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1993-10-06
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POVFrame 1.0 For OS/2 2.x
Copyright (c) 1993 Bill Pulver
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for trying POVFrame. This program enables you to use the FreeWare
raytracing program POV-Ray from the OS/2 2.x DeskTop. Most of the functions
needed to effectivly use POV-Ray in the WPS environment are available from
the POVFrames user interface.
This program is being distributed as shareware!!
A registration fee of $20 (US) is required if the program is used beyond a
30 day trial period. THANK YOU! See ORDER.DOC for further information.
NOTE: This program is NOT a "product" of the POV-Ray team. I use OS/2 for
my main machine & thought others would find a POV-Ray shell usefull.
Please dont bother others on the team with questions about this
program! <g> See ORDER.DOC for more info.
Also: The OS/2 compile of POV-Ray seems to be less "tolerant" of math errors
than the "official" ICB compile is. It will sometimes crash on large,
complex image files. If this happens try using the "official" Code
Builder compile to render your image.
------------
Installation
------------
Installation of the program is fairly simple. The VROBJ.DLL file is
the VX-Rexx function library, it may be placed in a directory in your OS/2
LIBPATH statement (D:\OS2\DLL is good) or it may simply be left in the same
directory as the POVFrame executable file. (POVFRAME.EXE)
A third party OS/2 support program called STARTD.EXE is required
to start the DOS sessions since a value larger than OS/2's default
must be used for DPMI_MEMORY_LIMIT. STARTD will start a DOS session with
the values in the POV.INI file. They may be changed the same as if they
were being set in the DOS Session notebook setup by editing POV.INI
with a text editor. DO NOT DELETE POV.INI or the DOS version of POV-Ray
will not run. For convienece the original BBS distribution file of STARTD
is included with POVFrame. It is copyrighted but is freely distributable.
By default POVFrame expects the DOS executable & the OS/2 executable
to be in the same directory as POVFrame. This is the simplest & most reliable
way to use the program but different paths may be entered with POVFrames
"defaults" pulldown as described above. STARTD may also be left in the same
directory or placed in a directory that is pointed to by your OS/2 PATH
statement in your OS/2 CONFIG.SYS file.
USING POVFrame
--------------
----------------
DeskTop Options
----------------
If you are familiar with the options available for running POV-Ray
most of the options on the DeskTop should be old hat for you. For further
information on POV-Ray and the options available please consult the POV-Ray
documentation distributed in POVDOC.ZIP. POVFrame will build a new POV-Ray
DEF file for each POV-Ray image run so multiple images with different
settings may be started. POVFrame uses a DEF file named POVDOS.DEF for the
DOS compile, POVOS2.DEF for the OS/2 compile and POVANIM.DEF for animation
runs. An OS/2 text mode compile of POV-Ray is included with this program.
It IS NOT shareware but freeware & registration of POVFrame does not relate
to it. It has been slightly modified from the distribution source code in
that all errors and the final image STATS are sent to STDERR in order to
capture them in the VX-Rexx console, the regular POV-Ray run time
info, credits, +v verbose line info etc are sent to STDOUT & will appear
in the OS/2 session window during the image run. Errors and image stats
may be saved to a disk file from the VX-Rexx console using an option in
the upper left "frame" button. The standard POV-Ray Team release DOS compile
distributed as POVIBM.EXE may be used for the DOS version.
The following describes the options, installation & use of POVFrame:
------------------------
POVFrame Options
------------------------
Output Buffering:
-----------------
This group box allows you to select whether you want POV-Ray to
buffer the image as it is rendered. The size of the buffer is entered in
the dialog box. The "Disable Image Buffering" checkbox enables & disables
this option for POV-Ray image runs. Note that using an image buffer can
significantly increase rendering speed by restricting disk writes. The
default is to use buffering with a 512K buffer.
Image Run Parameters:
---------------------
This group box controls the resolution of the image run and allows
the use of POV-Ray's ability to render only a portion of the complete image.
The "Do A Partial Render" checkbox enables & disables this option. The
"Percentage Partial" checkbox toggles between doing a partial render based
on physical starting/ending lines & columns of the image or based on a
percentage of the image width & height. Valid values for a render based on
the physical resolution of the image are 0 to Image Width & 0 to Image Height.
Valid values for percentage based renders are 0 to 99.9%. The values for all
these options are simply entered into the dialog boxes.
Output File Type:
-----------------
This group box of Radio Buttons selects the file type to be written.
Just click on the one you want.
Image File Selected:
--------------------
This dialog box is an informational box to tell you what image file
the program will render. The file may be selected from the "Files" pulldown
menu in the upper left, the "Files" button in the Image File Selected group
box, or by pointing to the entry field with the mouse cursor, clicking mouse
button 1 to move focus to that dialog box & pressing a key on the keyboard.
