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6.2 Installing Shaders

Once you have compiled a shader, you must install it at the appropriate place in your file system. The "appropriate place" is a place where 3Delight can find them!

When 3Delight receives a Surface, Displacement, LightSource or Volume command, it searches immediately for the shader given as the first argument to the command. The shader can be specified using a full path or a relative path to the shader file. On Unix, a full path is a path that starts with a `/'. On Windows, a full path starts with a drive (e.g. `C:'). All other paths are interpreted as relative paths. If you want to write cross-platform RIB files, then you should not specify your shaders using full paths.

If you specify a shader using its full path, 3Delight only looks for the shader at the location specified by that path.

If you specify a shader using a relative path, 3Delight tries to find the shader in the directories specified by the shader search paths list. Each directory from the list is tried in turn, starting with the first one. As soon as a matching shader is found, the search stops. For more information, see section 4.1 Options.

When specifying a shader, you should use the slash (`/') character to separate directories, even under Windows. If 3Delight encounters an environment variable, it will replace it by its value. The environment variable has to be specified using the Unix convention (like this: $HOME).

A tilde (`~') character at the beginning of a path has the same signification as the $HOME environment variable.

If the specified shader cannot be found, 3Delight signals an error message and replaces it by the default shader. The default shader is `defaultsurface' for surfaces, `spotlight' for lightsources, `bumpy' for displacements and `null' for atmosphere.


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This document was generated by Aghiles Kheffache on July, 31 2003 using texi2html
3Delight 1.0.0. Copyright 2000-2003 The 3Delight Team. All Rights Reserved.