3D Madness! Companion CD/3DMADNESS.iso/dosdemos/3dwkshop/newpov.doc

Text File | 1993-04-19 | 8KB | 155 lines

3D WorkShop Version 2.0
POV Rendering of 3DWS Animations

3D WorkShop version 2.0, release "B", has been re-worked to make it
much easier to render your 3DWS animations with the POVRAY ray tracer.
This produces outstanding true-to-life animations.  The new process
is considerably streamlined, and rendering ray-traced animations is
now as simple as running a batch file.

To render 3DWS animations with POVRAY, you will need the following
programs:
        3D WorkShop 2.0, release "B" from Presidio Software
        ANIM3D.EXE - 3DWS file converter by Mike Miller (freeware)
                available in the PRES Presidio forum on CompuServe,
                in the POV section of the GRAPHDEV forum on
                CompuServe, and many BBS's (see list at the end of
                this document)
        POVRAY - the POV ray tracer (freeware)
                available in the POV section of the GRAPHDEV forum
                on CompuServe, and many BBS's (see list at the end
                of this document)
        (optionally)
        3D_RAW.EXE - additional 3DWS to POV converter, by Mike
                Miller (available with ANIM3D.EXE above)
        RAW2POV.EXE - RAW data to POV converter, available in
                the same places as POVRAY, see above
        DECLARE.EXE - POV declaration utility, available in the
                same places as POVRAY, see above

Once you have obtained all of the necessary programs, follow the steps
outlined below to render your 3DWS animations through POVRAY.

1. Create your models, cameras, lights, and animation motion in 3DWS
   in the normal way.  Be sure to save your animation as a 3DW file
   (File/Save in 3DWS) before continuing.

2. In the Render/Config dialog box in 3DWS, use the All/Single/Segment
   selection to indicate the frames you wish to be rendered in POVRAY.

3. Select File/Save POV from the 3DWS menu.  A File Select dialog box
   will appear, with a default name of FRAME001.INC.  Use the default
   name, or one of your own.  Use, if possible, 5 characters for the
   filename - the last 3 characters will contain numbers indicating
   the frame number each file.

4. The POV File Options dialog box will appear. There are two options
   you can set:
        a. Flat triangle output or smoothed triangle output
                If you have 3D_RAW.EXE and RAW2POV.EXE and are
                going to use them, select Flat output.  Smoothed output
                uses the break angle setting in the Render/Config dialog,
                and takes MUCH longer to save the POV files.
        b. Clones as objects or Clones as clones
                "Clone" objects in 3DWS share geometry and surface
                definitions with the objects they are cloned from.  If
                you wish your clones to be rendered in POV with the
                same surface textures as their master objects, select
                "Clones as Clones" and you will save considerable space
                in the geometry files, since only the geometry of the
                master objects is written out.
                If you want your clones to have different surfaces from
                their master objects in POV, you MUST select "Clones as
                Objects".  This writes a separate geometry definition for
                each clone to the POV file, taking up more space but
                allowing you to define clone surface textures differently
                from their master objects.
   Click on "OK" in the dialog box, and your POV files will be written out.
   Note that it is probably a good idea to save your files into their
   own subdirectory, so they can be easily worked with later on (perhaps
   keep a subdirectory called POVSCENE just for this purpose).

   3DWS will write the following files:
        XXXXX000.INC - the "frame 0" file, this contains ONLY the
        geometry (the triangles) of the objects in their frame 0
        positions. XXXXX is replaced with the name you chose in
        the file select dialog box.

        XXXXXnnn.INC - nnn is replaced with a frame number for the frame
        that this file represents.  These "frame" files contain no
        geometry, only transforms to move, scale, and rotate objects to
        their correct positions for that frame.

For the following operations, assume you used the default "FRAME001.INC"
filename for the POV files output from 3DWS, and that the programs listed
above are in your DOS PATH.  We'll also assume you made a 50 frame
animation in 3DWS.

5. The "frame 0" file will be called "FRAME000.INC".  Run the ANIM3D.EXE
   program (just type "anim3d" at the command line).  Anim3d will prompt
   you for:
        a. The name of the frame 0 file (FRAME000.INC)
        b. The number of the starting file (normally 001, be sure to
           put in 3 digits, lead with zeros)
        c. The number of the last frame (in this case, 050)
        d. A name for your POV anim files (we'll use TEST, enter up
           to 5 letters, no extension).

   Anim3d will "gather" the transforms in each frame file into proper
   POV declarations, add include statements, and write a POV file
   called TESTnnn.POV for each frame, with nnn replaced by a number
   for that frame.  It also writes a MESH.TEX file with texture
   information, and a batch file called ANIM.BAT which can be used
   to render your animation.

6. If you used the Flat triangles option when saving the POV files from
   3DWS, you should also do the following steps (you can also use these
   steps if you saved smooth triangles from 3DWS, to speed up POV
   rendering):
        a. rename the frame 0 file saved by 3DWS from XXXXX000.INC to
           XXXXX000.dat (where XXXXX are the first five characters
           of the filename).
        b. run 3D_RAW.EXE, passing it the name of the frame 0 file.
                example: 3D_RAW TEST1000.DAT
        c. run RAW2POV.EXE as shown on the screen when 3D_RAW.EXE
           completes on the RAW file produced by 3D_RAW.exe
                example: RAW2POV TEST1000.RAW TEST1000.PV -s80
                the -sXX parameter is the "break angle", just
                like in 3DWS, for smoothing triangles
        d. run DECLARE.EXE on RAW2POV's output file, now named
           with a .INC extension again
                example: DECLARE TEST1000.INC
           This will produce a TEST1000.DEC file. Rename this file
           back to the original TEST1000.INC name, which is
           included by ANIM3D produced files.
7. Copy the following files to your POV directory for rendering with
   POV (this assumes you saved your files as TEST1XXX.INC originally,
   and gave the name TEST2 for the anim file name when prompted in
   ANIM3D.EXE):
        TEST1000.INC - the frame 0 geometry (either straight from
                3DWS or run through 3D_RAW,RAW2POV,DECLARE)
        ANIM.BAT - the batch file for rendering the animation
        MESH.TEX - the editable file containing texture declares
                   for all of the objects in the scene
        TEST2*.POV - the individual frame POV files, one for each
                   frame of the animation
        POVRAY.DEF - definition file for POV.

8. Edit POVRAY.DEF, to set up POV to your liking, i.e. antialiasing on
   or off, resolution, buffer sizes, etc. (see POVRAY documentation for
   setting POVRAY command line switches in this file).

9. Edit MESH.TEX, if you want to change the textures assigned to the
   objects.  There will be one declared texture name for each object
   in this file - do not change the declared texture names, only
   the texture definitions (see POVRAY documentation for details on
   defining textures).

10. Run the ANIM.BAT file - this will render all of the scenes in your
    animation one-by-one, saving all of the individual frames with
    the same name as the .POV file for that frame, but with a .TGA
    extension (the files are TARGA files).