Other Options:
--------------
This group box contains checkboxes and radio buttons for the various
commonly used POV-Ray options. See the POV-Ray docs for specific information
on what each one does. A "check" in a checkbox or radiobutton signifies that
option is enabled for the next image run. Note that the "Display" option is
valid ONLY with a DOS compile. (It will work with either the "official" POV-
Ray Teams ICB compile or a Watcom 9.5 compile.)
Use the "Verbose" option for the OS/2 compile supplied with POVFrame.
Image Quality & Anti-Aliasing:
------------------------------
These dialog boxes set the values for POV-Rays quality and anti-
aliasing features. The quality levels are selected by running thru POV-Rays
valid options using a "spin-button". The values for Anti-Aliasing are
entered via the dialog boxes in this area. The Disable Anti-Aliasing checkbox
will disable AA for the next image run. By default it is disabled since
you will probably only want to use it for a final "high quality" image run.
OS/2 GO! and DOS GO!:
---------------------
POVFrame will start either a DOS compile of POV-Ray or an OS/2 compile
of POV-Ray. The POV-Ray teams ICB (DOS) compile of POV-Ray 2.0 has the ability
to render an image of any resolution to a WPS desktop window by using the
VGA 320x200x256 mode as the display option. (+d1 POV-Ray option) The "Display
Image While Rendering" radio button option is valid ONLY for the DOS compile
at the moment. The OS/2 compile supplied with POVFrame will display the
verbose "current line being rendered" option to the OS/2 session window during
the image run. Errors and the image trace stats are written to the VX-Rexx
consol handler and may be reviewed and saved from there. (Saved from the upper
left buttons pulldown menu.) Upon completion rendered image files will have
the same name as the image "source" & the appropriate extension for the type
of file written. For example, using the program defaults for paths & such,
D:\POVRAY\BLOB.POV will render to D:\POVRAY\BLOB.TGA if the TGA file type is
selected. The VX-Rexx console window must be closed "manually" after POVFrame
is terminated. You may also save the contents of the VX-Rexx console to a
file. This makes for a good way to save image stats if desired.
--------------
PullDown Menus
--------------
Files:
------
The "Files" pulldown supplies file services. Image files to be rendered
may be selected from here. Image files to be edited may also be selected as
well as deleted.
The "Select Image File to Render" option is identical in function to the
"Files" pushbutton in the "Image File Selected" groupbox on the desktop
explained earlier.
The "Edit POV-Ray File" option selects a POV-Ray image source file for editing
and calls OS/2s "built in" editor, EPM.EXE (The Enhanced Editor), to actually
edit the image file. Multiple files may be opened in different windows to
allow cut 'n paste editing of entire image file sets. Due to a limitation
in the file selection dialog there can only be 1 default file mask. In this
case *.POV is used. Other masks may be entered manually in the "Open
Filename:" dialog box at the top to select *.INC or other POV-Ray image file
extensions. If a filename that does not exist is entered EPM will open a file
by that name for editing. New image files may be created that way.
The "Delete A File" dialog may be used to delete unwanted or outdated
files. By default all files are displayed in the dialog. A second dialog
box will open to -make sure- you want to delete the file selected.
Defaults:
---------
All of the following are stored in the POVFRAME.INI file and, after setup,
are loaded each time the program is started.
The defaults pulldown allows initial settings for POVFrame to be
set & saved as well as POV-Ray options that are less frequently changed.
Items such as your POV-Ray image "source" files path and POV-Ray library
directories. (Up to 4) All of these options are saved in the POVFRAME.INI
file and will be loaded each time the program is started. All path names
must be fully qualified.
The "POV-Ray Source Path" option allows entry of the path to your POV-Ray
image "source" files directory. This is the directory where your IMAGE
SOURCE FILES are located, NOT the POV-Ray program it's self. Enter a fully
qualified path name including a trailing backslash.
EXAMPLE: D:\POVRAY\IMAGES\
The "Library Paths" option opens a submenu that allows entry of up to 4
library directories for POV-Ray. Again, fully qualified paths *must* be
entered.
The "DOS (& OS/2) EXE Defaults" options allow you to seperate your DOS and
OS/2 EXECUTABLES by specifying a specific path to your DOS/OS2 executable
file and a directory that all your DOS/OS2 rendered images should be placed
in upon completion.
By default that program expects both the OS/2 and DOS executables to be in
the same directory as POVFRAME.EXE. Also, by default, rendered images are
placed in the same directory as the image "source" file they are rendered
from. These options are provided for "house keeping" if you'd like to use
them to keep things a little more "organized". They also allow the
use of both the OS/2 and DOS compiles to render the same image at the same
time. (If this is attempted with the program defaults both compiles will
attempt to write the image to the SAME file!!!... Leads to some wierd results
sometimes.)
