Biowin is a graphical notepad/toy/tool to make a bioform with POV-Ray for windows 3.1.

Building a bioform is easy and straightforward. You choose a Worm, give it segments, some values (you even can give it some features), choose a Thing (not necessary though) and there you go. Further there is a simple texture-editor for your creature's skin, and background options if you want to place it in a scene. You then can evolve, mutate, breed, randomize, animate (morph) and let them grow at your like.
Knowing the Povray scene language is not necessary but can help a lot if you run into trouble.


System requirements :
	- System as big as you can afford ... the more RAM the better.
	- Min. 800*600 display.
	- Win95/WinNT4 ; Win98 not tested.
	- Pov-Ray for Windows 3.1 preinstalled.


Files in the archive and where to put them :

  - Biowin.exe : the biowin executable.
  - *.bio      : example biowin settings.
  - *.btx      : example biowintextures.
  - *.bbg      : example background settings.
  --> Put these together where you want.

  - Biopred.inc : example objects include-file.
  --> Put this in your Povraypath (normally : ...\Program files\POV-Ray for Windows v3.1\include).


PLEASE make shure that your path to pvengine.exe is correct in the PovrayPath setting in Biowin or nothing will happen when you try to render your scene. I hope I can fix this soon (when did I said that) !!!


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Biowin.exe is copyrighted freeware and is developped in Delphi3.
I'm not responsible for serious disasters on your PC when you try to use it ... <blablabla>... 

Thanks to Denis Sarazin for the Delphi source of his magnificent PovTexture creator. This was far more then only a starting point for Biowin.
Thanks to Chris Colefax. His modclock.inc file showed me the way in how doing the animation-routines.
Thanks to Nathan Kopp. His background.inc file and the matrix concept by John VanSickle showed me how to do the BackgroundPicture.
Thanks to Andrew Cocker. His ideas about working with animations were just great. 
Thanks to Dennis Miller, Darren Fisher, Mike Stone, Rick of Kitty5, Nelson and Kilian, for valuable feedback.
 
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About predefined objects :
Simple objects are build within Biowin, and you can drag them from the toolbar to the textboxes. In the textboxes you can scale, rotate, translate them (in povray-language) at your like. More complicated objects or objects of your own can be defined in an include-file (an example is biopred.inc). Just don't forget to put the include-file in your Povray-path. Add the name of the include-file on the left of Biowin and then you can go. (Note that using 'outside' objects will not give a correct estimation in 'Preview of used objects'.)

About predefined textures :
You can use the texture-editor for making you textures. You then assign them to an object by clicking on the corresponding button in the textures/general Tab. (If you leave the texture-textbox of a feature blank then it will take the general thingtexture).
The texture-editor is for the moment only a very simple one. If you need more complicated textures or textures of your own, put them in an include-file and call them in Biowin just like you would for external objects.

In general you can make use of any povray-feature in Biowin by calling an include file.

P.S. : For final renders, extra manipulations not supported by Biowin, or using a Thing in other scenes, you can export the settings to a .pov file (a Thing is always centered at the origin ... I think).

P.S. : You can export your bioforms in Pov 2.2 format. Then with the help of pov2mdl (at http://www.stmuc.com/thbaier/tools.html ... or do a search for pov2mdl) it's possible to bring your Thing into Moray and do your further thingies there if you like. --> Watch out : the Moray *.mdl can become very big ... someday I maybe find some time to implement exporting to UDO.


If you wish to contact me with bug reports, tips, criticisms, comments, suggestions, improvements, questions, etc. you can reach me by email at:
                         babayaro@dds.nl

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History :

v0.99f :
- Added : Now you always can interupt an animation render
- Added : Chris Colefax' S-Curve in animation-routine.
- Added : Formgrow in the animation-routine. New features or worms dont appear or disappear suddenly anymore, but grow (thanks Andy Cocker).
- Changed : in the Trilobyt-routine the endtranslate to center it at the origin is skipped now (for the purpose of animation).
- Changed : animation now uses TotalFrames (the total amount of frames you want your animation to be), Start- and Endframe you want to render in this session, and BitmapCountStart (the number your bitmapname should start) ... I hope this is not too complicated. 
- Changed counting-mechanism in animation to allow animations of more than 99 frames.
- Added : ability to specify the output-resolution in 'PovRayoptionstab' (especially for animations).
- Added global switch to turn on/off Background globally.
- Changed : every Worm has it's own segment-declaration now. I left the old textboxes temporarily, so you can adjust previously saved *.bio's.
- Added new WormType "TwoDWorm".
- Added new WormType "FormWorm" (still very basic).
- Added new ThingType "Hull" ( still very basic).
- Added the ability to choose texture-preview on a sphere or on a box.
- Added "image_map" and "bump_map" in Textures.
- Added "Scramble Scale" and "Scramble Rotate" in ThingExtra. This is a truly random operation within Biowin, so it gives each time a different thing and is only savable as a bioform-start. You can however retrieve the pov-file (temp.pov in the biowin directory) before you render a new one.
- Rearranged ThingExtra.
- Added "SplitOn" in Random routine.
- Added "TopHart" and "Husk" in CurlWorm.
- Changed : Now uses Round-function for integers in Animation calculation.
- Fixed a bug in the Random routine (Thing-choice and the use of doublespiral).
- Fixed bug in Animation routine (... invalid number).

v0.99e :
- Added "Helix" in SpiralWorm.
- Fixed bug : now a correct outputted Povscript when more then one Thing is selected (thanks Dennis).
- Fixed bug (I hope) of screen-display if you work with large screenfonts.
- Added "Husk" in Spiralworm, so you can add a serie of objects while building the Spiralworm.
- Added BranchLevel in Branch. A sort of recursive branchroutine, but watch out, the worm can become very bigggg soon.


v0.99d :
- Added Background (sky, fog, sea, land and backgroundpicture)... for the moment still very simple but nice for experimenting ... let me know how you like it.
- Added some povray-options, so you don't have to leave biowin to trace final renderings.
- Removed 'combined' since it was so pathetic.
- Got partially rid of biopred.inc and biotex.inc. (you still can use your own includes + biopred.inc still in the include section of Biowin for compatibility with olderly saved *.bio's).
- Added Animation : manual settings for animation or loading in a second bio of the same family (worm and thing) to animate to. (not much tested since it is so time-consuming, please let me know how it works ...).
- Added the possibility to preview the number of objects used by the Thing, so you can judge to go on tracing. (see menu Povray -> Estimation of used objects).
- Added a Splashscreen.
- Splitted the entry-textboxes for the camera ... take notice of this while loading previous saved bio's.
- Fixed a terrible bug in the different Thing-routines that insisted to ask for a worm2 when 'