Peanuts NeXT Software Archives/Peanuts-2.iso/Unix/graphics/rayshade.4.0.README

Text File | 1991-02-13 | 8.5 KB | 190 lines

This is the Beta release of rayshade version 4.0, a ray tracing program.
Rayshade reads a multi-line ASCII file describing a scene to be rendered
and produces a Utah Raster Toolkit "RLE" format file containing the
ray traced image.

Rayshade features:

    Eleven primitives (blob, box, cone, cylinder, height field,
    plane, polygon, sphere, torus, flat- and Phong-shaded triangle)

    Aggregate objects

    Constructive solid geometry

    Point, directional, extended, spot, and quadrilateral light sources

    Solid procedural texturing, bump mapping, and
        2D "image" texture mapping

    Antialiasing through adaptive supersampling or "jittered" sampling

    Arbitrary linear transformations on objects and texture/bump maps.

    Use of uniform spatial subdivision or hierarchy of bounding
        volumes to speed rendering

    Options to facilitate rendering of stereo pairs



This is Really and Truly a Beta release:  No patches will be issued
to upgrade from this distribution and the 'official' release.  The
documentation is spotty, and there is no proper 'man' page.

There are many differences between rayshade versions 3.0 and 4.0.  In
particular, the input syntax has changed.  Input files created for
version 3.0 must be converted to version 4.0 syntax using the provided
conversion utility (rsconvert).

Rayshade v4.0 Beta has been tested on several different UNIX-based computers,
including: SGI 4D, IBM RS6000, Sun Sparcstation 1, Sun 3/160, DECstation,
Apollo DN10000.  If your machine has a C compiler, enough memory
(at least 2Mb), and runs something resembling UNIX, rayshade should be fairly
easy to port.  Be warned that rayshade uses yacc and lex to process input
files.  If you do not have lex and yacc, try to get flex and bison from
the Free Software Foundation folks (ftp to prep.ai.mit.edu).

Rayshade uses a Configuration script in order to determine how it should
be compiled.  This means that if you're not runing under UNIX, you'll
probably have to create a config.h and edit the Makefiles by hand.
If you create a config.h file and/or Makefiles for use in an non-UNIX
environment, send them to us and we will make it available for use by
others.  The prototype config.H file may be of some help.

Normally, rayshade makes use of the Utah Raster toolkit.  You are
strongly encouraged to get a copy of the toolkit, as it provides a
host of useful tools for image manipulation and a library for reading/reading
the toolkit's "RLE" format image files.  "blurb.urt" is the "blurb" file from
the latest distribution of the toolkit.  Also of interest is the
"fbm" library, available from nl.cs.cmu.edu:/usr/mlm/ftp/fbm.tar.Z, which
provides additional tools for converting Utah Raster format images
to/from other formats.

If you do not want to or cannot use the Utah Raster toolkit, rayshade
can be configured to create image files using a generic format
identical to that used by Mark VandeWettering's "mtv" ray tracer.

Rayshade consists of a number of libraries (residing in the lib*
directories) and an application (rayshade proper) that is
linked against those libraries.  To compile, run the Configure script to
generate config.h and the Makefiles, then run "make depend"
followed by "make".  If the Configuration script fails, or if
it can't determine a way to generate dependencies, you'll probably
have to edit the Makefiles or extract them from the Makefile.SH scripts
by hand.  Don't be overly alarmed if there are a few non-terminating error
messages while running "make depend".

The Doc directory contains a User's Guide (in the Guide directory),
as well as a quick-reference sheet and some information that might
be useful in porting or modifying rayshade.  To create a formatted
version of the User's Guide, you'll need LaTeX.  If you don't have
LaTeX, a postscript version of the Guide is available via anonymous
ftp from weedeater.math.yale.edu (see below).

The etc directory contains miscellaneous goodies, including the source
to a filter to convert rayshade v3.0 input to rayshade 4.0.
The Example directory contains example input files, which may be
used to test rayshade and to familiarize yourself with rayshade's input
syntax.  You can also run any one of Eric Haines'
Standard Procedural Databases through awk using the etc/nff2shade.awk
script, and then feed the results to rayshade.  Note that for several
of the databases, you will need to tweak the data a bit to achieve
optimal runtimes.  See spd2shade.awk for details.

