Liquid Rendering Toolkit


Note from the original developer, Colin Doncaster.
--------------------------------------------------

Liquid has been in development for over three and a half years now, starting
off as a small tool that was used at my own company in Toronto and then
evolving into a production tool able to handle large complex scenes.  I've had
a lot of input from people on how it should and shouldn't work, what needs to
get added and where the bugs were.  Over the first year I made a decision that
I was going to develop Liquid as a production tool that was meant to be used by
Technical Directors to get their job done, not a rendering interface for
visually building shaders.

Because the Renderman interface has been pushed by Pixar as a standard there
are various different renderers out there that support it, with slightly
different options and attributes and quiet different compiled shader formats.
Because of this it tends to get quiet ugly, you'll understand once you start to
take a look at the liquidGetSloInfo source.  Add to the confusion different
platforms, different means of compiling Maya plugins on those platforms and
other inconsistencies you'll understand why I've just provided somewhat generic
makefiles.

Some people who have know me and the amount of time I've spent with the source
think I am crazy for giving it away.  Maybe I am.  Over the last while I've
been wrestling with idea of marketing the plug-in, the source, or coming up
with an closed development group for it.  All were interesting ideas but I
really wanted people to use it, after all there really is only two or three
companies using it.  More importantly what I would like to see is people
actually contributing back changes, bug fixes and additions they make.  Lastly,
I want to make it accessible - for all the studios that want to start using
higher end software but don't want to pay the extreme costs for it (MtorR is more
expensive than Maya these days!).

Thanks - Colin Doncaster
colin@nomadicmonkey.com


Compiling For Linux
-------------------

Liquid has been succesfully compiled against 3Delight, Aqsis, Entropy, Pixie
and PRMan libraries on Linux.
To compile :
  - Go in a shell into the src directory.
  - Make sure the below environment variables are set.
      LIQRMAN       : which library to compile against. Can be:
        3delight
        aqsis         (default if not set)
        entropy
        pixie
        prman
      MAYA_LOCATION : specify where is the main directory of maya (/usr/aw/maya
                      if not set )
      AW_LOCATION   : specify where various versions of maya are installed
                      (/usr/aw if not set )
      The environment variable used to setup your renderer, e.g. DELIGHT or
      PIXIEHOME.
  - Type
      make <type>
      where <type> is one of:
        debug       : (default if not set)  to get a version of Liquid compiled
                      with debugging flags (use MAYA_LOCATION)
        release     : to get a version of Liquid compiled with release flags
                      (use MAYA_LOCATION)
        newversion  : to get a version of Liquid compiled against a different
                      version of maya installed (use AW_LOCATION)


Compiling For Windows
---------------------

In the src directory you will find a Microsoft Visual C++ project for compiling
Liquid. It is currently setup to compile against the PRMan or 3Delight
libraries, but targets will be added for other renderers.
To compile:
  - Ensure your MAYA_LOCATION and RMANTREE environment variables are set
    correctly (e.g. c:\aw\maya4.5 and c:\program files\pixar\prman-10)
  - Build either the 'Release' or 'Debug' targets from within MSVC++ matching
    the renderer you are using
  - the plugin will be compiled to <LIQUID>/bin/win32/Release or
    <LIQUID>/bin/win32/Debug

There also is a GNU make makefile to compile with the Visual C++ Toolkit 2003
(which is free and includes the Microsoft C++ compiler and linker). You thus
need to have the Visual C++ Toolkit 2003and Cygwin (for make) installed.
The build process is the same as described for Linux above.


Thanks
------
(in no particular order)

Liz Vezina, My Folks, Kris Howald, Berj Bannayan, Jeff Hameluck, Dan Lemmon,
Ken McGaugh, Mark Tait, James Cunningham, Wayne Stables, Guy Williams,
Joe Letteri, John Shiels, Daniel Kramer, Jamie McCarter, Julian Mann,
Cory Bedwell, Seth Lippman, Matt Hightower, Randy Goux, Greg Butler,
Markus Manninen, Larry Gritz, Shai Hinitz and anyone else I forgot.


License
----------
The contents of this file are subject to the Mozilla Public License Version 1.1
(the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the
License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/

Software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" basis,
WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for
the specific language governing rights and limitations under the License.

The Original Code is the Liquid Rendering Toolkit.
The Initial Developer of the Original Code is Colin Doncaster. Portions created
by Colin Doncaster are Copyright (C) 2002. All Rights Reserved.

Contributor(s): Dan Bethell, Berj Bannayan, Andrew Chapman, Colin Doncaster,
Stéphane Deverly, George Harker, Jamie McCarter, Ken McGaugh, Moritz Moeller,
Michael Duffy, Richard Pickler, Rob Pieke, Paul Scruby, Yuri Meshalkin, Cedric Paille.

The RenderMan (R) Interface Procedures and Protocol are:
Copyright 1988, 1989, Pixar
All Rights Reserved

RenderMan (R) is a registered trademark of Pixar