Installing the Win32 Binary

Make sure you have OpenGL installed on your system. If you use Windows 98 or Windows NT 4.0 you already have it. If you have a very early version of Windows 95, you may need to download it from http://www.opengl.org .

You'll need a render engine to convert your virtual worlds into images. K-3D sends its output to rendering engines using the Pixar Renderman Interface, so you can use K-3D with any RI-compliant rendering engine. Aqsis and BMRT are excellent choices, but there are many others - see the list of engines known to work with K-3D.

Install the render engine of your choice, and verify that it can be run by hand from the command-line (at a minimum, you'll have to update your PATH environment variable).

You'll need to install the GTK+ library for Win32.

Important

K-3D Win32 binaries are currently linked with the old DLLs (version 1.3).

Get the K-3D binary distribution for Win32. Expand the distribution into a suitable location, say c:\k3d (I recommend -against- installing the program in c:\program files because you will have to do some command-line work to get the program running, and the space in "program files" is an endless source of trouble).

Set the HOME environment variable to point to your home directory. For Win95/98 users, c:\ is probably the best choice. WinNT users should use c:\winnt\profiles\username where username is the username you logged-in with:

set HOME=your home directory

Set environment variables that K-3D requires in order to run:

set K3D_BASE_PATH=c:/k3d
set K3D_SHADERS_PATH=c:/k3d/shaders

Note

Note the use of '/' not '\'.

Note

Note to set an environment varialbe on Windows 2000, select Start/Settings/Control Panel/System, then go to the advanced pane and click 'Environment Variables'. The path entry (set below) is in the top list.

You need to add the directory containing the k3d executables (k3d.exe, sdpslparse.exe, renderjob.exe, and renderframe.exe) to your path:

set PATH=%PATH%;c:\k3d

K-3D now compiles shaders on demand - when render engine is started. If you have an older version, you'll have to manually compile the shaders included with K-3D so they'll work with your render engine. cd into the c:\k3d\shaders directory, and follow the instructions included with your render engine to compile each .sl file.

You'll have to install NetPBM tools to play with bitmaps and textures. NetPBM for win32 implementation (and may usefull tools too) you can find at: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/netpbm.htm You will need at least:

  • 'NetPBM' main package,

  • 'file' tool package,

  • 'jpeg', 'tiff' and 'zlib' libraries packages.

Note

Note that you will need only *-bin.zip files.

Extract all archives to, say c:\netpbm". Add directory with NetPBM executables to your path:

set PATH=%PATH%;c:\netpbm\bin

Create directories c:\Program files\files\share then copy the directory content c:\netpbm\bin\share in it.

Note

Note that file.exe file can be located anywhere in your PATH but it MUST have its "magic" files in c:\Program Files\file\share.

Change directory to the install directory and run K-3D from the command-line:

cd c:\k3d
.\k3d

or run from anywhere

k3d --basepath c:/k3d
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