You are encouraged to make use of cpp in the design of your input files.
If available, rayshade will automatically feed input files through
cpp for you.

Rayshade was not designed to be, nor is it, the be-all and end-all of
ray tracers.  It was meant to be reasonably fast, portable, and easy to
modify.  It has some nice features which allow you to produce
pretty pictures, but there are countless extensions, modifications,
and improvements which could be made.  There are many routines which may be
optimized and many features which could be added.  For a list of suggested
improvements and projects see "TODO".  You are encouraged to modify the
source code left and right.

It is hoped that the 'official' release will include a library
that provides a C interface to the various ray tracing libraries.
While there is currently no documentation for the libraries, it
should be easy for you to add your own primitives, textures, aggregates,
and light sources by looking at the code and sending mail if you get
stuck.

It is also hoped that the modular nature of the primitive, aggregate,
texture, and light source libraries will make it possible for
people to write their own code and to "swap" objects, textures, and
the like over the net.  The object interfaces are far from perfect,
but it is hoped that they provide a reasonable balance between
modularity and speed.

Additional rayshade goodies are available via anonymous ftp from
weedeater.math.yale.edu (130.132.23.17) in pub/rayshade.4.0.
If you have contributions of new objects, textures, input files,
configuration files, or images to make, feel free to send us email or
to drop off a copy via ftp in the "incoming" directory on weedeater.


The first version of rayshade was written by Craig Kolb, David P. Dobkin,
and David C. Hoffman during 1987-1988, and was heavily based on an
"introductory" public domain ray tracer written by Roman Kuchkuda.
Rayshade v3.0 was written by Craig Kolb and released in the Fall of 1989.
Rayshade v4.0 was written by Craig Kolb and Rod Bogart during 1990.

Rayshade was made possible by many people who have made suggestions,
fixed bugs, and who have been all-around good sports about the whole thing.

Thanks to Gavin Bell, David Dobkin, Eric Haines, Lefteris Koutsofios,
Ken Musgrave, Przemek Prusinkiewicz, and Allan Snider for their
encouragement, comments, and willingness to be on the Front Lines.

Thanks to Roman Kuchkuda for providing such a solid base upon which
to build.

Special thanks to Robert Skinner for providing the Noise(), DNoise(),
and other texturing functions and allowing them to be redistributed.

Pat Hanrahan's OOGL provided the spirit (if not the letter) of the
modularity of rayshade v4.0.  Thanks to Pat and to Mark VandeWettering
for the 'net tracer' conversations and for the inspiration to do something
to clean up rayshade.

Thanks to Marc Andreessen, Ray Bellis, Dominique Boisvert, William Bouma,
Allen Braunsdorf, Jeff Butterworth, Nick Carriero, Nancy Everson, Tom Friedel,
Robert Funchess, David Gelernter, Mike Gigante, Ed Herderick, John Knuston,
Raphael Manfredi, Lee Moore, Dietmar Saupe, Brian Wyvill,
and everybody else for their bugfixes, suggestions, input files,
encouragement, and other feedback.

Thanks also to Mark Podlipec for providing the blob and torus objects.

Thanks to Jochen Schwarze for the cubic and quartic root-finding functions.
His code, and a host of other useful routines, can be found in
"Graphics Gems", edited by Andrew Glassner.

Finally, thanks to Benoit Mandelbrot for his support and inspiration in
this and other endeavors.

If you find any bugs, make any useful extensions, have a nice input
file, port rayshade to a new environment, or need assistance understanding a
particularly braindamaged section of code, please let us know.  We can be most
easily reached by email.

Once you start using rayshade, send a message to
[e-mail] and you'll be added to the rayshade
mailing list.

Craig Kolb
Rod Bogart
13 Feb 91
[e-mail]

Craig Kolb
Department of Mathematics
Yale University
10 Hillhouse Ave.
Box 2155 Yale Station
New Haven, CT  06520-2155
(Until September, 1991)