The "OS/2 EXE Defaults" allows the same options to be set for the OS/2
executable.
The "View Program" option allows the entry of the path too, and name of, an
*external* OS/2 image viewer and/or post processor. A fully qualified path
must be entered. Some options that are available for this are PMVIEW, PMJPEG
and JOEVIEW, all of which are also shareware programs and may be obtained
from many BBS's and On Line services. I've tried them all & they all work
quite well. The program selected by this option is called from a files
dialog under the "External" pulldown menu. Just about any OS/2 program that
can have the image file name passed to it on the command line may be used
here.
The "Post Processor Program" option does the same thing as the View Program
option but the files used for this one may be DOS files. Since I use
a TSENG ET4000 based HiColor/TrueColor video card in my machine here I use
TGVIEW.EXE by John Swenson for this option. It allows me to click on the TGA
file I'd like to look at in the files dialog presented under the "External"
pulldown. As with the "View Program" option above, just about any DOS program
may be used for this option. The DOS session started when the program is
invoked under the "External" pulldown is a FULL SCREEN session. This allows
use of HiColor or TrueColor hardware and the DOS progams that support it.
PICLAB and other image processors may also be started from here. The idea
between the "View Program" and "Post Processor Program" options is to allow
as many OS/2 and DOS programs as possible to be called directly from the
POVFrame desktop & have the name of an image file passed directly to them.
Again, fully qualified path names and EXE names should be used for both of
these options.
The "External" option actually calls & executes the programs whose names
and paths have been entered as described above.
SnapShot
---------
The "SnapShot" option will examine the >>> CURRENT STATE <<< all of the
entry boxes, radio buttons and check boxes on the desktop (with the exception
of the Partial Image rendering paramaters) and save them to a defaults file
named POVSNAP.INI. These settings will then be loaded as the DeskTop defaults
for future program startups. For example, say you'd like a default image buffer
of 200K, display during render with a pause at completion, and a quality
setting of +q5. Set these options up this way by entering the appropriate
values & punching the right buttons, then run the SnapShot option. From then
on, when you start the program, these items will be set up this way. It does
slow down program startup by a few seconds though. To return to the programs
"built in" defaults DELETE the file POVSNAP.INI.
Animation:
----------
This option is a VERY BASIC animation loop generator that uses the
POV-Ray 2.0 "clock" option to pass frame information to the program. It's
currently a very simple system. Frame and clock values may be entered in
the entry boxes. The clock increment value for the animation may be entered
manually or the program will calculate even steps for the clock increment
when the AutoCalculate checkbox is "checked'.
BE VERY CAREFULL TO ENTER ** ONLY ** NUMBERS WHEN THE AUTOCALCULATE IS "ON".
The program will ignore a minus sign entered as the FIRST charactor in the
entry field to allow negative numbers to be entered. REXX's math support is
quite limited, the program will crash if an Alpha charactor is entered since
the math for undefined variables (which is how REXX interprets it) is
undefined. Currently ONLY the DOS compile of POV-Ray is used for animation
generation. (POVFrame writes out a DOS batch file with a seperate command
line for each frame to be generated.) The output image files will be numbered
sequentialy based on the frame values and the first 4 charactors of the image
file name. To facilitate simpler use of programs such as Dave Masons "DTA"
frames numbered from 0 to 9 will have 2 leading zeros prepended and frames
numbered from 10 to 99 will have one 0 prepended.
I.E. Frames are numbered xxxx000, xxxx001, xxxx002... xxxx035... xxxx999 etc..
It's not much but it does make for -easy- linear animation generation.
Simply replace the value that you would like to vary in your POV-Ray 2.0
image "source" file with the word "clock" & the values will be passsed to it.
EXAMPLE:
Used to vary the z position of the camera in this case.
camera {
location <-5, 8, clock>
direction <0, 0, 1.2071>
look_at <0, 0, 0>
}
--- If you have any ideas on anything to add here, or the rest of the program for that
matter, I'd like to hear them!
Help:
-----
The "DOCS" are still being worked on. I'm hoping to have a full
INF version of POV-Ray 2.0's doc files hooked into the program here.
*** Lots of work to convert the DOCS though.
"About" is just that.
This gives an intro to the program. The best way to get the feel of it is
to, of course, USE it. Expirement & have fun!!!
Thanks for your time:
Bill Pulver
Please send bug reports & suggestions to one of the following E-MAIL addresses.
They are listed in desending order of frequency of usage, just not enough
hourse in the day......
InterNet folks, PLEASE include your "return address" in the body of your
message. Deciphering the routing headers can sometimes be a difficult task!
<G>
CIS : 70405,1152 <------ Most often used!
InterNet: 70405.1152@compuserve.com
AOL : BPulver
Delphi : BILLP
Genie : B.Pulver
Prodigy : NCCJ93A