In addition, mass-springs models are very computationally expensive and may exhibit compression or stretching, effects unwanted when modeling stiff paper. While this gives realistic results for supple, cloth-like objects, paper is by nature stiff and rigid and normally bends in a predictable manner. Some early attempts treated a page as a soft body, utilizing a mass-springs system to calculate all the internal and external forces applied to each point in a mesh. The math behind page curlingMany people have tackled the job of modeling a page curl dynamically in 3D. The interface isn't pretty, but it gets the job done.
HOW TO TURN PAGES ON IBOOK ON MAC MAC
I was pleasantly surprised with what I could accomplish in less than a day, and you can view the proof-of-concept online (installs Unity plugin if needed, no restart required), or as a stand-alone Mac application (11.8 MB). On a whim I decided to revisit dynamic page curling to see if then current technology could deliver acceptable results. A new, high-performance 3D development tool called Unity had just been released and I was quite blown away by its capabilities. Needless to say, it was a lengthy and expensive process but yielded the best looking results by far.įast forward a few years into the future, and graphics hardware was advancing faster than computers in general. While it would have been nice to have had dynamic page curling, in the end we opted to use pre-rendered bitmaps of each page turn for the sake of image quality.
HOW TO TURN PAGES ON IBOOK ON MAC SOFTWARE
Unfortunately realtime 3D didn't cut it on the hardware and software available at the time. High visual quality followed by performance were the top criteria. During the initial stages of the project I experimented with various methods of handling the page turning. Using a touchscreen, users can browse a rare book by swiping with a finger while the priceless original remains protected in a climate-controlled case. Whether or not this is the same algorithm Apple uses, it's a simple, elegant solution that works well from all viewing angles, not just straight on.īackgroundI was particularly intrigued when I first saw iBooks' dynamic page curling because several years ago I developed a system for kiosk-based virtual books. Instead of a 3D approach through OpenGL it's quite possible that they may have simply used Core Image and some fancy math to implement everything entirely in 2D, something hinted at by the fact their page flattens out for large deformations rather than exhibiting a uniform curvature. This article aims to demonstrate one technique that Apple may have used to implement their page curling behavior but doesn't assert that they did.
Shortly after the iPad announcement Steven Troughton-Smith discovered the page curl effect hiding inside a private API but it offers few cues to the actual implementation. Unlike cheap implementations using simple masks and gradients, iBook's page curling is very realistic, with content that bleeds through and deforms accurately along the curve of the page. Perhaps its most eye-catching but completely superfluous feature is the beautiful, dynamic page curling effect that follows your finger naturally as you drag to turn pages.
One of iPad's most talked about apps is Apple's own iBooks e-reader.
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