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		  RenderStar-2 eXtension-24 v1.2
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This file contains a lot of little tidbits of information that did not make 
it into the manual. This file is updated constantly.

   PLEASE READ THE DOC FILES IN THE DOC DIRECTORY THESE FILES CONTAIN EXTRA
   INFORMATION ABOUT THE SEPERATE MODULES, ALSO EXTRA INFORMATION
   ABOUT THE INSTALLED GRAPHICS DRIVERS.

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1. RenderStar installation
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The included diskettes contain the software for RenderStar 2 eXtension-24
installation. 

There are "other than tutorial" sample datasets included, HSB, VCA and PTT.
See the readme files in those directories for further information.

The installation program is not capable of installing the RS2.COM program
in the root directory. Please install RS2.COM in one of the directories
included in your PATH.

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2. Graphic Drivers
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RenderStar will use graphic driver utilities for two separate functions or
operations. One is the user interface, "RenderShell". The other is for the
actual viewing of RenderStar images.

1. RenderShell Interface drivers:

During install, the user must pick which graphics card they want to use
with the RenderShell. The shell is a standard VGA based screen. It is
suggested to use the Standard VGA option during install. This one will
always work with any VGA compatible graphics adapter.

Only when the shell needs to be run in higher resolutions, should a special
driver be used. There is really no functional advantage to running the shell
at a higher resolution than 640 x 480. All of the drivers are 16 color
drivers, as the shell is a 16 color windowing interface. The extra resolution
does make the fonts much more readable which is important if you spend a lot
of time looking at the shell ! See the file meta_dev.doc in the doc directory
for a complete list of supported shell drivers.

2. RenderStar Image drivers:

RenderStar will use a graphic display utility for sending the rendered images
to the desired viewing screen. The most common way for RenderStar to do this
would be through a graphic standard support. Some of the more common graphic
standards are SVGA, ET4000, VESA, SIERRA Hi-color, TIGA (8 or 24bit), 8514A,
and DGIS.

Some graphics adapters are directly supported through the use of a proprietary
graphics utility. These utilities are usually developed solely by, or co-
developed with RenderStar Technology BV graphics manufacturers. The included
list will indicate the driver that is best for the listed graphics card.

Some users will have dual screen configurations. Provisions for this is
included in the install.

If you have a VGA pass through set-up, and your high resolution board is not
supported for some reason; you can use the VGA for viewing images. If the
pass through happens to be a high resolution SuperVGA that is supported
by our main SVGA driver, then you will be able to view high resolution images
anyway. This kind of pass through is very common these days.

The GIF2 drivers are still old RenderStar-1 drivers. These drivers are not
included in this BETA release. Please contact RenderStar Technology if you 
should need one of the old GIF2 drivers. Current RenderStar users can locate 
these drivers on their original RenderStar-2 Drivers disk.

The next listed drivers are already updated for RenderStar-2 eXtension-24:

		RS2SVGA  RS2TIGA    RS2DGIS   RS2_85                            
		RS2SPEA  RS2ART_T   RS2ART_H  RS2VISTA

These drivers are capable of displaying 24-bit TGA files on 8 bit screens.
This option is only useful when displaying for example bitmap textures on
your VGA screen. You can still use the 'old' drivers because RS-2 eXt-24
has the best image quality on 8 bit screens.

Graphics adapters are supported by RenderStar (for image display only) via a
graphic standard or proprietary driver. The graphic standards such as VESA,
TIGA, and 8514A are accomplished by using a program supplied by your graphics
adapter manufacturer. They have given you some kind of program that will
emulate one of these popular standards. Some boards will actually have a
standard loaded into it's bios. This means the board is emulating the standard
at boot-up time. This is how most of the new S3 boards support the widely
supported VESA standard.

The next list shows which boards are tested, and which driver to use.

