Software Setup

Making Art with Computers

HSSP - Summer 2002 - Course C-22

This page will contain links to pages that can lead you through setting up all the software that we will use in class.

The GIMP

The GIMP stands for The "Gnu Image Manipulation Program". It is written by the noble folks at the free software foundation. It was originally written for Unix, but a Windows version exists and is mostly stable. I will be using version 1.2.3, which is the latest stable version.

• The GIMP for PC - You should uninstall any version of The GIMP that you already have before installing this.
• The GIMP for Linux - This already comes with most Linux distributions, but if you don't have it, check here.

POV-Ray

POV-Ray stands for "Persistence Of Vision Ray Tracer". It is a free ray tracer that has been around for many years. Versions exist for Windows, Linux, and Mac.

• POV-Ray for Windows
• POV-Ray for Linux
• POV-Ray for Mac

Animation Utilities

The following utilities will take a series of images that you generate with POV-Ray and turn them into movie files. (Sorry, I’ve only found Windows utilities so far!)

• AVI Creator – A free utility that creates AVI files (for Windows). Good for getting started, but it seems to overlay some annoying text on your movies.
• VideoMach – A powerful shareware utility that can create many different formats, including AVI and MPEG. This requires a $19 license fee after a trial period of 30 days or so.

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Maintained by Richard C Davis (rdavis@mathworks.com)
Last updated 7/18/2002