequence" check-box option, and open "sample000.bin".

If the data is loaded successfully, you can see the evolution of spiral pattern around the proto-Earth. Fuss around the application and see what you can do with Zindaiji.

Sorry that English Document is incomplete.