Board                                 Drivers, Chipset     Driver1     Driver2
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Appian Technologies                   TIGA                 RS2TIGA
Artist XJ10/MC10,XJ12/MC12                                 RS2ART_H
Artist XJS                            TIGA                 RS2TIGA     RS2ART_T
Artist RealVision 16E                                      RS2RV16E
ATI Graphics Vantage                  8514/A               RS2_85
ATI Ultra                             8514/A               RS2_85
ATI Wonder XL                         VESA                 RS2SVGA
ATI Wonder                            VESA                 RS2SVGA
AutoPack Apogee                       ET4000               RS2SVGA
BOCA Research                         ET4000               RS2SVGA
Calcomp DrawingCard 3100,3200         TIGA                 RS2_DC      RS2TIGA
Cambridge Xcellerator 1600 & 1600i                         RS2CAM
Cardinal                              ET4000               RS2SVGA
DataPath Merlin                       TIGA,I860            RS2TIGA     GIF2MER
DataPath QPC                                               GIF2QPC
DELL                                  TIGA                 RS2TIGA     RS2SVGA
Diamond SpeedStar                     ET4000               RS2SVGA
Diamond SpeedStar Hi-color            ET4000, sierra       RS2SVGA
Diamond SpeedStar 24X                 WD(VESA)             RS2SVGA
Diamond SpeedStar 24Pro               Cirrus(VESA)         RS2SVGA  
Diamond Stealth                       S3 (VESA)            RS2SVGA
EIZO MDB-10                           ET3000               RS2SVGA
EIZO MDB-12                           TIGA,DGIS            RS2TIGA     RS2DGIS
EIZO MDB-11                           TIGA,DGIS            RS2TIGA     RS2DGIS
EIZO MDB-8                            TIGA                 RS2TIGA
ELSA XHR Gemini                       TIGA                 RS2TIGA     RS2XHR
Everex                                ET4000,8514/A,VESA   RS2_85      RS2SVGA
Hercules SuperStation 3D              TIGA                 RS2TIGA
Hercules Graphics Station             TIGA                 RS2TIGA
Hewlett Packard IGC-20                TIGA                 RS2TIGA
InfoTronic                            DGIS                 RS2DGIS
Matrox HIPER                          S3 (VESA)            RS2SVGA
Matrox MG-108                         8514/A               RS2_85
Matrox PG-1281                        8514/A               RS2_85      RS2MTRX
Matrox MG-128                         8514/A               RS2_85
Metheus Premier VGA 1MB               ET4000               RS2SVGA
Metheus Premier "Hi-color"            S3 (VESA)            RS2SVGA
Mirage                                T8900 (VESA, 8514A)  RS2SVGA     RS2_85
Miro TIGER (24 bit tiga)              TIGA                 RS2TIGA
NEC MB1024                            DGIS                 RS2DGIS
NEC MGE                               TIGA                 RS2NEC      RS2TIGA
Nth TV                                ET4000,VESA          RS2SVGA
Nth Engine 150                        8514/A               RS2_85
Number 9 NGX                          TIGA                 RS2TIGA
Number 9 GXI (24bit tiga)             TIGA                 RS2TIGA
Orchid ProDesigner                    ET4000               RS2SVGA
Orchid Fahrenheit                     S3 (VESA)            RS2SVGA
Photon                                T8900,VESA,8514A     RS2SVGA     RS2_85
Pixelworks (Clipper)                                       GIF2_PW
Rasterex                              TIGA                 RS2TIGA     RS2GTI
Rendition III                         TIGA                 RS2TIGA
Rendition II                          8514/A,TIGA          RS2_85      RS2TIGA
Sigma Sage                            TIGA                 RS2TIGA
SPEA FGA Hilite                       TIGA                 RS2TIGA
SPEA FGA                              TIGA                 RS2TIGA     RS2SPEA
SPEA Gallery                          SPDRIVER             RS2SPEA
SPEA Painter                          SPDRIVER             RS2SPEA
STB                                   8514/A,ET4000        RS2_85      RS2SVGA
Tecmar                                ET4000               RS2SVGA
Trident 8900 Impact                   T8900,8514/A,VESA    RS2_85      RS2SVGA
TrueVision VideoVGA                   ET4000               RS2SVGA
TrueVision Targa/Vista                                     RS2VISTA
Vermont MicroSystems Cobra            TIGA,8514/A          RS2TIGA     RS2_85
Video 7, 1024i                        VESA                 RS2SVGA
Video 7,SPEA 1280                     TIGA                 RS2SPEA     RS2TIGA
Video 7,VRAM II                       VESA                 RS2SVGA

