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The Ayam Team
This page introduces the Ayam team. Together we develop, document, and distribute Ayam - a free 3D modelling environment for the RenderMan interface. We share beliefs like "the future of 3D-modelling are (even more) higher level primitives" and "a sphere is a sphere is a sphere (it does not have poles like the common NURBS sphere and it surely does not have a single planar region like your ordinary polygonal approximation has)".Team-Leader
This is the head of our team, he makes the decisions, assigns tasks, and knows how to use carrot and stick."Randolf Schultz" <randolf.schultz@gmail.com>
Contributors
In the course of the project, several persons contributed to different parts of Ayam (MetaBalls, PolyMesh optimization, TTF parsing - Frank Pagels; object picking - Bertrand Coconnier; Win32 icon - Stephen Echavia; Makefile configuration GUI - Hynek Schlawack; french translation of balloon help - Michel Armand; constructive criticism, example images - Bernd Sieker). None of the former contributors are active anymore. Thank you for your contribution!
Core-Developer
Responsible for all the inner workings of the modeller, object structure, object types, modelling actions, file i/o, undo, drawing and shading, geometric algorithms (NURBS) etc. We sometimes have a really hard time stopping him to add yet another object type to Ayam. Nevertheless, he does a great job, or?"Randolf Schultz" <randolf.schultz@gmail.com>
Plugin-Developer
The role of the plugin-developer is to create all fine pieces of software you can find in the plugins directory: RIB import, OpenNURBS (Rhino 3DM) IO, Wavefront OBJ IO, Apple 3DMF IO, AyCSG (CSG preview), Shader Parsing Plugins, IDR. Phew, that is a lot, right? Right."Randolf Schultz" <randolf.schultz@gmail.com>
GUI-Developer
Our GUI-Developer knows Tk and its widgets as well as GUI related intricacies of the different supported platforms in and out. His work ensures a more or less equal and pleasing user experience on all supported platforms."Randolf Schultz" <randolf.schultz@gmail.com>
Documentation-Writer
He is the author of the now 150 pages Ayam user documentation, the tutorials (for users and developers) as well as the balloon help texts (and their translation to German). Since the first public releases of Ayam, he kept the documentation always up-to-date (a rare gem!) with the fast growing Ayam feature set and provided HTML and PDF versions."Randolf Schultz" <randolf.schultz@gmail.com>
Release-Manager
This team member compiles the results of development and documentation team members and creates and tests the distribution archives. Currently, there are eight archives to be created per release! If a late show stopping bug is found he has to do it all again, poor guy. After packaging, he uploads the packages to various software distribution sites and, of course, to SourceForge. During the past years, this guy created a whopping total number of well over 100 archives (including pre-release archives)."Randolf Schultz" <randolf.schultz@gmail.com>
Graphics-Artist
To be honest, this person actually left the team again already. The results of two weeks of his sweat however can still be seen in the tool box icons. Furthermore, he designed some of the example scenes and helped creating the Ayam splash screen image."Randolf Schultz" <randolf.schultz@gmail.com>
Beta-Tester
This person is responsible for finding application and documentation errors. Unfortunately, we feel that he currently does the poorest job of us all. We have yet to discover why. Somehow it seems to us, when testing he is not behaving like a real user but rather as a developer who instinctively knows which paths to follow and thus simply misses a lot of bugs."Randolf Schultz" <randolf.schultz@gmail.com>
Web-Master
This team member did not only invest much of his spare time into the Ayam project but also money (by registering and paying for the domain ayam3d.org)! Apart from that, he is responsible for all the HTML code of the Ayam home page."Randolf Schultz" <randolf.schultz@gmail.com>
System-Administrator
Our Admin, praise him for keeping all our development machines running and connected. Without him, we had nothing to develop on! He is responsible for keeping hardware, operating systems, development environments, and third party software up-to-date and running (and that for Windows, Linux, IRIX, and, recently, even Mac OS X!). Usually he is not too scared of even compiling compilers from scratch. Give him a hug, he deserves it."Randolf Schultz" <randolf.schultz@gmail.com>
Public-Relations Manager and 1st-Level User-Support
Monitors help, support, and discussion forums and answers your project related questions via e-mail; usually he maintains a breathtaking turn-around time of less than 24 hours (if he is not sitting in planes, on his racing bike, or at the beach ;)! He is also responsible for sending out release announcement messages to various media like Usenet, software announcement web sites, and web based forums."Randolf Schultz" <randolf.schultz@gmail.com>
Interoperability-Engineer
Ayam interfaces to a lot of other software packages that expose bugs or missing features now and then. Our interoperability-engineer is responsible for notifying the development teams of those other software packages about problems, creating example software to help debugging or even patches that fix the bugs. During the project, bugs were found and properly reported in Tcl/Tk, Togl, Mesa, IRIX-OpenGL, Apple-OpenGL, BMRT, Gelato, Pixie, Aqsis, 3Delight, OpenNURBS, Apple-3DMF, and RenderDotC. In addition, missing functionality (Quadrics support) was provided to the Ribelato project."Randolf Schultz" <randolf.schultz@gmail.com>
You think, you could help us in fulfilling our roles? Just send a message. We are always glad to hear from you.
Randolf Schultz, 14. Aug 2006
randolf.schultz@gmail.com