[blender.git] / README

Welcome to the fun world of open-source.

This file is to help you get started using the source and will hopefully
answer most questions.  If you do have any problems with these instructions,
post a message to the Forums on www.blender.org, or visit us at #blendersauce
on irc.freenode.net

Here are some links to external packages you may or may not need:

openssl:     http://www.openssl.org
python:      http://www.python.org
mxtexttools: http://www.egenix.com/files/python/mxTextTools.html (python lib)
libjpeg:     http://www.ijg.org/
libpng:      http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/
zlib:        http://www.gzip.org/zlib/
ode:         http://opende.sourceforge.net/
openal:      http://www.openal.org/home/                (for linux/windows)
    sdl:     http://www.libsdl.org/index.php (for openal)
    smpeg:   http://www.lokigames.com/development/smpeg.php3 (for openal)
fmod: http://www.fmod.org/

mozilla: http://www.mozilla.org/
nspr:  ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/nspr/releases
        (side note: on debian linux you will need mozilla-dev and libnspr-dev)

glut:    http://www.opengl.org/developers/documentation/glut.html

If you do not have GL you will also need mesa:
mesa:    http://www.mesa3d.org

For the translations to other languages than English you will need gettext,
freetype2 and FTGL. Note that these translations are not complete yet, some
time after the release of 2.27 they will be made available for download also.
We welcome feedback about the translated user interface, and even contributions
to the translation effort :)

gettext:     http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/
freetype2:   http://www.freetype.org/
FTGL:        http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/henryj/code/#FTGL

FTGL needs a small patch to get glyphs with the right colour in the cache
--- FTGL/src/FTPixmapGlyph.cpp.orig     2003-05-10 16:07:45.000000000 +0200
+++ FTGL/src/FTPixmapGlyph.cpp  2003-05-10 16:09:19.000000000 +0200
@@ -33,3 +33,3 @@
         // Get the current glColor.
         float ftglColour[4];
-        glGetFloatv( GL_CURRENT_COLOR, ftglColour);
+        ftglColour[0] = ftglColour[1] = ftglColour[2] = ftglColour[3] = 1.0;


*********************************************************************
*********************************************************************
We are in the process of moving things over to automake/autoconf
The old makefiles are still in place and will work.  
If you want to get a working blender skip down to the next section 
and use this readme as a guide.

If you want to play with the new autoconf environment take a look at 
doc/autoconfig.txt

*********************************************************************
*********************************************************************

--Notes on compiling mxTextTools----------------------------------------------
To get the latest version to compile on my machine I had to
edit mxSetup.py and remove /usr/include from INCLPATH for it to build
properly.
(after doing this you need to edit blender/source/Makefile and
fix the pointer to it I'm still working on automating this)

--------------Basic Makefile TIPS---------------------------------------
Edit source/nan_definitions.mk to fit your environment, be sure to edit the
block matching your OS. You will want to change variables like NAN_OPENSSL,
NAN_JPEG, NAN_PNG etc. to point to where you have those installed.

If you want to integrate the game-engine in Blender, you might want
to uncomment the following line in nan_compile.mk:
#CFLAGS += -DGAMEBLENDER=1
The define is disabled by default because there are still some
problems with this at the moment.

After adjusting things for your environment run 'make' (or use the nice hmake
script at blender/source/tools/hmake/hmake)

----------------------WINDOWS TIPS--------------------------------------

When building Blender on Windows you have three choices:
METHOD 1. Build using the old NaN Makefiles.
METHOD 2. Build using the new automake/autoconf files
METHOD 3. Use Microsoft Visual Studio project files

These directions are for method 3. Method 1 was used in Nan in combination 
with Cygwin. I don't know if somebody ever tried method 2.

EXTERNAL LIBARIES
All external libraries that Blender depends on are found in CVS in 
precompiled form. If you did not already do so, check out 
blender/lib/windows from CVS. If you prefer to build or download those 
libraries yourself, there are some directions below.

INTERN LIBRARIES:
The first thing you need to do is to build the Blender "intern" libraries.
You need to have Python installed on your machine.

Open the workspace in the $NANBLENDERHOME/intern/make/msvc_6_0 directory.
Build the "build_install_all" project. This will build all the intern libraries
and installs them in the $NANBLENDERHOME/lib/windows directory.

If the post build step (copying the libraries to their destinations) fails,
this is probably due to the fact that MSVC can't find the XCOPY command as 
happened to me on an XP system. MSVC has it's own PATH that you can set through
the options. Open options from the menu: Tools->Options. Go to the directories
tab and select "Executable files" from the drop down menu. Now add you SYSTEM32
directory.

The last project build is the python_freeze project that will freeze python code
for compilation and linking with Blender's C code. At the moment, this should be
automatic except that batch file probably does not find Python. If this is the
case, follow the same procedure as was mentioned above for the XCOPY command
to add Python to your path.

BUILDING BLENDER

Open the workspace $NANBLENDERHOME/projectfiles/blender/blender.dsw

This contains the following three main projects:
blender           Builds the main executable
GP_ghost          Builds the stand-alone game player
GP_axctl          Builds the ActiveX control

Choose the project you want to build and hit F7. If all is well it should build
with a lot of warnings but no errors.

BUILDING/DOWNLOADING EXTERNAL LIBRARIES
If you don't want to use the precompiled libraries you can download and/or
build them yourself. Here are some directions.

JPEG:
BINARY LIBRARY:
Go to sourceforge.net, navigate to the GnuWin32 project and download 
libjpeg-6b-lib.zip. Rename the unzipped directory "jpeg" and copy it to the 
$NANBLENDERHOME/lib/windows directory.
FROM SOURCES:
Download the jpeg sources from http://www.ijg.org/. Go into the source 
directory and copy the file jconfig.vc to jconfig.h. Now start a command box
and run nmake /f makefile.vc (assuming nmake is in your path, if not run the
vcvars32.bat batch file located in the VC98/Bin directory of the MSVC 
installation directory first).
Copy these include files: jconfig.h, jerror.h, jmorecfg.h, jpeglib.h
from the build directory to the lib tree in this directory:
$NANBLENDERHOME/lib/windows/jpeg/include
The file libjpeg.lib should be copied to:
$NANBLENDERHOME/lib/windows/jpeg/lib

PNG:
Go to sourceforge.net, navigate to the GnuWin32 project and download 
libpng-1.2.4-1-lib.zip. Rename the unzipped directory "png" and copy it to the 
$NANBLENDERHOME/lib/windows directory.

ZLIB:
Go to sourceforge.net, navigate to the GnuWin32 project and download 
zlib-1.1.4-lib.zip. Rename the unzipped directory "zlib" and copy it to the 
$NANBLENDERHOME/lib/windows directory.


----------------------Mac OSX TIPS--------------------------------------
When building Blender on OSX you have three choices:
METHOD 1. Build using the old NaN Makefiles.
METHOD 2. Build using the new automake/autoconf files
METHOD 3. Use the Project Builder project

METHOD 1 and 3
The first 4 steps are th same for methods 1 and 3. Only the actual Blender 
build step number 5 is different.

Step1:
If you want to follow method 1 and 3, follow the instructions above to set the
environment variables. You don't need to edit the Makefiles. They should work
out of the box in combinations with some external libraries that should be on
your system in a fixed location. 

Step 2:
You can use the package installer fink (http://fink.sourceforge.net/) for some
of the external libraries:
1. openssl (fink install openssl)
2. openssl-dev (fink install openssl-dev)
3. jpeg    (fink install libjpeg)
4. png     (fink install libpng)
5. cvs     (fixes some bugs in the shipped cvs: fink install cvs)
6. python22 ((addes the static lib for python) fink install python22)
        You will probably want to select python22-nox-shlibs when
        it asks you.

        After you have done this you should install the mx lib from:
        http://www.egenix.com/files/python/mxTextTools.html

Step 3:
The rest of the external libraries are present in CVS in binary format so you
don't have to download them. Precompiled libraries are found in CVS in 
directory:
$NANBLENDERHOME/lib/darwin-6.1-powerpc
If you are not running on a darwing kernel 6.1 (which is likely if you auto-
update your system, you might want to add a symbolic link in the 
$NANBLENDERHOME/lib/ directory. For example, if you work on a 6.2 kernel:
ln -s darwin-6.1-powerpc darwin-6.2-powerpc

Step 4: 
Start the build process by building Blender's "intern" libraries. Navigate to 
$NANBLENDERHOME/intern and type make. This will build the intern libaries which
will be installed into the $NANBLENDERHOME/lib/darwin-6.1-powerpc (thanks to 
the symbolic link).
Now you can choose how to build Blender itself; using the Makefiles or the 
Project Builder project.

Step 5 METHOD 1:
Navigate to $NANBLENDERHOME/source and type make. 

Step 5 METHOD 3:
The project Builder project can be found in the directory:
$NANBLENDERHOME/projectfiles/pb_2_0_1
Start Project Builder open the blender.pbproj project, choose a target (blender
or player) and build.

Step 6:
Although the Makefiles in the intern directory run ranlib on the libraries 
built, the gcc linker complains about ranlib not being run. Until there is a
solution, you will need to run ranlib by hand once in a while when the make 
breaks. Luckily, the error message lists the full path of the file to run 
ranlib on... Anybody out there with a real solution? I guess the problem arises
from copying the files from one location to the other...


BUILDING EXTERNAL LIBRARIES
If you don't want to use the precompiled libraries you can download and/or
build them yourself. Here are some directions.

PYTHON:
Mac OSX 10.2 (Jaguar) now comes with Python (2.2.1) pre-installed. This is fine
for producing the "frozen" Python code found in the intern directory. However,
the installation does not contain the python library to link against (at least
I could not find it). You could use fink to install Python but that Python 
installation depends on X being installed and that is a large installation.

If you prefer the easy way: download Python 2.2.2 from http://www.python.org.
Follow the instructions to in the documentation to install it on your box. If
you run OSX 10.2 it should install just fine. Basically a configure and a 
"make" will do the job. The result is a Python library that should be copied to
the library tree together with the associated header files.

Create the following  directories:
$NANBLENDERHOME/lib/darwin-6.1-powerpc/python/include/python2.2
$NANBLENDERHOME/lib/darwin-6.1-powerpc/python/lib/python2.2/config
Now copy the include files and the libpython2.2.a library to those locations.

ODE:
Ode is currently included in the source tree of Blender. This might change in
the close future. But for now you don't need to download Ode.
If you want to build ODE yourself, you'll have to edit a config file of ODE first.
go to $NANBLENDERHOME/extern/ode/dist/config and edit the file "user-settings" so 
that platform is equal to osx (PLATFORM=osx).

QUICKTIME:
In order to compile Blender with QuickTime support enabled, you need to have the 
QuickTime 6 SDK installed (see http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/). This extra
step is only necessary if you're using a version of MacOS X prior to 10.2.
When using the new automake system, QuickTime support can be enabled by passing
the "--enable-quicktime=yes" flag to ./configure. When building with the original 
NaN Makefiles, QuickTime support is enabled automatically.