
The POVTextureEditor - texture editor for povray.

== Version 1.01 
== 03 August 1996

author Vladimir Bulatov (V.Bulatov@ic.ac.uk)


This tar archive contains the UNIX distribution of the POVTextureEditor.
It allows to edit povray texture, pigment, colormap and color
description in highly interactive regime.


MAIN FEATURES

POVTextureEditor is written in Java(tm) and should run without recompilation 
on all platforms which support Java (currently Solaris, Linux, Irix, AIX, 
HPUX, OSF/1, OS/2, MacOS, Windows 95 (no Windows 3.1 yet), Amiga). 
It was developed in Linux with JDK 1.01 (Java Development Kit) and partially tested 
in Irix 6.1 and Windows 95.  To make run it in Windows 95 it is necessary 
to use JDK 1.02 at least, because of many bugs in JDK 1.01.

POVTextureEditor supports all main texture and colour features of povray 2.2 except: 
image_map (it is more modeller's task I assume), material_map (if you are able 
to use it, you don't need any interactive program anyway :-) and some 
multi coloured pigment like checkers and hexagon. Simple new features of povray 3.0
like new pigment crackle or wrinkles are supported too. 
Now texture_map yet, but layered textures there.

POVTextureEditor accepts as input source file in povray format with 
#declare and #include statements. Basically all povray 2.2 and povray 3.0
include files are valid input files with an exception of some new directives
like #ifdef, which should be commented out. Anyway, is there other program,
except povray, which can read pov files? This is still the first :-) 

POVTextureEditor produces an output in povray format (certainly). 

POVTextureEditor has very sophisticated (but intuitive easy) user interface
with highest level of interactivity and multiple level of selectable undo, 
copy and paste facility.

POVTextureEditor has its own visual editors for colours and colormap and 
uses povray to make preview of pigments and textures.

POVTextureEditor run in true color (if supported by system) or makes high 
quality dithering on 256 color system.

POVTextureEditor does optional gamma correction of colours and images.

POVTextureEditor is quite hungry for CPU resources. The faster CPU you have 
- the better. My home 466/66/16MB with Linux on board was sometimes a little bit 
depressed by POVTextureEditor, but just sometimes :).

Sources (about 8,500 lines ) are included.

INSTALLATION

To be able to run POVTextureEditor You MUST install java on your system. 
To be able to have a preview of created textures and pigments you should 
have a povray installed (from http://www.povray.org)

Visit official Java site  http://www.javasoft.com/
or list of useful links http://www.cybercom.net/~frog/javaide.html
for information how and where to get Java distribution.

Unix installation.

The provided Makefile will install POVTextureEditor on your system.  To use
the Makefile, you MUST first edit it to match your directory
structure. Change the values of $JAVA_DIR and the other two variables
if necessary to point to where the actual Java binaries and classes
are stored on your system.  See the Makefile itself for more
information.

Windows 95.

0) Be  sure, that you have extracted files from this archive with
long file names.

1) Copy contents of directory "classes" with all subdirectories
to some place pointed by CLASSPATH variable (or add new
path to CLASSPATH), or add path to "classes" to
your CLASSPATH and do not copy anything.

2) Edit bin/POVTetureEditor.bat to make it to have correct full path 
to java executable and CLASSPATH in it pointing to correct location 
of POVTextureEditor classes.

3) Copy bin/POVTextureEdirtor.bat to some directory from your PATH variable.
 
Mac installation.

Here you are on your own at the moment. It shouldn't be a problem,
but I am not too familiar with Mac to provide exact 
installation procedure.

STARTING POVTextureEditor

After installing, you can start the editor with the POVTextureEditor
command. First time when you will start it will ask about 
exact location of povray and will create directory $HOME/.POVTextureEditor
(or somewhere in your java distribution directory if yoiu are on Windows 95)
with some configuration files in it. You can edit this files later 
to reflect you own need.