If you do not find your graphics adapter in this list, please check the
manufacturers documentation for further information. Your board needs to
support some kind of graphics standard or emulation. The most popular
standards are VESA, 8514A, TIGA. If your board is proprietary and does not
support a current market standard, other display arrangements will have to
be made. Call RenderStar Technology then for futher consultation.

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3. Mouse and Pointing Device
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The mouse and pointing device drivers that are tested and supported:

		Microsoft Mouse        Logitech 
		Calcomp                Hitachi 
		Summagraphics          Genius GT-6000 
		Artec (optical)        GVC (optical) 
		ATI Wonder Mouse       Merit

We have also found that most of these devices will work fine when using 
their mouse emulation driver, and the STANDARD MSDOS mouse option in the 
RenderStar install. 

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4. Additional programs
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All of the following programs have been tested with RenderStar image and/or 
animation files. These are some of the programs we use ourselves a lot:

-Image Alchemy (file format conversion, color quantizing, best scaling     
		process)

-Autodesk Animator Pro (still image editing, bitmap creation and editing,    
			animation creation and editing)

-Aldus Photostyler (24bit image manipulation, painting, bitmap creation)

-Publishers Paintbrush 2.0 (image editing, painting)

-Hijaak (file format conversion, screen grabbing)

-Corel Draw (best text fonts. output to DXF and turn into 3D text with AME)

Call RenderStar Technology for further information about these programs and
how they are helpful with a rendering software like RenderStar-2 eXtension-24.

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5. Output
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RenderStar image output is achieved through standard output file format
support. RenderStar does not drive any printing device directly. This is
not normally a function of the rendering software, as there are too many
possible devices to support. Instead, the best support is handled through
file format. The standard file formats that RenderStar supports are GIF, TGA, 
PCX and EPS:

-GIF is a standard 8 bit raster file format.

-TGA is a standard 8/16/24 bit raster file format

-PCX is a standard 8 bit raster file format. It is usually associated with   
     painting sotfware.

-EPS is standard encapsulated Postscript. Color or gray-scale is supported.

Example:

RenderStar can produce a TGA file. Targa (TGA) is a standard high-end
raster file format. Mitsibishi makes printers which come with a import
driver for TGA files. Hence, feed the RenderStar TGA file to the Mitsubishi
software. It imports and converts the file to the proprietary Mitsubishi
format. In a few minutes, out comes a print.

One has to verify which file format(s) are supported by the device. Also, the
maximum input resolution of the device must be known so that a rendered
image can be at the best resolution and aspect ratio for the device.

One example of this is the Kodak XL7700 printer. This is a very high end 
color printer which is usually found in good service bureaus and print shops.
The XL7700 is able to import a 24 bit TGA file at a maximum resolution of 4K.
4K resolution is a typical term for an image file which has been created at
4096 x 2730 resolution.

Another example is the Hewlett Packard Paintjet printer. Some utilities were 
made for the sole purpose of importing GIF files to a Paintjet printer. One 
of these is a little public domain program called PGIF. Others are much more 
elaborate with a price tag as well. The best we have found on the market is 
Easycopy. It is able to support standard files for input and convert them to 
practically every known printer on the market. One of those is the Paintjet. 
They also call it Easycopy for a reason. It is really easy to use.

There are multitudes of possible devices out on the market. There are 
probably just as many service companies which employ devices and will print
your files for you. Please contact RenderStar Technology for further 
information.

