Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-winken!uunet!tektronix!reed!rbrewer
From: rbrewer@reed.UUCP (Robert S. Brewer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: PD Ray Tracers for Mac
Message-ID: <12625@reed.UUCP>
Date: 2 May 89 07:00:43 GMT
References: <4YHragy00W0-MAilU2@andrew.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: rbrewer@reed.UUCP (Robert S. Brewer)
Organization: Reed College, Portland OR
Lines: 48

In article <4YHragy00W0-MAilU2@andrew.cmu.edu> kg19+@andrew.cmu.edu (Kurt A. Geisel) writes:
>I'm sure this must have been discussed before, but I am having trouble
>finding PD ray tracers for the Mac.  Are there any?  (Has DBW been
>ported?)  Where are they located?
>
>Any information will be greatly appreciated.
>
>Thanks,
>
>- Kurt

	The short answer is yes. I currently have both DBW 1.0 and QRT 1.4
running on the Mac II. The long answer is a little bit more complex...

	I found DBW 1.0, binary only, on GEnie. Unfortunately, it was compiled
with an early version of LSC (2.something) and so it didn't use the 68881. As
a result it was godawful slow. Luckily, it did come with a postprocessor,
written by Bill Bond, but that was binary only also.
	
	I managed to obtain the source for DBW 1.0 from an Amiga person (hi
kjohn!) and so I have compiled it under LSC 3.0x (using the 68881) and it works
just like the Amiga version. It is still quite slow, and the input file format
is really attrocious. 

	I also have QRT (Quick Ray Trace) 1.4 running on my Mac II. It is much
faster than DBW, but lacks some of DBW's nice texture mapping features. I have
the source for 1.5, but haven't gotten it compiled yet. I have written my own
very crude postprocessor, which is slow and doesn't use all 256 colors.

	The third and final raytracer I have lying around is the MTV
raytracer. I have the source for the second release, but have yet to get it
compiled.

	I would be willing to post the binaries for any of the above, but I
would be more reluctant to post source for any of them. I obtained source for
two of the three above raytracers from the net, and don't really want to repost
them unless absolutely neccessary. If you have FTP access, a great raytrace
archive is available at drizzle.cs.uoregon.edu maintained by Mark
VandeWettering (after whom the MTV raytracer is named).

	Are there other people interested in generating photorealistic images
on the Mac? Does anyone have any of the outrageously priced commercial
packages that are available for raytracing (Sculpt-Animate 4D, MacTracer,
etc)?
-- 
Robert S. Brewer       Bitnet: RBREWER@REED.BITNET, Usenet: rbrewer@reed.UUCP 
Student at Reed College                             GEnie : R.BREWER
                     "Thank you." - Lt. Commander Worf