AmigActive 20/AACD20.BIN/AACD/Graphics/PerfectPaint/RayLabFactory/docs/amiga.doc

Text File | 1996-09-16 | 8KB | 177 lines

                            RayLab 1.1 for Amiga


                      (c)1995-1996 by Marcus Geelnard


Introduction:
-------------

RayLab  was  mostly developed on an Amiga 3000 with gcc 2.7.0 (some testing
and coding was done on a mighty DEC Alpha, with gcc/cc).  Gcc has proven to
produce  smaller  and  faster (in most cases) executables than SAS/C (which
was  used  to compile RayLab 1.0).  Thus the executables that come with the
Amiga distribution of RayLab 1.1 were compiled with gcc 2.7.0.


Requirements:
-------------

RayLab  needs  AmigaOS  2.0  or  better  to work, partly because of the new
display-routines  that  require  kickstart  v36 or higher to work, but also
because  gcc  does  not support AmigaOS 1.x (why should it?).  I think that
this  will  be no limitation to the majority of potential RayLab users (?).
If  you  would need a compilation for older versions of the AmigaOS though,
either  compile  RayLab  on  your  own,  keeping  in  mind that the display
routines will not work, or contact me, and I'll do my best.

Other requirements? I have run RayLab on an Amiga 500 with kickstart 37.175
and 512KB Chip + 512KB Slow memory, one disk-drive only (no hd). It worked!
It was even over four times faster than a 386SX-20MHz running Windows!

Please  note  that  the stack needs to be set quite high for RayLab to work
properly.   I  use a stack-size of 50000, which seems to work well.  RayLab
refuses  to  run  if  the stack is less than 40000.


Contents:
---------

The Amiga distribution of RayLab contains the following:

· Two executables:   raylab000  - for all Amigas (68000 or better)
                     raylab881  - for Amigas with 68020+ and an FPU

· The documentation for RayLab:
     raylab.doc    - a plain ascii version of the documentation
     raylab.guide  - a comprehensive amigaguide-formatted version, with
                     some graphical figures (requires MultiView)
     amiga.doc     - (this file)

· Sample RayLab scenes and some texture-images to go along with them.

· The sourcode for RayLab,  including  the Amiga specific code,  a makefile
  for gcc and  one for  SAS/C 6.x,  and the  generic code/makefile  for any
  platform.


Installation:
-------------

You may already have installed RayLab, if you are reading this.  Otherwise,
this is what you need to do:  Extract all files from the RayLab lha-archive
to  a  proper place on your harddisk (e.g.  Work:Graphics/RayTracing/).  If
you  have extracted the files to a temporary directory (e.g.  RAM:), simply
drag-and-drop the RayLab drawer icon to where you want it on your harddisk.

After  installing  the  files  to  a  proper  place,  you should rename the
executable  that  you  intend  to use (raylab000 or raylab881) to 'raylab'.
Some  special  features of the guide documentation requires this, and it is
much easier to type 'raylab ...' than 'raylab881 ...', for instance.

Also,  it  would  be  wise to create some new directories for your own use,
especially one for your own scenes and one for pictures.  For example:

         ..../RayLab/MyScenes/
         ..../RayLab/MyPics/

This way it will be easier to keep track of your RayLab files.

Before  you  use  RayLab,  please finish reading this doc.  Then proceed to
reading  the  full  documentation.  You can either choose to read the plain
ascii  version  (raylab.doc)  or  the  guide (raylab.guide), but I strongly
recommend  the  latter  one.   The  guide is sequential, so you can use the
browse  buttons  to browse forward and backward in the documentation, which
can  be good the first time you read the doc, as you should really read the
whole  documentation  to get to know how RayLab works.  If you want to have
the  users  documentation  printed  on  paper,  you  can get the postscript
version  of  the  documentation, which is available at RayLabs home-page on
the  www  and  on Aminet under gfx/3d (or hopefully from where you got this
archive).


Amiga specific:
---------------

Currently  you  will have to use RayLab from shell.  RayLab was intended to
be as portable as possible, and I frequently run it on a unix system (which
is  about  10000% faster  than  my  A3000-28MHz) so I have not yet made any
working  GUI.  I have tried to make one, but it will not be ready until the
next release, at the best.

The  Amiga version of RayLab can display a picture as it is being rendered.
To  make it do so, use the -d flag on the command line when you are calling
RayLab, or add the following to a globals section in your scene description
(read 'raylab.doc' for more information):

        display x

...where  x  is  the  display-mode.   These  are  the  currently  supported
display-modes for the Amiga:

  0  - No display  (default)
  1  - Chose display-mode from a requester
  2  - Greyscale, hires, interlaced (dithered)
  3  - HAM6, lowres, non-interlaced (dithered)
  4  - HAM6, lowres, interlaced     (dithered)
  5  - HAM8, lowres, non-interlaced (non-dithered)
  6  - HAM8, lowres, interlaced     (non-dithered)
  7  - HAM8, hires, non-interlaced  (non-dithered)
  8  - HAM8, hires, interlaced      (non-dithered)

(RayLab 1.0 users: Note the changes in display numbers!)

If you forget the display-numbers (most likely) use the -l flag to list all
available display-modes (the -l flag should work on all platforms, not just
the Amiga).

You can either choose one of the 'fixed' display-modes (2-8) which will use
the  standard  monitor, or you can use the display requester (mode 1), from
which    you    can    choose    just    about    any   display-mode   (e.g
NTSC:Superhires-HAM8).  If the mode you choose is not HAM, the display will
be  grey-scale  (2-256 colors are supported for grey-scale).  In the future
RayLab  will  hopefully  support  CyberGraphics  true color screens as well
(which is one reason for the display-requester to be there).

Please  note  that  the  HAM6  display  is far from perfect (I can not tell
anything about the HAM8 display, haven't got it :-( ), but the general idea
is that it should only serve as a rought preview anyway.

With  the  display  turned  on,  the rendering will be slightly slower, but
probably  not  enough  for  you  to  notice (a 320x240 HAM6 screen takes 20
seconds  on  an  Amiga 3000, as compared to some potential 10-60 minutes of
computing).

When  the  rendering is done, you are able to select 'Close' from a menu on
the  screen  (by  pressing  the  right  mouse-button).  This will close the
display  and  exit  RayLab.   The menu will not appear until the picture is
completed.   If you did not open a display (or if RayLab was unable to open
one), RayLab will just exit when it is done rendering.

If you want to terminate RayLab during rendering, activate the shell-window
from  which  you started RayLab (it is active by defult), and press CTRL-C.
RayLab  will  then cleanup and exit gracefully.  The output picture will be
correct  and  viewable  after a break if the output format is either iff or
tga  (this  is  a  new feature introduced with RayLab 1.1), but you may not
continue  rendering  the  picture where you stopped rendering (that will be
implemented in the future), so you will have to start it all over again.


Compiling on your own:
----------------------

If  you would like to compile RayLab for the Amiga on your own, simply copy
the  Amiga  specific code and the makefile(s) that you want to use from the
source/platform/amiga  directory  to  the  source directory.  Makefiles are
available  for both gcc and for SAS/C 6.x.  Please refer to the makefile(s)
for  more  information  about compiling RayLab for different machines.  Now
you are on your own!

Please  note that you may not spread a new compilation of RayLab without my
permission!   This  is  to avoid misunderstandings about who is responsible
for  supporting  the  users  of  your  compilation.   Read 'raylab.doc' for
further info about legal issues...