Below is a guide for setting up a very fast emulated Amiga workstation environment on WinUAE for raytracing with Lightwave and many more application that need raw CPU power. Please note that almost all of these options may apply to other UAE flavours as well.
This guide assumes you already have WinUAE installed and tested, and that you have an Amiga kickstart3.1 ROM available as well as a working AGA system.
You will also need to download an Amiga Lightwave copy. The latest version known to be released is 5.0r and a preserved copy can be found here.
So here we go.
Part 1
1. Load up WinUAE and create a new configuration, naming it appropriately e.g. 'Super Amiga Raytracing Metal Machine' etc.
2. Enter the following settings:
Alternative 68060 setup:
Note 1: As you can see, my settings emulate an AGA system. If you have experience with RTG systems please go ahead and set your instance accordingly, however, I have limited knowledge in, say, ModePromotion, although as far as I hear it is not anything too difficult too achieve. I may do a post about it in the future, but please leave a comment if you have done it successfully.
Note 2: Lightwave has some preview options disabled in an RTG environment, namely the Modeler's animated Preview options as well as Layout's Preview are disabled.
Note: You can experiment with more Chip and/or Fast RAM. The more, the merrier!
Hard Drives: The best way is to 'Add Directory ...' for keeping Directories accessible by the Filesystem for being able to add/edit stuff around. You can for example have one partition for Lightwave programs and the '3d:' Content Directory and another partition for your Image and Animation filesaving.
And last but not least,
The Horizontal and Vertical 'Filter' settings presented here are monitor-dependent and will be fine-tuned later when we have Lightwave and Modeler installed.
3. Save the Configuration.
Part 2
1. Assuming you have already downloaded the archive containing Lightwave 5.0r, place it in a folder inside an Amiga partition.
2. Load the newly created Configuration and boot into your UAE Super Amiga.
3. Extract the LW archive with LHA and place the resulting 'Toaster' folder into a partition of your liking.
Optional: To keep things tidy, create a '3D' folder whenever you want (but outside 'Toaster') and MOVE the following folders from 'Toaster' into '3D':
Code: Select all
Images
Motions
Objects
Scenes
Surfaces
ToasterFonts4. Entering the 'Toaster' directory, run the 'AssignMe' script, either executing it via shell or by modifying its Default Tool to IconX. You can, of course, paste the scripts contents to your S:User-startup so that they run upon bootup.
5. Run 'Lightwave.fp'. If the program runs correctly you will be presented with a screen like this:
Lets see if the Renderer works.
5. From the tabs on top, go to Record -> Render Display and change it from 'None' to 'HAM8'. 6. Open also the Lights tab, activate the 'Lens Flare' option and press 'F9' (Render current frame). If all goes well, you will be facing your first rendered lens flare! Congratulations!!
There are a couple of things left to be done, though, to make sure everything runs as it should.
7.Press ESC to close the renderer and exit Layout by selecting QUIT on the FILE drop-down menu. 8. Run Layout again, go to 'Record' tab and check if HAM8 is still the active selection from when we changed it.
(If it's not, you may want to do some digging with SnoopDos to see where LW searches for a file called LW_config, which is located in Toaster/LightWave_Support.)
Now that Layout runs fine, let's see if Modeler works as well.
9. Run 'Modeler' from its icon. If all goes well, you will be greeted by this screen:
Now is a perfect opportunity to calibrate WinUAE to our monitor by using Modeler's GRID. What I do when I fine-tune UAE's dimensions is press the " . " (period) once or twice on the main keyboard to ZOOM IN (alternatively the " , " (comma key) to ZOOM OUT) so that I get the largest grid rectangles. I then take a ruller and by measuring the grid's dimensions I then try to adjust through UAE's Filter tab the Horizontal and Vertical Sizes so that the grid's dimensions depicted on the monitor are of the same length.
That's all!
Let me know if you encounter any problems by commenting below.
