Real 3D to Opalvision display driver. OVRealPanel User's Manual produced by Digital Machine Concepts Australia 1992 PLEASE NOTE THAT FOLLOWING IS A DIRECT EXTRACT OF THE PRINTED MANUAL SUPPLIED WITH THE FULL VERSION. MANY OF THE FEATURES DISCRIBED IN THIS MANUAL ARE ONLY AVAILABLE IN THE PURCHASED APPLICATION. ALSO THE FOLLOWING TEXT HAS REFERENCE TO FIGURESS THAT COULD NOT BE INCLUDED IN THE DOCUMENT. THE INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS DISCRIBED BELOW MENTION A INSTALLER PROGRAM WHICH HAS NOT BEEN INCLUDED IN THIS ARCHIVE. PLEASE FOLLOW THE "NON STANDARD INSTALLATION" INSTRUCTIONS. This manual is copyright (c) 1992 Digital Machine Concepts. All rights are reserved. The software supplied with this manual is copyright (c) 1992 Digital Machine Concepts. All rights reserved. This document may not be reproduced, photocopied, digitised, translated or copied in whole or part without the consent of Digital Machine Concepts Australia. opalvision is a registered trademark of opal technology Inc. Real 3D is a registered trademark of Realsoft. Amiga is a registered trademark of Commodore-Amiga, Inc. Commodore and CBM are registered trademarks of Commodore Electronics Limited. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. We wish to acknowledge opal technology for their support and congratulate them on an outstanding product. We also take this opportunity to acknowledge Creations Audio Visual Services, Australia. DISCLAIMER Digital Machine Concepts makes no warranties, either expressed or implied, with respect to the software described herein. This software is sold 'as is.' All care in its preparation has been taken but all responsibility is assumed by the purchaser. Under no circumstances are Digital Machine Concepts liable for direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages resulting from the use or defect of the software described herein. Produced by Digital Machine Concepts in Australia, 1992 revision 1.1. OVRealPanel Driver. Real 3D version 1.4 Ver 2.x TABLE OF CONTENTS Product Description 1 Installation 1 Non-Standard Installation 2 Rendering to opalvision 3 Opalvision control panel 4 Using the Framebuffer menu 5 Saving options 6 Rendering status reports 7 Product support 7 Please remember to send us your registration. The installation of Digital Machine Concept's opalvision display drivers enables 24 bit display integration with your system's productivity software. Our opalvision drivers are designed to provide maximum utilisation of opalvision's resources to fully complement your Desktop video publisher or Rendering packages. At Digital Machine Concepts we are committed to continually updating our products and are pleased to inform registered patrons of product updates when they become available. We look forward to your registration or any inquiries regarding our range of products. Installation. Boot your machine to your normal Real 3D working environment. Important, do not launch Real 3D at this point. Insert the distribution disk into the internal floppy drive DF0: , provided on this disk is an install utility. You must now initiate the install procedure. It is recommended that you launch Installer from the workbench by first 'double-clicking' the Disk icon, then the Installer icon. When installing from CLI simply type 'DMC:Installer' and press return. If problems are reported by the installer consult the section entitled Non-Standard Installation. for Release 20 Sept 1992 page 1. Non-Standard Installation. Note: This section is intended for the intermediate to advanced users who wish to manually install the display driving software. A framebuffer library must be included in your system libs: drawer for Real 3D to make use of opalvision. Both library files 'opal_r3d.library' and 'opal.library' must be present in the libraries drawer referenced by Real 3D. If 'opal.library' is not already present in your libs: drawer copy this from your opalvision distribution disks. Now copy 'DMC:libs/opal_r3d.library' to your required libs: drawer. While Real 3D is running the driver daemon must be active. It is suggested that this be launched on system startup. As such, we recommend its inclusion in the system drawer WBStartup. If launching from a CLI script file, for instance, the 'user-startup' the daemon must be 'run'. Copy the daemon file, 'DMC:other/OVRealPanel' into a drawer within the system path. The command line in the custom script file should resemble the following. ' sys:c/run >nil: REAL:OVRealPanel ' This is all that is required to install the Real 3D opalvision display driver. Remember that you must have 'OVRealPanel' running as a background task as outlined above. Any attempt to open a 24 bit frame will result in an error which informs you that Opal Panel is not present. If your manual installation fails please feel free to contact us for additional installation assistance. page 2. Rendering to Opalvision. Once Installation has completed re-boot your Amiga. If you have followed the recommended installation process a window will open temporarily on startup to inform you that the OVRealPanel is installing. The following steps outline a simple test of the installation and introduces rendering to opalvision from Real 3D. 1. Open Real 3D then load a desired scene into the editor. 2. Select Modes > Solid in the pull down menu. 3. Select Framebuffer > library in the pull down menu. 4. Type 'opal_r3d.library' then press return. 5. Under the framebuffer pull down menu extra items will now appear. Possible Errors If not, check you have entered the library name correctly, otherwise your installation has failed. See the section entitled ' Non-Standard installation.' 6. Make sure that IFF-24 is selected in the Options panel. 7. Select Framebuffer > Openscreen. The screen will blink. Possible Errors Any Alert occurring at this point regarding a 'panel task' indicates that the daemon is not active. Ensure that 'OVRealPanel' is running. 