craig@weedeater.math.yale.edu (Craig Kolb) (02/14/91)
Archive-name: graphics/raytrace/rayshade/1991-02-14 Archive: weedeater.math.yale.edu:/pub/rayshade.4.0/rayshade.4.0.tar.Z [130.132.23.17] Original-posting-by: craig@weedeater.math.yale.edu (Craig Kolb) Original-subject: Rayshade v4.0 Available for Beta-testing Reposted-by: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti) At long last, rayshade v4.0 is available for Beta-testing. The distribution is available by anonymous ftp from weedeater.math.yale.edu (130.132.23.17) in pub/rayshade.4.0 as either "rayshade.4.0.tar.Z" or the 16 compressed tar files in the subdirectory "kits@0". Please direct comments, questions, configuration files, source code, and the like to rayshade@weedeater.math.yale.edu. If you get semi-serious about using rayshade, drop us a line and we'll add you to our mailing list. Thanks to everybody who contributed to this and previous versions of rayshade, and to those of you who are willing to provide feedback on this Beta release. Craig From the README file: ------ 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. [...] 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. [...]