                  3D animations in METAPOST (version 1.0, superseded)
                  ===================================================

This directory contains a set of files allowing the creation
of animations in metapost, and especially animations of 3-dimensional
objects, such as polyhedra.

The files contained in this distribution are:

Changes      History of the macros

inputs:
             3d.mp        3D macros
             poly.mp      Polyhedra definitions
             animpoly.mp  Example of animation driver

contrib      Contributions (currently only by Denis Barbier)

doc          Subdirectory containing the formatted metapost files
             as well as the code for the figures
             It uses Ulrik Vieth's formatting macros for mft.
             There is also a paper describing 
             how an animation can be created.

examples     Some animations produced with the 3d package
             (other examples are in the contrib directory)

tugboat      Files used for the production of the TUGboat paper.
             (Courtesy of Mimi Burbank.)

README       This file

README.bin   Explains where to find the binaries.


HOW TO CREATE AN ANIMATION
--------------------------

Details are given to produce the standard animation
under UNIX, with the binaries listed in README.bin.
For other architectures, you may have to adapt the
write_script macro in the 3d.mp file.

  1) create a directory and copy the three .mp files from the
     inputs directory to it.
  2) apply metapost to animpoly.mp ; this will create 100 files
     named animpoly.101, animpoly.102, ..., animpoly.200.
     It will also have created a script file named
     create_animation.sh
  3) copy the gifmerge utility (as well as programs such as pnmcut,...)
     in this directory or let it be reachable through PATH.
  4) apply sh to create_animation.sh; this will create the animation;
     first the metapost outputs are converted to gif, then
     they are collated with gifmerge.
  5) the result is animpoly.gif which is a GIF89A animation file;
     it can be viewed under netscape or simply with a program like xanim.

Denis Roegel (roegel@loria.fr) 8 April 1998
============================================================================

                 Binaries required by the 3D package
                 -----------------------------------

As it is, the generation of animated gifs requires the following
programs:

  awk
  gs (ghostscript)
  pnmcut
  ppmquant
  ppmtogif
  gifmerge

These executables are not part of that distribution.

The first two are widely available on UNIX. 
The three p* programs are part of the NETPBM toolkit.
You can find this toolkit on the web through any search tool.
And gifmerge can be found at http://www.iis.ee.ethz.ch/~kiwi/GIFMerge.

I have no idea how to port all this on other architectures,
but I assume there are similar tools for PCs or Macs.
I'd be interested to get feedback and details so that i can 
include instructions in future releases of my package.

Denis Roegel, 8 April 1998