Directory textures in this distribution contains several examples of 
textures, which are basically examples from povray distribution:
colors.inc texture.inc stones.inc. However they was saved by the 
POVTextureEditor, what made them independent of each other for 
the price of loosed comments and pretty man made looks and feel :)
You can create all thumbnail images of all pigments and textures
in this files by opening them all and selecting from menu Edit|UpdateAll.
This will start background processing and will create about 4 MB of thumbnails
in TGA format.


TIPS and TRICKS

The POVTextureEditor was designed to be as much simple in using as 
possible. But some tips of using it are necessary to be explained.

The main resource, which is edited by POVTextureEditor - include file in povray
format, which can contains arbitrary number of colours, pigments, textures and 
color_map declarations. You can create new item to place add it in current file
or in new file. Everything is saved only, when you save the whole include file.
All comments in povray file are discarded after saving by POVTextureEditor. 
Also are discarded all declarations used inside declarations, for example 
the following statements:

#declare White = color rgb <1,1,1>
#declare TransparentWhite = color {White} filter 1

will be saved as:

#declare White = color rgbf <1,1,1,0>
#declare TransparentWhite = color rgbf <1,1,1,1>

So if you don't want this, make a backup of your texture files first.

Everything (almost :)) is activated by double clicking mouse on it.
To edit selected item double click on it in the list. It may take a while 
when corresponding editor will appears on screen first time (but only first time).
To edit another thing - double click on it in the list. Keep in mind, that
you previous edited item will go back to pool of all item in the file and 
information to undo it's editing will be lost. The real saving will 
happens only when you will select  File|Save. POVTextureEditor
will NOT ask you: The file <blah-blah> have been changed, are you sure <blah-blah>?

To make new thumbnail preview of texture or pigment press Update button 
in corresponding editor. Be sure, that there is correct path to povray 
executable in File|Properties dialog.

To change scene used for thumbnail image you can change the 
$(HOME)/.POVTextureEditor/texture.pov for texture and 
$(HOME)/.POVTextureEditor/pigment.pov for pigment. Other parameters
of rendering are in $(HOME)/.POVTextureEditor/povray.def
The useful one are 
-w<width of thumbnail>
-h<height of thumbnail>
-A0.1 change to +A0.1 to have antialiaced rendering

Editing of color_map's. 

It is the only difficult place.
color_map is represented as a coloured strip with consist of series of 
intervals with some colours on the ends and interpolated colours inside.
Intervals are represented by grey buttons. Each end of interval may 
be selected by clicking in corresponding end of the button. The whole interval 
may be selected by clicking in the centre of the button.
The color of selected color_map interval may be adjusted by 
picking up color from ColorEditor area of from other place in color_map strip.
To move color interval - drag it's button or the corresponding end 
of the button. 
To create new interval double click on free (black) area in buttons panel. It there
is no free place - make it by moving other buttons.
To split button in two parts - use right mouse button (or META+mouse button 
if your mouse has one button).
To destroy interval - use Ctrl+(Mouse Button).
To expand interval as wide as possible double click on corresponding button.

When you type something in numerical fields it is stored in internal variables, 
but will not cause immediate visual changes on screen. To achieve 
immediate effect it is usually necessary to press enter after you have finished.
Or you should press update, if you want to see preview of texture or pigment.



LICENSE

This software is distributed for free including its source code under 
terms of general GNU license (included).
If you like this software very much you can send me postcard or donations.
My current address is: 
84 Harslock Drive, London SE2 9UU (but check via e-mail first)

Any comments and questions by e-mail are welcome too.

You can also visit may home page http://pc153.mt.ic.ac.uk/Bulatov
to find news about POVTextureEditor and much more.

enjoy!	
Vladimir Bulatov V.Bulatov@ic.ac.uk


HISTORY

31 May 1996 

version 1.0 - first public release


03 August 1996

version 1.01 - bugs fixing release

Some bugs are fixed: 
bug with rendering with povray 3.0,
messy reaction on "update" in PigmentEditor, etc.
Menu items are disabled if necessary.

