David K. Buck and Aaron A. Collins are pleased to announce the release of the
new DKBTrace Version 2.10 program, over the weekend of April 14, 1991.

The program is a ray tracer written completely in C.  It is a photo-realistic
3-D object rendering shader, suitable for realizing the output of CAD programs
or generally wasting LOTS of CPU time drawing pretty pictures.  It features a
command-line interface and reads plain text input files in an easy to use and
understand "structured" scene description language.  It writes output files in
several popular 24-bit image formats, including DKB/QRT "Raw" and Truevision
Targa-24 formats.

DKBTrace supports spheres, planes, triangles, smooth (Phong) triangles,
arbitrary quadric surfaces (spheres, ellipsoids, cones, cylinders, planes,
paraboloids, hyperboloids, etc.) and quartic surfaces (which include tori,
lemniscates, foliums, etc.)  It also supports constructive solid geometry
and composite objects, so a nearly infinite variety of object shapes can be
produced from the several simpler geometric primitives.

Lighting and shading models used are: diffuse, ambient, reflection, refraction
and alpha (transmittance), and Phong specular highlighting.  These combine
with a rich set of procedural textures and atmospheric effects (fog) to make
realistic and interesting looking scenes.

The object coloration textures available are: checkers, marble, wood, Bozo,
granite, agate, spotted, gradients, and image-mapping.  Image-mapping allows
the use of IFF (32 color and HAM), GIF (2-256 color), or 24-bit DKB/QRT "Raw"
images.  Several surface perturbing (or bump-mapping) textures such as waves,
ripples, bumps, dents, and wrinkles are available for use in combination with
the coloration textures to help make more natural-looking object textures.

The program has been made freely distributable, however the author retains
the copyright to the program.  He specifically authorizes free distribution on
BBS'es, networks or by magnetic media.  Source code, documentation, and sample
scene description data files are available in separate archives, and make and
link files are provided for Amiga, IBM PC, Macintosh, VAX/VMS and many Unix
Systems.

DKB 2.10 is available from a wide variety of sources including Internet and
Compuserve's COMART section.  There is a Ray-Trace specific bulletin board in
the Chicago area called the "You Can Call Me RAY" BBS, which has become the
"unofficial" DKB support BBS, where both David and Aaron can be reached.
The number there is (708) 358-5611, at 2400 baud, 8 bits, no parity, 1 stop.