May 2003 Archives

Blender 2.27 has been released!

A few of the new features pulled from the press release:

- International Language support for the Blender interface. A translation system for tooltips, buttons and menus, with support for non-latin character sets.
- User definable (antialiased) fonts for the interface. (Freetype)
- A restyled userpreferences menu, which adds more space for all the new buttons.
- Autoskinning for Armatures, when parenting a Mesh to an Armature it gives a menu.
- In editmode, selected vertices can be merged with Alt-MKEY. The merge option is also added to the WKEY menu.
- Shadowbuffers now can have any size. (with number-button)
- Hotkeys are added for subsurfing objects. Shift-OKEY toggles subsurf mode for an object and Ctrl-ONEKEY to Ctrl-FOURKEY will set the subsurf division with the keyboard.
- Freetype2 support added for importing almost every font format for a 3D text object.
- Pressing Alt-MKEY in the texteditor window generates a 3D text from the current textfile. (up to 1000 characters)
- The texteditor window is enhanced with a rightmouse menu for opening and saving files.
- The windowtype button has been redesigned, it now displays a textual description
- A small button has been added that toggles the visibility of the pulldown menu titles.
- Rename/delete menu's are added to the file and image browsers. Try NKEY and RKEY/XKEY.

A mips4 IRIX binary can be downloaded here:

http://www.blender3d.org/Download/

SGI has posted the new Mozilla 1.4b binaries on their Developer Central Open Source page. Apparently it's been available since the 12th though the Mozilla project news page hasn't been updated - I just happened to check the FTP server and stumbled across it.

They also gzipped the tardist again (same as with 1.4a) so Software Manager won't know what to do with it unless you decompress it beforehand (i.e.: gtar xvfz fw_mozilla.tardist).

Download:

ftp://oss.sgi.com/projects/mozilla/download/irix/1.4b/fw_mozilla.tardist

This week SGI released a few new beta tardists of their own via http://freeware.sgi.com/beta:

fw_libpcap-0.7.2.tardist
fw_php-4.2.3-sgipl1-2.tardist
fw_rsync-2.5.6.tardist
fw_tcpdump-3.7.2.tardist
fw_unzip-5.50-sgipl1.tardist

The fw_php build fixes a bug in the mail() function which I reported to the Freeware team a couple of weeks ago.

Here are a few packages I put together this week for the forum:

SGI has updated IRIX to version 6.5.20 which is now available for download from SGI's Supportfolio website. Improvements in this version include MP3 audio integration in the media libraries and tools, new Huffman YUV video codec (HuffYUV) for lossless real-time compression of 4:2:2 video in the range of 2:1 to 3:1, write-capable UDF filesystem format for DVD and support for the M-Audio Revolution 7.1 PCI audio card.

A complete list of changes can be found here.

P. Harvery-Smith has released an IRIX port of 3D Realm's Rise of the Triad based on the Linux open source port. Rise of the Triad requires the datafiles from either the full commercial release or optionally the demo (download links below).

Download the binaries, instructions and souce code from the official IRIX port site:

http://daria.bio.warwick.ac.uk/~bshu/rott/

The shareware datafiles can be downloaded at:

http://filesingularity.timedoctor.org/download.php?realfile=1&fileid=8

The datafiles for the full version are available from Abandonware Games (registration required).

Finally, here's a link to a great article on ROTT which covers the history of the game among other things; it's an excellent read:

http://www.classicgaming.com/rott/hell/

An official OpenOffice binary has finally been released and is available from the IRIX OpenOffice porting site:

http://porting.openoffice.org/irix/

Setup for this version is similar to the previous 1.0.1 release; i.e:

setenv DISPLAY hostname:0.0

before launching the the installer or soffice startup script. Once again this release is mips4 only.

Side Effects Software has released an update to Houdini Apprentice, the evaluation version of their 3D modeling and animation software. Apprentice is essentially the same as the full fledged product, but with the limitation of a non-standard file format and watermarked renderer.

More information on the release can be found at the Side Effects Software website. CD images which include the IRIX version of Houdini Apprentice 6 as well as tutorials can be found at the official mirror:

http://www.vislab.usyd.edu.au/sidefx/

Brian Moffet of Moffet Images has released an alpha of his 48-bit image converter RGBCrunch. The software takes a 48 bit TIFF image and allows the user to modify the image colors to an 8 bit RGB TIFF for use in Adobe Photoshop 3.0.1.

From Brian's Usenet post:

Some time ago, I got frustrated with Photoshop 3.01 on the O2 not being able to handle images larger than 24 bit (8-bit each RGB). So, I wrote a program to pull a 48 bit image apart. You can adjust the color range and then save the image off as a 24-bit tiff.

I've made the *very alpha* version of this available to those who would like
to take a look at it. it is available at http://www.moffetimages.com/RGBCrunch.html I am open to constructive criticism, suggestions on features, etc... I'm going to continue working on it.

I am also working on a Linux and FreeBSD version. Right now I have tested this on an O2 running 6.5.16f, and an Octane running 6.5.16f.

More information as well as a download link can be found at the official web site.