KL3
Introduction
KL3 is the third of my languages of this type. The first one was Intercol. The products of gig3d (and previously Electrogig) were based on it. The next one was called IL. The lessons learned when integrating a shading and texturing language in Intercol were fully exploited as a new paradigm in language design. Now I make KL3 available as a free, stand alone, language. Currently it is only available for Win32 platforms. Linux is next in the near future.
Please read the manual and the IL paper for further introduction.
Installation
Just make a directory (C:\kl3 for instance) and unzip the downloaded file in it. The html manual is included. The program files init.kl3 and test.kl3 are also included. It might be easy to include the bin folder in your system path.
Execute kl3.exe to start the interpreter. Type read("test") to render your first image.
Image format and utilities
Kl3 uses tiled tiff image files, both to render to, and as texture maps. To help with conversions there are a couple of command line utilities in imgutils.zip. The executables are self explanatory when executed without parameters. The simple batch files untile and tile can be used to convert to and from ordinary tiff image files when you have problems reading the rendered images with your imaging tools. Unzip this file in a directory that's in your execution path.
The renderer
The 3D renderer used in KL3 is a derivative of the raytracer in the gig3d products. KL3 only renders simple CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry) primitives, no nurbs or polygon meshes. The quality is the same however, and the procedural texturing possibilities are much more extended.
Mailing List
I created a dedicated mailing list in Yahoo groups. I understand the current release is not for the faint of heart and many questions most likely need to be answered. For the time being this is the best place for it.