Hello! I'm Earl Terwilliger and I have an interest in creating Lightwave scenes which look as real as possible. Mostly, I like to see scenes from nature. I was excited when I ran accross a program which creates natural 3D shapes via fractal math. It is called LPARSER and was written by Laurens J. Lapre. The companion program call LVIEWER will display the created object in 3D and allow you to view it from various positions. The file called lparser.txt documents these programs and should be used as reference. I am using an AMIGA computer for Lightwave but I also have a PC. The LPARSER and LVIEWER programs from Laurens J. Lapre run only on the PC. I have converted the sample objects provided with the LPARSER package to Lightwave format so anyone can use them on any platform, however to create your own objects using the LPARSER program and my object converter program, you will need a PC! The LPARSER program, documentation, LVIEWER program, sample files, etc. are included in the self extracting executable called LPARSER3.EXE. The LPARSER program will allow you to create, trees, plants, "critters" and other shapes found in nature in a 3D format which you can import into Lightwave and have fun rendering. The program is based on L-system fractal math and I would highly recommend the book mentioned in the LPARSER documentation, excerpted as follows: "The implemented l-system is based on the one described in the book : 'The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants' (ABOP) by P. Prusinkiewicz and A. Lindenmayer (this is where the 'L' from l-systems come from). If you want more information on making your own l-systems you'll want to check out this book. A lot can be done by changing the l-systems suplied with the parser and seeing for yourself what changes in the final form. ISBN 0-387-97297-8" The LPARSER program if given the right parameters will create 3D DXF files (with 3DFACES) which will import quite nicely via TIO into Lightwave 3D. The only problem is that the files created are HUGE and take a long time for TIO to import and "merge points". So, I wrote a PC program called DXF2LW which will do the conversion from DXF to Lightwave and also "merge points" to reduce the number of points. The results are great! (Well.... I'll let you judge by trying out some of the sample objects provided.) Some of the objects do have a high point/polygon count but I think the results are worth it. By changing the original .LS commands in the LPARSER input file you do have control over the objects created. The documentation for the LPARSER program can be found in the file LPARSER.TXT (it will be re-created upon running the self-extracting program LPARSER3 which will create the LPARSER program, files, etc.) The documentation on the other files which I have provided is contained below. If you have further questions, you can contact me at: Earl Terwilliger 158 Eades Drive. Irvine, KY 40336 Phone (606)-723-5718 Compuserve 70575,1330 Internet aisterwi@acs.eku.edu The following files can be found on this disk/directory: DXF2LW COM DXF2LW C C source and executable This is the program to use to create Lightwave 3D objects from the DXF files produced by LPARSER. Actually, it will work on any ASCII DXF file that has 3DFACE entities. It creates objects with the smallest number of points. The syntax is as follows: DXF2LW infile.DXF outfile.OBJ -d The outfile.obj and -d parameters are optional. If the outfile name is not specified the infput file name will be used with the file name extension changed to .obj. The -d parameter will tell the DXF2LW program to not delete the RAW file it creates. The .raw file is an intermediate file used by the program with polygon information needed to create the output object file. If it is not deleted, it can be used as input to the READRAW program which will list its contents in readable format. READRAW COM READRAW C C source and executable This program reads and displays the .raw file which is created by the DXF2LW program. DXF2LW always creates a .raw file from the input file but it is deleted before the DXF2LW program ends if the -d parameter is not specified. This program is really just for DEBUGing purposes. It may be handy if you are going to make changes to the source and test them. This program and the LWLO program were used quite a bit to initially test and debug these programs. LWLO COM LWLO C C source and executable This program will tell you some interesting things about a Lightwave 3D object file. The syntax is: LWLO infile.obj It will work on object or "modeler only" object files. The "modeler only" file is one that Lightwave modeler has saved in layers. This program was/is used for DEBUGing purposes and comes in handy to make sure that the object converters are working OK. (Run it on a "modeler only" file to see how that object file type is structured.) OBJS TXT Documentation (list) of converted L-system objects to Lightwave format. Also documents the commands in the batch file used to create the objects. LPARSER3 EXE Self extracting program to create the LPARSER program documentation, LVIEWER program and sample L-system objects. LPARSER TXT Documentation on the LPARSER program. This file is also included in the LPARSER3.exe file after extraction. README TXT You are reading this file! DXF_R10 TXT Documentation on the DXF file format version 10 ?? DXF_R12 TXT Documentation on the DXF file format version 12 ??