Becoming a Computer Animator

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Text File | 1994-06-14 | 16.8 KB | 365 lines

+++++++++++++++++++++ POV COMMANDER (ver 2.0) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ NEW THIS VERSION : -Major overhall! All known bugs fixed. -New load windows to choose your files. -Sorted Files Screen. -Slicker, friendlier interface. -Complete on-line help system. -Non-crippled! All options are available and work as in the registered version. There is only one shareware screen on the final exit. This program is designed to make the use of the POV raytracing program easier. The documentation assumes that you have a basic knowledge of how either POV 1.0 or 2.0 works. POV Commander also allows you to assign other programs, 3D modellers, and ray-tracing utilities to User Configurable buttons - and the ability to run all of these and POV with a click of the mouse. There is even a built in on-screen file manager with a drag-and-drop style interface to make assigning of directories, files and user configurable buttons quick and easy! Advanced options include the ability to edit your POV text files, multiple traces of different POV files with one click of the mouse, the ability to save your favorite library paths,and a view include file option that allows you to see which files are being included in a graphical display. All POV options are assignable as easy as clicking your mouse! REQUIREMENTS : DOS 5.0 , and Microsoft compatible mouse. (And the POV Raytracing program, of course!) THIS PROGRAM IS SHAREWARE. YOU MAY USE THIS PROGRAM FOR A TRIAL PERIOD OF 30 DAYS, AFTER WHICH TIME YOU MUST REGISTER IT IF YOU INTEND TO CONTINUE USING IT. BY REGISTERING THIS PROGRAM, YOU WILL RECEIVE YOUR REGISTERED NAME AND PASSWORD THAT WILL CLEAR THE SHAREWARE SCREEN. YOU WILL ALSO BE GIVEN FUTURE UPGRADES OF VERSIONS 2.0 OF THE PROGRAM FREE. SEE "ORDER.DOC" FOR ORDERING INFORMATION. THE PRICE IS $10. THIS PROGRAM IS A full WORKING COPY - WITH ONLY A SHAREWARE WARNING ON THE FINAL EXIT OF THE PROGRAM. THE AUTHOR RESERVES ALL RIGHTS TO THIS PROGRAM. THE AUTHOR DOES NOT WARRANT THIS PROGRAM'S FITNESS OR SUITABILITY FOR ANY PURPOSE. ALL USERS SHOULD USE IT AT THEIR OWN RISK. THE ONLY THING THAT IS GUARANTEED IS THAT IT WILL TAKE UP A LITTLE HARD DRIVE SPACE. The author will make a reasonable effort to correct problems and software bugs relating to documented features of the program for registered users. The author intends to make continuing improvements to the program. To this end, comments and suggestions are welcomed. (Even from non-registered users.) Users may contact the author, Matthew O. Alvey on America Online under user name NIHIL777, or in writing at: 3436 Kendale Dr. Ft. Wayne, IN. 46835 or over Internet at address: NIHIL777@AOL.COM ************************************************************************* 1.0 THE POV COMMANDER ENVIRONMENT **IMPORTANT!!** The first time you start POV COMMANDER change to the directory that contains POV COMMANDER and type "START". Otherwise the program will not function properly. Always use 'START' each time you run the program. You must also know in advance where the POV raytracing program is on your hard drive. The POV Commander environment is based on a point-and-click concept. It is completely mouse driven. All options are chosen by left clicking on them. Some items are even assigned by clicking and dragging, so that there is a minimal amount of keyboard use. The left side of the screen is devoted to the File Commander. This lets you browse through your drives and find files with the ease of the mouse. From here you will drag-and-drop the files and directories you want, as well as assign your user configurable buttons. At the bottom of the file window are eight buttons that allow you to save, load, run POV ect. There is also a file mask selector, accessed by clicking on the line that displays the current directory. The right half of the screen contains all of your POV options. These are all set with the click of the mouse. The bottom right half of the screen contains more large buttons to view the include chain, trace multiple POV files, and four other buttons which you can assign to run any other programs you want (3d modellers, ect.). There is a menu bar at the top of the screen, and a status line bar at the bottom of the screen. Keep an eye on the Status bar, as it will let you know what you can do in any given situation. 1.1 DEF Files POV Commander works with .DEF files. These files contain all of the POV options that you set - anti-aliasing values, include directories, ect. This is the file that POV will use to trace your picture. All your work will be saved in a file with an extension of .DEF. POV COMMANDER automatically loads the last .DEF file you used in your last POV COMMANDER session. ************************************************************************** 2.0 THE MENUS ************************************************************************** 2.1 The FILE menu. NEW The new option resets all of the POV options to their defaults, if you were previously working on a file, you are first asked if you want to save it. LOAD This option brings up a screen from which you may choose the desired DEF file. See the File Commander section for another way of loading DEF files. This option is only here for menu-heads. SAVE This option will save the currently loaded DEF file to the POV directory. This is where it needs to be for POV to use it. SAVE AS This allows you to save the current DEF file under a new name. EXIT This option allows you to exit the POV COMMANDER back to DOS. LAST 5 DEF FILES WORKED ON. Under the EXIT option will be listed the last 5 DEF files that you have worked on. This is a quick-load option for files that you work on often. Just click on the name and the file will be loaded! 