Finally, the first issue of BitDreams has come out. I think it was a very good effort from Mark because it's predecessor - Darkness - took me far longer than 2 weeks to put together. Okay, so there aren't very many articles just yet and most of them were in the first issue of Darkness before it was abandoned.
Well, between playing Quake, eating junk-food, messing around in POV-RAY and updating my homepage I can sometimes find time for a bit of programming. I've learned a lot about programming in the past few years and the results can be seen on my homepage. Programming is my favourite hobby but everyone tells me I'm really good at graphics so I don't know which area of expertise I should follow. At the moment I'm trying to put together a small arcade game.
Lately, I've been trying to churn out something good with BMRT. BMRT (Blue Moon Rendering Tools) is a collection of tools for making rendered images. It complies to the Pixar Renderman standard - and Renderman is one of the best renderers in the world - and it can run on an Intel platform running Linux.
BMRT can handle RIB files (Renderman Interface Bytestream - a scene description language used by Renderman) and SL shaders. It also supports Volume shaders (used for volumetric effects such as fog or dust - like those spooky scenes in movies where you can see beams of light passing through the air), raytracing for true reflection and refraction (Renderman uses environment-mapping and can't do raytracing) and radiosity. Pixar Renderman doesn't support those features.
I'm really happy now because RHINO (disputably the best modeller on a PC - runs under Windows NT - which can do NURBS spline modelling) can export RIB files. So now I can finally get complex objects instead of crappy "reflective-sphere-on-checkered-plane" scenes which I was writing with a text editor. RIB files really annoy me, I tend to stick to POV for hand-written scenes.
As for the techy side of things, I had to install Linux and X Windows and learn how to use them. I was really wrenching my gut out because I grew up (LITERALLY!) with a DOS system and am currently using Windows NT 4.0 and MS-DOS 6.22. I also downloaded the Pixar Renderman Specs and had to learn RIB and SL formats. Eventually, I was able to write a checkers shader (joy) and a few small scenes. The only annoying thing about making RIBs with RHINO is that the materials, lights and cameras have to be hand-edited. RHINO can do spot-lights but I haven't had any good results yet...
I'd just like to thank Tony Saveski for helping to get Linux running, helping me through configuring X Windows and lending me his Linux CD. Eventually, I shelled out a few bucks to get my own Linux CD with the latest version of Slackware Linux (3.2).
If you want to contact me, feel free to send mail to: darkmoon@connexus.apana.org.au
And Mark says I come from Australia but he didn't say where. I come from Melbourne but I wasn't actually born here - I'm European by origin.
Greets fly out to...
(My close friends)