Icon Files

[edward]

I've started a new thread for hoknahman's question:

What programs can draw vector icons (i mean SGI's icon format) and where i can find iconsmith in sources (to compile it under Linux) or iconsmith for Linux ?

The .icon files that you can use under $HFS/houdini/config/Icons/Sample are in the desktop icon format from the SGI platform. A description can be found here:

Icon Description Language. It's an ASCII vector format. As far as I know, there is no public source for manipulating it. On Irix, there's a utility called iconsmith which allows you to draw and output to this format.

Having said that, there's a little known program called "gicon" which you will find in $HFS/bin. It converts geometry files into the .icon format. If you type "gicon -" at the command line, you get the following help:

Usage:  gicon <geo_file> [<geo_files> ...]

gicon will convert houdini geometry files into iconsmith-style icons that

can be used in houdini.  One or more .geo or .bgeo files can be listed,

and corresponding .icon files will be created for them.  For example,

       gicon myicon.geo

will create an icon called myicon.icon.

All geometry will be converted to polygons and projected onto the xy-plane.

The relative size of the geometry inside its 2D uniform bounding box determines

its size in the icon.  Primitives in the icon are drawn in increasing order by

z-depth value, so higher primitives draw over top of lower ones.  Polygons on

the same plane will hole each other if they are inside each other.  Their draw

order will be approximately the primitive number order.

Polygons are drawn with their primitive colors, not their point colors.  Closed

ones are drawn shaded and open ones are drawn in wireframe.

So on non-Irix platforms, I've actually had good success at drawing icons using Houdini's curve sop in the front ortho view and then adding primitive colors and doing more.