**************************************************************** * RAYTRACE USER NEWS ISSUE #6 AUGUST, 1992 * **************************************************************** OKAY, SO I LIED... ------------------ Issue number 5 was supposed to be the last, but a few things have cropped up in the past few weeks that truly deserve mention and should be shared with all my faithful readers around the world. OKAY, SO HE TRIED.. AND SUCCEEDED! RAYVERTER II - THE SEQUEL!!! ---------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, that brilliant friend of Raytrace users worldwide, Mr. Pursell has finally figured out how to decompress .SCL picture format! Now, more than ever a reason to get Lonny Pursell's latest version of his Raytrace to Spectrum 512 and now Neochrome/Degas/Prism-Paint conversion utility. Wrapped up in one program is a way to convert .SCL OR .SUL Raytrace pics to 512 color, or 16 color/grayscale standard ST pic formats. The 16 color conversion is quite good - most tracings will translate well down to a narrower color range. Lonny has used dynamic palette averaging to continually reevaluate the reduced palette as it goes, a bit slower but much better than quick 'n' dirty calc routines. Sixteen colors is still a tight squeeze for some pics though - rainbow-hued gradients across an object are like trying to fit an elephant into a thimble, so keep your expectations reasonable... It was great having ANYTHING to convert with, but with RAYVERTER II it doesn't matter if your pics are in compressed format or not, making file conversion even easier by not having to manually change the program's default setting of Compressed in the Status menu. Even better, it lets you save 15 to 30K on disk for each image by not having to start with uncompressed .SUL files. Lonny's been very open to suggestions and has refined the program's interface to the point of being downright elegant! There's context sensitive help available for each option, and constant feedback as a raytrace image is being processed - no sitting in front of a blank screen wondering if the program has locked up. Also of note is an info box which tells you the number of unique colors in a pic - the most I've done is 197, a far cry from the 512 theoretically possible. I think you'll be pleased with the intuitiveness and ease of use in this new version. Lonny's also written a utility to separate Raytrace .SAL animation files into individual pics allowing you to edit the frames and create customized Spectrum animations if you like, or just save the best pics out of a sequence. With other Spectrum utilities, you can create animations with more than 10 frames, or duplicate and arrange frames in sequences just not possible from within Raytrace itself! A 3-D animators dream... This decompression technique was also added to RAYVIEW - now at version 5 - to make viewing either format of Raytrace pics point 'n' shoot easy! All these programs deserve a place in your library to help you get the most out of Raytrace. Send him a $5 shareware fee, and Lonny will be more than happy to send you disk full of all these goodies and more! He's also trying to support saving to Spectrum compressed and GIF formats - if you have some sample code in GFA basic or C to help him implement .GIF or .SPC conversion you can save yourself the shareware fee by sending him useable source code instead. Write: Lonny Pursell RE: Rayverter II P.O. Box 145 Pandora, Ohio 45877 USA OKAY, SO I WAS WRONG! --------------------- Last issue I mentioned problems with GFA Raytrace running under TOS 2.06 on a 1040 STE, specifically that hitting the ESCape key during a trace in progress causes the program to bomb out. This is still true - at least in color mode. HOWEVER, if you press HELP first to switch to 512 color mode, then ESCape, you usually will safely return to the Raytrace menu. I say usually because I don't guarantee this 100% of the time. But so far its worked most of the time. Its not a bad idea to make a point to Save Data before moving to Raytrace mode... Seems to be related to the key- board handling or the timing of the vertical blank interrupt that Raytrace uses to switch between video modes. The ESCape key does work fine in monocrome since this doesn't apply to B&W mode. OKAY, SO I WAS ALMOST RIGHT... ------------------------------ I've gotten a confirmation from a user that he can load Raytrace on a TOS 2.06 Mega STE with *NO* 68881 math chip installed at 8mhz/No Cache. But has experienced problems with screen redraw in the editor, and garbage on the 512 color screen. As it now stands, if you want to run Raytrace reliably, and Spectrum 512 at all for that matter, TOS 1.6x on a STE appears to be the end of the line for these programs. SOME GREAT FOLLOW THROUGH! -------------------------- ST Format UK has kept the ball rolling for a third consecutive issue by printing a few more examples of my raytraced pics alongside a collection of tips to help explore and improve on the programs abilities. Though the article is attributed to one of ST Format's editors, it is MY ideas and words that were used in that article, cloned from back issues of Raytrace User News and I'm miffed they didn't give credit where it was due. But I'm just glad the disk I sent off to them several months back got put to use and made the release of Raytrace something more than just a one shot thing. The view/convert utilities in the second and the tip section in the third issue has served interested readers well, helping them to move beyond their initial experimentation with the program. GLOBAL DISSEMINATION - THE MASTER PLAN REVEALED! ------------------------------------------------ I will be sending Rayverter II and Rayview 5 off to ST Format for possible publishing on a future coverdisk. I'll also be sending disks off to the US, UK, and German branches of GFA as well to show them someone wrote the utilities THEY should have written for the program long, long ago! I also hope that those of you who down- load these Shareware utilities off of GEnie do make a point of uploading them to your local ST BBS's, or getting them into the hands of your area's User Group for their disk library. Everyone who bought Raytrace deserves access to these utilities - please help me do it. And as always - a picture says a thousand words about the power of GFA Raytrace and the ST - make a point of distributing some of your favorite raytraced creations as well! ZEROING IN... ------------- If you have access to GEnie, try a keyword search on 'raytrace' in the ST libraries and you'll find a host of related stuff. There are some interesting PD tracers out there worth exploring, though none touch GFA Raytrace for ease of use. To narrow down further, do a search on Uploader Address: S.SMITH65 to get a listing of stuff I've uploaded - the view/convert utilities, archives of pics, texture maps, and back-issues of the newsletter. I am no longer active on CompuServe, so I'd appreciate it if someone out there would make sure that the latest versions of Rayverter II and Rayview5 end up there - if they aren't - please, take the time to make these available to Raytrace users on CompuServe for me. With CompuServe's international access, global dissemination is more likely. ON MY HITLIST... ---------------- Seems I always have an ongoing computer frustration to deal with and this month's headache is a Star NX-1000 Rainbow color printer I picked up second-hand. Does anyone know of a driver that will print Spectrum pics out on it? I hear that Pagestream will, but EXCUSE ME!, a $200+ printer driver is out of my league... If any of yous are aware of an alternative, let me know. In the mean- time, Deluxe Paint ST has a very, very good color print program that supports the Rainbow for 16 color pics. Very flexible in allowing user specified sizes, and lets you print test strips and adjust color correction by using sliders to blend the CYMK ribbon colors to match the RGB colors in your pic. YOUR OWN PERSONAL RT GURU! -------------------------- If some of Raytrace's features got you stumped, I may be able to provide insight - or at least sympathy. And am always eager to share operational tips, pics, and texture maps, so drop me a note on GEnie to S.SMITH65, or send a disk my way! Don't let the date on this issue dissuade you - as I've been since 1985 - I'm quite content with my ST and will probably still be a year from now, so even if you read this in 1994, don't hesitate to contact me! GFA RAYTRACE USERS USA c/o Nick S. Smith 4406 5th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55409 USA