8. Select the Render button. At this point the opalvision display panel will pull into view and the image will render from the top of the display. You may at any time select options on the opal control panel. Some options will cause rendering to halt. For example, selecting the save function before rendering has completed. On completion of these functions rendering will resume. Accompanying the opal control panel are further functions listed under the frame buffer pull down menu. Including a 'set display modes' option which allows you to configure Hi or Low resolutions, Overscan displays and Interlacing. Real 3D version 1.4 page 4. Opalvision Control Panel. The control panel displays render statistics and presents a number of button gadgets which allow you to, save the current image, hide the panel display and return to the Real 3D solid modeller. The panel display acts as the control medium between the Real renderer and your custom opalvision view. Below is the main panel display. The particular button and associated function are outlined below. !SAVE IMAGE! RETURN TO REAL! TIME 00:00:00 !HIDE! !ABOUT! Opalvision main control panel 1.2.3.4.5.6. Description. 1. Click once with left mouse button to bring Real 3D into view. This operation does not stop any rendering in progress, a progress indicator is maintained on both views. 2. Click once with left mouse button to activate the 'Image Save' panel. This operation may be executed at any time, this allows partial image saving. 3. Click to cycle a status output while rendering. Cycle to either elapsed time, current scan line or image size. 4. Cycle gadget output region. 5. Click once with left mouse button to remove the panel from the 24 bit display. Clicking the mouse again restores the panel image.requires page 5. OpalVision Control Panel. When an opal frame is open the only acceptable method of returning to the Real 3D view is by selecting the return to Real button. Visible on the Real Screen is a new button which can be selected to return the opal display and control panel into view. Using the Frame Buffer menu. The frame buffer menu, which is present on the solid modeller menu bar, controls the opal display. Before rendering to an opal display a frame must be opened. The opal panel remembers your display options. Once a screen mode is set all opal screens will open with the predefined display parameters. When selecting 'Openscreen' a 24bit display is created. Note that different screen modes have different memory requirements. The recommended system configuration is 2 Meg of Chip memory plus another 1Meg of Fast memory. The driver will operate with One Meg of Chip but this limits the choice of screen modes. If the requested mode is unobtainable the mode defaults to a low resolution screen. The display options cannot be set while a dispay frame is closed. Selecting the set modes option while a frame is closed will have no effect. Select the 'Openscreen' option, then select the set modes option. A panel containing a set of cycle gadgets will appear. Simply cycle the gadgets until the desired display parameters are displayed on the panel. 'Set' these modes and the new frame will open using your display options. Opening multiple screens is not currently supported by Real 3D or the display driver. Attempting to 'Openscreen' more than once will have no effect. Real 3D version 1.4page 6. Saving Options. Image saving to disk from Real 3D can be achieved using three different save options. The first two options are contained in the frame buffer pull down menu. 'Save Image' will open a Real 3D file requester. Select a path and enter a file name to save as an IFF24 image. 'Save Custom' will again open a Real 3D file requester.* This provides an alternate route to the save option on the opal panel. The recommended method of saving images is through the Save option on the Opal control panel. Once the save option is selected a new panel is displayed with a cycle gadget to select between IFF24 and JPEG saving configurations. A thumbnail, the opalpaint icon, will be generated if this option is ticked. Clicking the thumbnail region toggles the selection. If JPEG is selected the quality factor can be selected with the slider gadget. Selecting 100% represents lossless compression. The higher the quality percentage the larger the image file, conversely, with lower quality the image file size is reduced. If IFF24 is selected the slider is disabled since no other save options are required. Selecting the save option from the save panel will open a file requester on the opal backdrop. Choose a path and file name, select OK to begin the saving procedure. Saving from the opal control panel is selectable at anytime while the panel is in view. As such the frame rendering does not have to be completed and allows partial image rendering and saving. Whilst rendering the save options present in the Real 3D pulldown menu are NOT available. Again, we recommend all saving to be done from the opal display panel using the save image option. Real 3D version 1.4 page 7. Rendering Status reports. Rendering status is reported on both the opal control panel and upon the Real 3D view. On the main opal control panel the cycle gadget selects either, Elapsed rendering time, Image size, and current scan line number being rendered. The elapsed time count is reset upon the initiation of a render and halted upon its completion. The current scan line reports the vertical line number currently rendering. On completion of the render it reports ALL completed. The image size option displays the resolution of the current display, not the current image. Any image size can be rendered by editing the width and height parameters on the solid modeling panel. When the Real 3D view is forward the current scan line is reported near the render button. Product Support. If you discover bugs in any of our software products we would like to know about it. We are also keen on hearing your suggestions for improving our range of drivers so that you can become more productive with your opalvision unit. You can send your bug reports or upgrade suggestions to the following address. Digital Machine Concepts. Drivers: Opal Real 3D driver. P.O. Box 37 Darlington Western Australia, 6070. ph (61) 9 299 6153 fax (61) 9 299 7593 Email : tnewmanda@cc.curtin.edu.au FOR THOSE HOW HAVE READ THIS FAR (AND HOPEFULLY WANT PURCHASE A FULL VERSION), OVREALPANEL IS AVAILABLE FROM THE ABOVE ADDRESS FOR $US49 OR $Aust59 INCLUDING POSTAGE AND PACKAGING. Real 3D version 1.4 page 8.