This archive contains a 3-string Appalachian Mountain dulcimer in Imagine
object format.  For those of you unfamiliar with dulcimers, it is an easy
to play stringed instrument, traditionally held across the lap and strummed
or plucked.  Depending on the tuning and the manner which it is played, it
can sound like bagpipes, a guitar, or a harpsichord.  This object is
patterned after a dulcimer I just finished making in my workshop.  The plans
for the dulcimer were found in "The Woodworker's Journal", Vol. 15, No. 4
(Woodworking magazines are great places to find patterns for objects).


The head, fretboard, and tail are supposed to be unfinished dark mahogany.
The sides, top, and bottom are unfinished light mahogany.  The tuning pegs
are polished ebony.  The nut and bridge were made from an unknown piece of
wood found on a scrap table at my local exotic hardwood store.  The textures
used on these objects were designed for final display on a 768x482 24-bit
FireCracker.  I use a fine grain (the exponent value of the wood texture is
pretty big), so I don't know how the wood textures will look in the standard
Amiga ILBM/HAM modes (sorry, I'm spoiled and only like to use the 24-bit
board for viewing images, so I never use the standard Amiga modes anymore).
One more thing about textures and this object, I always use textures: as the
location for the Imagine file requestor to look for textures.  So just make
sure you give the CLI command similar to this before loading this object:

assign textures: hd:3d/imagine2.0/textures

where hd:3d/imagine2.0/textures is replaced with the full path to your
Imagine textures directory.


The dulcimer.iob file uses strictly triangles to achieve the flower and
hummingbird cut-outs on the top of the dulcimer. This was achieved using
the Convert IFF/ILBM and Slice features of the Imagine Detail Editor.  I
chose this technique over the use of filter maps, because I was able to
make the cut-outs have depth (its actually the illusion of having the wood
around the cut-out look like it has depth).  With filter maps, I was able to
"punch a hole" in the top surface, but that illusion of depth cannot be
accomplished with filter mapping.  However, I have included the necessary
items to reconstruct the filter-mapped top if anyone is interested.  Just
load dulcimer.iob, remove the 2 objects topright and topleft (they are
grouped together as "top"), then load top_filter.iob.  This object looks for
brushmaps:flower.brush and brushmaps:hummingbird.brush, so you should do an
assign similar to the one above except for brushmaps:

assign brushmaps: hd:3d/Imagine2.0/brushmaps


The filter map version would be a good one to use if the object is never
going to be very close to the camera.  But for close-ups, I much prefer the
looks of the sliced top.  I have not done anything to compare the rendering
speed or memory usage of these 2 tops, if anyone actually does some tests
I would be interested in the results.


Oh, and by the way, you ARE missing something from this object.  I
intentionally left out the strings of the dulcimer (I guess my first comments
about this object should have read 3 peg dulcimer rather than 3 string :-).
The file size was pretty big already, and as a former high school and college
professor, it was always popular to say:

"And the rest of this problem is left as an exercise for the reader."

It's really pretty easy to create the strings using a polygon outline and the
ability to extrude along a path.  Just create a path that loops around the
tailpin, runs along the fretboard, and wraps around one of the pegs.  Extrude
the polygon outline along the path and you've got a dulcimer string.

There are no restrictions on the use of this object.  It is truly public
domain, so use it anyway you like. I would prefer that all the files
found in this archive be distributed together (including this readme file),
so feel free to distribute this archive anywhere.

Marvin Landis
marvinl@amber.rc.arizona.edu