2. Setting up Ayam

If you followed all steps in the file "Setup.txt" or "SetupWin32.htm" already and feel like you set up Ayam the right way you might as well skip to section Creating the Ground now. Otherwise follow these instructions:

Please get, install, and setup BMRT V2.6 before going on. Note, that if you have a very old BMRT (versions prior to 2.5) Ayam might not be able to work correctly.

Before you start modeling you should make sure that Ayam is set up correctly. Please take a look at the messages that appear on startup in the console, red messages denote serious errors that should be eliminated before going on.

However, you may ignore messages about a missing "ayamrc" file if you start Ayam the very first time.

In order to successfully complete this tutorial, the preference setting Shaders should point to the shaders directory of BMRT (shaders are files with the extension ".slc"). But, what is a shader you ask. Well, for the moment we can safely assume that a shader is a file carrying a material description. It is actually much more than that but we really do not have to worry about this now. But, how do you set this up? Simply select the menu entry "Preferences" in the "Edit" menu. A new window pops up as shown in this figure:

preferences dialog

You need to adjust the first setting "Shaders" in the "Main" section to point to the directory, where the BMRT2.6 shaders are stored. If it already does, fine. If not, set it. You can enter the list of path names to your shaders manually, separated by a ":" on Unix and by a ";" on Windows, or you can use the "Add" button. If you use the "Add" button simply select a file in the directory of shaders you would like to add. Now press the "Apply" button below. After that, press the "Scan Shaders!" button right below the "Shaders" entry and watch the console for error messages. It will tell you how many shaders have been found. Note: on the Win32 platform you probably will have to delete all files with the extension "intelnt.slc" to make parsing of shaders work. Now close the preferences window by clicking on the "Ok"-button.

When Ayam has been started for the very first time there is no view opened. You may open a first view (we do not need more than one in this tutorial) by clicking on the camera button in the tool box window. If you are unsure simply wait for the tool tip to appear, then browse through the buttons until the tool tip reads "new View". If Ayam crashes or blocks now, something is terribly wrong with your OpenGL setup and you should fix it. If you use a self compiled binary and Ayam crashes while opening a view this is a sure sign, that the Tcl/Tk version you used while compiling and the version Ayam uses at runtime mismatch, please re-read and follow the compilation instructions more carefully.

Now we are set, and may start modeling.