most recent change:	   8-Jul-2001

The file Raster3D_2.6b.tar.gz contains the full source distribution for
version 2.6b of Raster3D.

- Version 2.6b is the first general release of the Raster3D package version 2.6
  See CHANGELOG for a history of changes to the package.

- The installation procedure for version 2.6 differs from earlier versions.
  In a nutshell, the necessary steps are:

  	1)  Review the contents of Makefile.template
	2)  make help            (prints a list of OS names)
	3)  make OS              (where OS is your operating system name)
	4)  make all		 (builds the programs)
	5)  make install         (copies files to system directories)
	6)  modify user login environment to include R3D_LIB 
		e.g. setenv R3D_LIB /usr/local/share/Raster3D/materials

	7)  (optional)
	    modify ImageMagick delegates file so that ImageMagick recognizes
	    *.r3d files by default.  On my systems this file is in
	    	/usr/lib/ImageMagick/modules/coders/delegates.mgk
	    Add the following 2 lines at the end of the file
		r3d=>
	            render -tiff %o < %i

- Changes in Version 2.6 compared to earlier versions
	+   User changeable array limits are in a separate file parameters.incl
	+   V2.6 supports bounding planes as part of a material description
	    (see examples XXX)
	+   the limit of 2 layers of transparency is removed; 
	    render can now handle any number of occluding transparent objects
	+   render accepts command line options -shadow and -noshadow
	+   the label3d script has been changed for compatibility with
	    ImageMagick 5.3.2 (hopefully still works with older versions?)

This distribution has been tested on the following platforms:

	Alpha / OSF 4.0 / Tru64 5.1
	SGI / Irix 6.2 6.5
	IBM RS6000 / AIX
	SUNOS (g77/gcc)
	Intel Pentium / linux (Redhat 6.1, Mandrake 8.0)  (g77/pgf77)

Previous versions have been tested under Irix 5.3 and the Cygwin
environment for Windows.  If you run into installation problems, please let
me know, particularly if you can also tell me what you did to fix it!

For optimal use of Raster3D you should also obtain 
John Cristy's ImageMagick package for image manipulation and viewing 
	(source distribution available from www.ImageMagick.org)
Some version of a TIFF library, ideally one that allows LZW compression
Some version of a JPEG library
Version 2.0 of Molscript (http://www.avatar.se/molscript)


				Ethan A Merritt
				merritt@u.washington.edu