2.2 The OPTIONS menu RUN POV This option saves your current DEF file if it needs saving and runs POV using that file as its definition. When POV is finished you will return to the COMMANDER. EDIT This allows you to see your POV file as text and edit it. Files other than your currently selected .POV file may be viewed by double-clicking on them in the File Commander window. **REGISTERED VERSION ONLY** VIEW INCLUDE CHAIN This allows you to view graphically the other files that are being included in your POV file. Any files that cannot be found in the paths listed in your Library Paths are marked as such. This option is usefull in order to see if you have included all of the necessary library paths that POV will need. BATCH RUNNER This brings up a window which allows you to trace more than one POV file at a time in succession. While this window is up, the File Commander is still active, so that you can drag and drop up to 50 .DEF files to be traced in a row. If you don't like the order that you have put the .DEF files in, just drag and drop the out of place files to whichever of the 50 positions you want it to be at. Unwanted files can be deleted by double-clicking on them. To start completely fresh, hit the clear button. When you are ready to trace all of the .DEF files you have listed, hit the RUN POV button. Be sure that you have the 'Abort with a keypress' option turned on for each of those .DEF files, otherwise you will be tracing pictures for a long time with no way to abort them! (Except mabey ctrl-C, I haven't tried.) You can also now load and save your Batch files. HEIGHT & WIDTH This pop-up window contains many height and width values that you may choose by clicking on them with the left mouse button. If you have an odd size that you use frequently, you can enter up to three of these, by clicking in the box and entering your custom height and width values. The change start and end values checkbox will automatically update the start row, start column, ect. values after you hit O.K., if you have these items turned on. PALLET TYPE This allows you to choose the appropriate pallet type for your video card. BUFFER SIZE This allows you to enter how you want POV to write its image file to disk. You can set it to write after each line is rendered, or set it to write after so many Kilobytes. As with many of these options, see the POV documentation. OUTPUT FILE NAME This allows you to choose what file format POV uses when writing image files to disk. OUTPUT FILE PATH This is where you can choose one of the default paths for you output picture. You can also assign an output file path by dragging one from the file window and dropping it in the file output path display box, right below your output file name on the main screen. NUMBER OF SYMBOLS This allows you to change the number of symbols value that POV uses when reading POV files. Large POV files may need a high value here. See POV Documentation. CHANGE POV VERSION This option toggles the screen between options from POV version 1.0 and 2.0. The options from ver. 2.0 that aren't available in 1.0 will be grayed out. VIEW LAST OUTPUT This option will flip you back to dos to see what happened with POV, if there was an error. When you are finished, hit a key to return. 2.3 The CONFIG Menu PROGRAM LOCATIONS This brings up a window that allows you to enter or change the locations you have assigned for POVRAY.EXE and POVCOMM.EXE. SAVE CONFIGURATION This allows you to save any changes you have made to the POV COMMANDER configuration, which includes: custom heights, program locations, user configurable buttons, custom colors, all the files you have assigned in the batch runner, and the POV version you are using. You will be prompted before exiting the program if the config needs saving POV VERSION This allows you to set up POV Commander to use the appropriate version of POV. Choose 1.0 if you are using POV version 1.0, and 2.0 for POV version 2.0. This option is automatically set to 2.0, unless you change it at some point. SAVE LIBRARY PATHS This option allows you to save you current library paths in a file for quick loading later. All files are saved with a *.PTH in the same directory where POV Commander is. You can click on O.K. to save under the current *.PTH name listed, or enter a new name. LOAD LIBRARY PATHS This option brings up a window from which you can select a previously saved set of library paths. AUTO SAVE ON/OFF This turns the auto save function on/off. If you get tired of answereing all of those "changes made, Save?" messages, turn this on. ************************************************************************** 3.0 THE FILE COMMANDER 3.1 Changing directories and drives All files and directories are displayed within the File Commander Window. Directories are shown enclosed in <> signs. To change to that directory DOUBLE CLICK on the directory name. The symbol <.