DKBTrace




   This ray tracer was written by David K. Buck and is released as freely
   distributable software.  The author retains all copyrights but permits
   free distribution of the software through any medium.  The software may
   be used without charge so long as the code is not included in any 
   commercial product.


   The Amiga archive here contains two versions of the raytracer:

       traceffp   - Fast Floating Point version of the raytracer.
                    This version will run on any Amiga with sufficient
                    memory.

       trace881   - Math coprocessor version.  This version will only
                    run on 68020 or 68030 based systems that have a
                    68881 or 68882 math coprocessor.


   I usually like having a fairly large stack for this program.  If it
   crashes on you, try inceasing the stack size.


   In addition, the following utilities are provided (these will run on any
   AMIGA system).

       DumpToIFF  - Converts the raw 24 bit output files of the raytracer into
                    hires HAM images.
 
               syntax:
                DumpToIFF  [options] input-file [output-file [palette-file]] 

               options are:
                    -d            Suppress Floyd Steinberg dithering
                    -pfilename    Output a colour palette for the picture

              The colour palette for one image may be used in other images.
              This is useful for animations in order to force the entire
              animation to use the same colour palette.

                 eg.
                   DumpToIFF  -pmyImage.palette myImage.dis  myImage.ham
                   DumpToIFF  myImage2.dis  myImage2.ham  myImage.palette


       Dump2RGB   - Converts the raw 24 bit output files of the raytracer into
                    three separate dump files for red, green and blue.
 
               syntax:
                Dump2RGB [options] input-file

               options are:
                    -wxxx         Output image width
                    -hxxx         Output image height

       Dump2Raw    - Same as Dump2RGB but takes the size from the input file
                     and takes less memory.
 
       Sculpt2DKB  - Converts a Sculpt-Animate 3D .scene file into DKB format.
              At the current time, smoothed triangles are not supported.  The
              only information converted is the information on the polygons,
              the colours, and the textures.  Lightsources, viewpoints, and
              world information is currently ignored.

                syntax:
                   Sculpt2DKB  scene-file  dkb-dat-file

              You must edit this file after the conversion to add a viewpoint
              and lightsources as needed.


   The program documentation can be found in the file DKB.DOC and the
   documentation for some Amiga specific utilities may be found in
   AmigaUtils.doc.

   This program is being distributed in four separate packages:


      DKBTrace.lzh:  Executables for traceffp and trace881
                     documentation files
                     DumpToIFF and Sculpt2DKB executables

      DKBData.lzh    Many sample data files

      DKBSource.lzh  Source code for DKBTrace, Amiga utilities, and
                     IBM Utilities.


      DKBPics.lzh    Sample pictures produced by the raytracer.
                     (you could render these yourself using the
                      data files in the DKBTrace.lzh archive)


   There is a document in the DKBTrace.lzh archive which describes the
   conversions required to use data files for DKBTrace version 1.2 with
   the new 2.0 version.  This file is called 12to20.doc

   This readme file is in all three archives.