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------------------------------------------------------------------------- ThreeD - Version 0.60 - September, 1995 - by Kieran Jones ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. System Requirements Platforms: Quad-fat MAB for Next, Intel , HP and Sun. O/S: NeXTSTEP Version 3.3 2. Distribution ThreeD is distributed as a compressed tar file called ThreeD_06_NIHS.tar.Z. It contains the following two files: ThreeD.app quad-fat application file ThreeDmanual.rtfd reference manual file ThreeD is freeware. You may freely copy, distribute and use the program and its reference manual. All copies of the program should include the on-line help files and the info panel identifying the program and its author, and be accompanied by the complete contents of the reference manual. Please see the "Legal Notes" section of the manual for the standard legal disclaimers. 3. General Description ThreeD is a basic three-dimensional scene modeling and rendering program based on NeXT's 3DKit and Pixar's RenderMan. The program has the following general capabilities: - It allows the interactive creation of a 3-D scene consisting of a variety of basic geometric shapes such as cones, cylinders and spheres. The geometry, position and shader appearance of each shape can be changed at any time. - Three variable light sources are available to illuminate the shapes in a scene. - The camera can be moved about in a variety of ways within a scene to view the latter from any location. - A scene can be saved to a file at any time and be read in later for further modification. Its RIB code can also be saved to a file. - A scene can be rendered photorealistically at any time. The result is displayed on-screen and can be saved as a TIFF image file. - A rudimentary animation capability allows a sequence of frames to be generated and played back, simulating shape motion. 4. Specific Release Description ThreeD Version 0.6 is a minor update of the initial Version 0.5 release. Version 0.6 incorporates the following changes: 4.1 New Features - Displacement and Light shader types are now supported. Prior to Version 0.6 only Surface shaders were available. A new control has been added to the Shape Inspector panel to support multiple shaders. Note that although the interface allows all six RenderMan shader types to be specified only the Surface, Displacement and Light types are actually implemented and have any effect. - Three additional spatial operations related to shapes are now available: + Locate to shape: A shape can made to translate itself such that its origin is coincident with that of another shape or with the world space origin. + Orient with shape: A shape can be made to rotate itself such that its axes are oriented with those of another shape or with the world space axes. + Coincide with shape: Combines the above two operations, making a shape fully coincident in space with another shape or with the world space origin and axes. The manual has been updated to describe the use of these features. 4.2 Bug Fixes - Drag/dropping of custom shader files is now accepted only if they have a ".slo" extension. Files having any other extension are ignored when dragged into the scene view. Prior to Version 0.6 dragging and dropping a file whose extension was not ".slo" crashed the program. - The values of all shader arguments are now copied when duplicating a shape. Prior to Version 0.6 the shader arguments of a duplicated shape were set to default values, ignoring the actual values set for the original. - Modification of shader parameters now causes ThreeD to regard the scene as having been modified. Prior to Version 0.6 ThreeD failed to notice that shader parameter modification changed a scene. - Camera and shape translations now work correctly regardless of camera orientation. Prior to Version 0.6 rotating the camera to certain orientations could cause translation displacements to become near-zero, making it impossible to translate the camera or shapes by the correct amount. - The colour panel that is brought up when modifying a shader colour parameter now stays on-screen after the parameter has been set. 5. Known Problems In addition to the known problems listed in the manual, the following bugs exist: a) Specifying a .slo shader file containing invalid or corrupt shader data causes ThreeD to crash. ThreeD performs no checks on the validity of the contents of any shader files it uses. It assumes that any .slo file is a valid RenderMan shader language function and attempts to use it as such. b) Saving a scene containing a shape that uses the "texmap" shader with its "texname" parameter undefined (value = "none") causes ThreeD to crash. The "texname" parameter must be set to the full pathname of a texture map file. Example texture map files are located in /NextLibrary/Textures/and have a file extension of .tx. 6. User Comments Comments can be emailed to the author at the following address: kjones@vcn.bc.ca Please note that the above new address replaces the old one given in the ThreeD info panel and reference manual.
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Netfuture.ch.