Using Plugins

On the main Morphanalyser window, click 'Plugins' -> 'Add a Plugin' to add a plugin. A file browser window will open, select a jar file containing one or more Batchable3D and/or Plugin3D classes. The plugin will add a new cascaded menu to the Plugins menu, the cascaded menu will contain each "Batchable3D" class as both a single and a batch item on the "Plugins" sub menu.

To remove a plugin, click 'Plugins' -> 'remove an existing Plugin'

If the jar file for plugin is not available, here is an example of how to get and compile MorphAnalyserPlugins with Netbeans:

Menu Team->Subversion->Checkout.
On Repository URL, type '​http://cherry.dcs.aber.ac.uk/svn/svn' and click next.
On Repository Folder, type 'MorphAnalyserPlugins/trunk'. Check Skip trunk. Verify if the local folder is Ok and click finish.
After checkout completed, open the MorphAnalyserPlugins project or accept if Netbeans proposes to.
In the project properties, add the following dependance libraries: FaceMorphLib.jar, Morphanalyser.jar and jogl (j3dcore.jar, j3dutils.jar, vecmath.jar)
Clean and compile. The corresponding jar is generated in the dist folder of the project.

Using Factories

Beside Plugins, Factories can be added to Morphanalyser for personalized tasks. Factories are added in the same way as Plugins. If the selected jar contains one or more classes implementing a particular Factory, a new selectable factory is added to the Plugins menu ( in Factores submenu).

Morphanalyser uses Factories to specify the way that the 3D objects are loaded and rendered. The default Factory (installed by default) is DefaultObjectGeometryFactory. It makes Morphanalyser load a geometry and render it with only one texture. This file needs to be in the same directory as the object file and have the same base name. For example, if we want to open an object whose name is "face.obj", its corresponding texture must be located in the same directory, with the name "face.jpg" or "face.bmp".

There is another Factory that can be used for multitexture rendering ( MultiTextureObjectGeometryFactory ). It is included in the MorphAnalyserPlugins (so if MorphAnalyserPlugins.jar is added as plugin, another factory will appear in the Factories submenu : MultiTextureObjectGeometryFactory ). It implements a bump mapping rendering technique which requires 4 normal maps (red, green, blue and specular) and 2 textures (diffuse and specular). If selected the folder containing the object to open must also contain a text file with the same base name as the object and the extension ".multi" that says where to find the different normal maps and texture (in the following order: red normal map, green normal map, blue normal map, specular normal map, specular texture and diffuse texture).

Writing Batchable and Plugin classes

MorphAnalyser handles two plugin interfaces. The first, Batchable3D, allows single and batch processing of images. A no-args constructor (or no constructor for the no args default) needs to be provided for loading at runtime (using java reflection). The second interface, Plugin3D, is more general, and simply supports a setup and cleanup method.