Welcome to Blender For AmigaOS 4.1

More information on blender for AmigaOS can be found here:

http://www.broad.ology.org.uk/amiga/blender/

More information on blender in general can be found here:

http://www.blender.org/

FURTHER CHANGES: (June 2011 Update)

  o blender no longer scan the contents of $PATH when trying to identify the
    path to the executable. This would cause annoying insert volume requesters
    if blender was executed like appdir:bldyn or even just foo:bldyn
  o A further fix to crashes in low resources sitations. If the blender render
    window cannot open then blender would crash, as it did no checks for a
succesful
    open. It now contnues to render silently without a render display window.
  o rendering the "stamp" could cause a crash due a unititialised interface
  o Added a Amiga style version string. Version 248.3 To indicate
    blender version 2.48 amiga revision 3

CHANGES: (May 2010 update)

  o blender could crash in the GHOST_Window destructor if
    some resources hadn't been allocated. (FIXED)
  o Render Window Timer process now has ameaningful name
  o Render Window Timer process now only uses 32Kb stack
  o Absoulte paths were treating as relative on the command line
  o Fixed a problem with loading from a library with a relative windows path
  o Blender now sets it public screen as a public screen ...
  o The animation player now starts on the same public screen as the main
    blender program.
  o The direction of the mouse wheel was reversed. NB If you liked the behaviour
    of the mousewheel zoom in the 3D view, you can restore it by selecting
    Invert Zoom, in the user prefs panel, "Views & Controls" tab.
  o Fixed bug with relative paths, files in the same directory could not be
    loaded correctly due to an extra '/' added during the path conversion
process.
  o blender no longer attempts to find libtiff.so on a unix style serach path
  o removed extraneous debug output
  o ffmpeg compiled as a seperate shared object, altivec build of libbffmpeg.so
included

REQUIREMENTS:

AmigaOS 4.1 Update 1 or above. Update 2 or above recomended.
MiniGL 2.2 or above (2.2. should be provided with AmigaOS 4.1 Update 1)
2.4 is now recomended, but not required.

INSTALLATION

Copy contents to the destination of your choice.
If you have an altivec enabled processor then rename libbffmpeg.so_altivec to
libbffmpeg.so
replacing the non altivec default.

DEBUG OUTPUT TO CON:

This archive might be considered a 'very advanced beta' as such I have included
the
nonstripped version of the main exectable 'bldyn'. Also some extra "junk" is
printed to
the console. This is not too much more than the usual amount and should help
tracking
down any issues. If you wish to ingnore it >NIL: but beware some python scripts
require
console output.

USAGE

The main blender exectable is named 'bldyn' a example start script named
'blender'
with an associated icon (using the official blender logo) is provided. Blender
has a generous stack cookie set so you shouldn't need to set the stack.
Please eidt the startup script to suit your needs. If you need to find the
screen mode ID
then start blender from the command line like so

bldyn -M

then choose the screen mode you like. The ID will printed to the console before
opening
and you can then add to the script with

bldyn -MM<id>

Further tip if you run blender from it's own screen (with -MM as above) try the
-W
option as well to gain maximum workspace (borderless main window).

Start either from shell or by clicking on the start scripts icon in the
workbench
, please don't start bldyn itself from the workbench as this is not fully
supported.

Please edit the startup script to suit your needs. If you need to find the
screen mode ID
then start blender from the command line like so


do bldyn --help   for more info on command line options


Amiga specific

  o Command line Options

    -M start blender on own screen, with mode requester
    -MM<screenmode> starts blender on own scren with specified screen mode
    -MN<screename> starts blender on named screen (must be open or defined in
sreens prefs)
        With the above two oprion there must be no space between option and args

    -G enable graphics.library based workarround for glDrawPixel bug on some
graphics cards
        Only supports RGBA bits ATM, but does supports scaling. It handles alpha
blending but very crudely
        so that icons etc look a bit more contrasty than the blender standard
(better than invisible though :-))


  o Experimental Arexx Port  PORTNAME "BLENDER.1"
    This version of blender has an ARExx Port, with a limited but powerful
command set
    The main power comes being asbe to call python scripts via the ARexx port,
giving
    more options for automation integration etc.

    LOADBLEND "FORCE/S,FILE"

        Load blender project  from specified file. FORCE prevents the requestsr
in
        The Blender GUI.

    SAVEBLEND "FILENAME/K,FORCE/S"

        Save blender project to current file. FILENAME specifies a new filename
and FORCE
        prevents the overwrite requester.

    QUIT "FORCE/S"

        Stops whatever blender is doing and quits.


    STOP

        Stops what ever blender is doing. Equivalent to pressing the ESC key.
Stops
        Rendering, anim display, etc.


    RUNPYTHON  "FILE/K,VAR/K,SCRIPT,DEBUG/S"

        Run a python script in the blender interpreter.

        The default is to run a script passed in a string. As readargs is used
to parse
        the ARexx commands this string must be escaped AmigaDOS style

        eg "import Blender*Nprint dir(Blender)" where *N is a newline etc **
must be used
        for *

        FILE run python script from specified filename instead. No escaping
required here

        VAR specify a python variable to be returned to ARexx as the RESULT

        eg 'RUNPYTHON VAR="foo" "foo = 3 ** 4"'

        returns 12 in result

        The variable will be converted to an Arexx string so must be of a
suiatable type.


    TOFRONT SCREEN/S"

        Move the blender window to the front. SCREEN specifies move the screen
instead.

    TOBACK SCREEN/S"

        Opposite of above.



  o File handling and paths

    This version of blender uses AmigaDOS paths, throughout. However there are
still
    a few quirks. For instance to get a list of drives you need to type the dir
"/" in
    the blender filerequester

    Blender should now handle non AmigaDOS paths in loaded blend files. And will
correctly
    resulting mixed paths so long as the unix / windows bit is normalised (ie no
repeated
    slashes etc.) and obviously the paths must be relative.
    This is not as exhaustively tested so if you find a blend file that can't
load properly
    becauase of paths let me know.

    When saving a blend file it will only be "portabale" to another blender on
another OS if
    all files that blender needs are in the same or subdirectories of the same
directory as
    blender file.


    Plugins scripts etc can be found in PROGDIR:.blend


Have fun!
Andy
andy()broad.ology.org.uk