Club Amiga de Montreal - CAM/CAM_CD_1.iso/files/460.lha/Wrap_v1.32/Wrap.doc.pp/Wrap.doc

Text File | 1991-01-05 | 6KB | 102 lines

Wrap 1.32 © 1990 Martin Koistinen

     This program was written so that I could wrap an image around a sphere
or cylinder in Sculpt-Animate 4D. WRAP has an advantage over true surface
mapping in that the image is made up of faces and can be manipulated as
such to produce some really neat effects.

     To use WRAP, construct your input object in Sculpt-Animate. Make sure
that the surface is oriented so that it is NOT seen edge on in the DOWN or
UP window. Use the "Project-Save-Object" menu item to save THAT OBJECT ONLY.
WRAP may not understand whole SCENE files and will tell you so. Once your
object is saved, run WRAP by double clicking its icon. When it asks for an
input file, select your object (which should have .scene appended to it) and
also select or input an output filename. Wrap will not let you save output to
its input file; again, this is to prevent accidents. Also, make sure your
output file also has the ".scene" suffix or Sculpt won't let you select it
as an input file. Next, select the shape you want your object transformed
into and how you'd like it to treat reliefs in your data. For "perfect"
shapes, select "smooth" at the "Make surface..." requester.

     The program also allows the user to wrap a reliefed surface, such as a
mountian range or whatever onto spheres and cylinders as well. This makes
it ideal for constructing planetary objects or otherwise textured shapes.
Just select the "contoured" gadget on the "Make surface..." requester.
Note, the "smooth" option will treat already textured input data as flat by
ignoring any height values (Up-Down coordinates).

     Depending on the size of your object, it may take a while for Wrap to
do its thing, it will tell if it is still working in the WorkBench screen's
title area. When it finishes cranking through the math, it will tell you
what the final radius and circumference of your object is. Note: the radius
it gives you is the inside or minimum radius of your object. This is only
important if your object was created using the "Contoured" option since if
this case all contouring is done outward from the inner radius. Once your
new object file is reloaded into Sculpt, you may, of course, resize it using
the usual "Expand" requester.

     When running Wrap, it will give you a requester so that you can input
the number of desired revolutions. This is useful if you want your object
wrapped into say a hemisphere (0.5 revolutions) or if you wish to wrap
something many times around (revolutions > 1). It will accept any real number
except zero.

     Wrap will also ask you to specify a radius, the default value (the
number that appears in the requester automatically) is the value computed
by Wrap taken from the absolute length of your object and the number of
revolutions you specified. This default value was calculated to retain the
size of your object relative to the number of revolutions. If you wish your
final object to have a specific radius, this is the place to put it. This
requester will also accept any real number except zero.

    Since Wrap is a Sculpt utility and will normally be run concurrently, I
made it use as little memory as possible so that it doesn't interfere with
your work in Sculpt. Wrap doesn't store your object data in RAM: it works
with one vertice at a time and saves it to its output file. Also, Wrap uses
REQ.Library for its user interface which helps make Wrap smaller and easy
to use. See the REQ.doc for more info on the Req.Library.

     Everything has its price and Wrap's price is $10.00. I feel that this
program gives its user the capability of doing something that would be
almost impossible otherwise and will easily justify this low price. Just
think how simple it is to write a check and pop it in the mail. I am sure
anyone with an Amiga, has $10.00 at their disposal. Please send check or
money order as well as any comments, bug reports, suggestions or whatever
to the following address. Please do not send cash through the mail. I will
accept money orders, cashier's checks, and any check drawn on a U.S. Bank.


                            Martin Koistinen
                            1920 Richmond #3
                            Houston TX 77098

I can also be reached for comments or questions via the following:
                      GEnie as M.KOISTINEN
                      InfoLine BBS [phone] as Martin Koistinen.

     Also, all proceeds will go into a savings account for my yet to be born
baby girl who is due in April '91.

     If you send a blank disk with your registration fee, I will send you a
copy of the latest version available and the C source to it.

     Depending on the response, I plan to implement the following things.

     1) Face property support. Gives all faces of a certain property a
certain other property. Example, You have an IFF to Sculpt object
conversion program which outputs a complicated object with different
colored faces. You however want all of the grey faces to be "metallic" or
"mirror" and of a certain color. This would be a HUGE task to manually
select all of those faces and change them. Wrap would do it for you.

     2) Support for different shapes. Cones, ellipses, and other conic
sections may be in the next major release. If I get enough feedback, I may
implement freehand shapes around an axis. (ie, LATHE)

     3) Support for other object formats (Turbo Silver, Imagine, Light
Waves, etc.)

Remember, all of these things depend on YOUR support (yes, YOU too) so send
in your measly $10.00 and support your Amiga, and its community.

"Sculpt" is a registered trademark of Byte by Byte, inc.