\> will take you back to the root of the current drive, and <..\> will take you back one directory in the current drive. These symbols will always be the first two listed in the File Commander window. (Unless you are in the root drive. To change to a new drive, simply click on the drive letter, A:, B:, ect., located at the top of the file commander. To change which files are seen, click on the bar near the top of the File Commander that contains the path name. A popup window will appear that will allow you to choose a pre-defined file mask, or to enter one of your own. You may use any normal DOS wildcards. i.e. if you enter *.INC, only files with a .INC extion will be shown from then on in the File Commander window. To highlight a file, click on it with the left mouse button. To load a DEF file, click and hold it until the cursor changes to a hand. Drag it down to the bottom left hand corner of the status bar and release it on top of the old DEF file name displayed there. This is the quick way to load a DEF file. The same method is used when assigning directories to library paths and assigning programs to the user configurable buttons. (see later) You can also edit any file in the File Window by double clicking on it. The Buttons across the bottom of the file commander work much the same as their menu counterparts. ************************************************************************** 4.0 POV OPTIONS AND USER BUTTONS - right half of screen 4.1 POV OPTIONS POV VERSION this area shows which version of POV the commander is set up for. See menu section. HEIGHT Click here to enter a new height value. WIDTH Click here to enter a new width value. DISPLAY TYPE Click the checkbox to see the picture as it is being rendered, and click within the display box to choose your display card from the list presented. STATISTIC DISPLAY Click this checkbox if you wish to see only the statistics of your picture as it is being rendered. ABORT WITH KEYPRESS Allows you to abort the rendering image at any time. (You might as well keep this turned on at all times, especially if you are doing many POV files at once. Its the only easy way to get out of a render, once its started!) CONTINUE ABORTED IMAGE Allows you to continue an aborted render. PAUSE AFTER TRACE This will pause POV after it is finished tracing a picture to allow you to see it until a key is pressed. CLOCK VALUE Click the check box and enter the clock value for the current trace when doing animation scenes. INPUT FILE NAME This box displays the POV file name that will be traced. To assign a file to this box, just find it in the File Commander window, click and drag it to the Input File Name Box. Drag and drop - its that simple! OUTPUT FILE NAME Click the checkbox if you want your image saved to a file, and enter a file name in the box. OUTPUT FILE PATH Drag a directory from the file window to assign a path here, or click in this box to bring up a window where you can choose various default paths. RENDER QUALITY This allows you to choose the quality of render you want. Valid values are from 1 to 9. ANTI-ALIASING Click the checkbox and enter the values for these options NUMBER OF RAYS if desired. JITTER BOUNDING SLABS Enter the minimum number of objects needed before boundings are used. START LINE These values are used for tracing only a portion of the image. END LINE or START ROW END ROW START COLUMN END COLUMN LIBRARY PATHS These are assigned by dragging and dropping the desired path names from the File Commander to any on of the Library Path positions. You may delete an undesired library path by double clicking on it. VIEW INCLUDE CHAIN BUTTON See section 2.2. POV BATCH RUNNER See section 2.2. USER CONFIGURABLE BUTTONS These buttons can be assigned to run any program on your hard drive. Simply find the program you want to run in the file commander, and drag it with the mouse to one of the user configurable buttons, and release your mouse button. A window will appear that will allow you to enter a title for the button, and any command line parameters that the program may need. If you include the symbol @POV anywhere in the command line box, the current POV file name that is on-screen will be substituted whenever you run this program. This is useful for POV utilities that require a POV file in its command line arguments. These buttons can be edited at any time by double clicking on them. The Clear option in the displayed window will erase whatever you have assigned to that button. These buttons are useful for running 3D Modellers and the like directly from POV Commander. Once a button is assigned and given a new title, just click on it, and the program will be run. When the program is finished running, you will be returned to POV Commander! **NOTE** Any time that POV Commander runs another program or runs POV itself, no memory is used, because instead of using a TSR to track those programs, POV Commander uses recursive batch files. That is why it is important to start POV Commander with 'START.BAT'. Special Thanx to BETA testers Chris Dhoerman, Jim Babcock, and Timothy Bearmen! Compiled with Borland C++ 4.0. A SETI PRODUCTION. THELEMA - AGAPE - 93! note: the view TGA option was not included in this version due to technical difficulties (i.e. I can't get the true color image to dither to 256 colors correctly!). Hopefully I will have it in a new version soon. Thanx for all your support!