
VORT - a very ordinary rendering tool-kit. Version 2.3.1

VORT is a collection of tools and a library for the generation and
manipulation of images. It includes a ray tracer, pixel library, and
utilities for doing gamma correction, median cuts, etc...

The current distribution is described as follows:

art	- a ray tracer for doing algebraic surfaces and CSG models.

	Brief outline of the features of art:

		primitives (blobby, box, cone, cylinder, height field, bicubic
		patch, polygon, sphere, superquadric, torus, algebraic surfaces,
		triangular strips and OFF files. Polygons can be flat and
		phong-shaded, colour interpolation can also be done.)
		 
		Composite objects.
		  
		Constructive solid geometry.
					   
		Directional, point, and area sources.
						    
		3D procedural texturing, bump mapping, and 2D image mapping.
									     
		Adaptive antialiasing through variable-rate "jittered" sampling.

		Arbitrary (within reason!) transformations on objects and
		textures.

		Kd trees, uniform grids  and one or two other methods to
		speed up rendering. Extra grids/kd-trees can be specfied by
		the user.

		Basic animation support, via variables, and include options.

tools	- some utilities for fiddling around with image files.

docs	- various bits of doco on the tools

lib	- a the pixel library files - this has only been developed to the
	point needed to read and write display files.

old	- this contains a program for converting image files from 1.0
	format to 1.1.

sun	- a set of display programs for a sun workstation.

X11	- a set of display programs for a 256 colour X machine.

iris	- a display program for an Iris workstation.

pc	- a set of display programs for a PC with VGA Extended Graphics.

movies	- some C programs for generating some sample animations.

text3d	- a simple program for making 3d text by converting Hershey vector 
	fonts into art composites.

tutes	- some C programs for generating some animations that demonstrate
	the texturing.

We would like to thank the following people who helped with this release:
	Alberto Barsella much bug hunting, ideas, some great scene files, 
	another pcdisp program, and some mods to super.c.
	Henry Chatroop for also surviving a VMS port.
	Brad Fowlow for doing the Mac port.
	Ole Nielsen, Joe Lappa, and Joel Welling for suggestions
	and helping isolate the resulting bugs that we introduced.
	Pavel Rozalski for the SGI movie programs and the changes to 
	make the VORT library read compressed files.
	Eric Haines for providing the SPD Databases, which proved
	invaluable for debugging and testing the kd-tree in art.

This software is public domain, and provided without guarantee, although if
you send beer (use the snail mail address, it's less messy) we will drink it.

Surfaces, material properties, and general chat can be directed to:

	echidna@munnari.oz.au
or
	echidna@gondwana.ecr.mu.oz.au

or by snail mail to:

	The Software Support Programmer
	Department Of Engineering Computer Resources,
	Faculty Of Engineering,
	University Of Melbourne,
	Parkville, Vic, 3052, Australia.

Enjoy.
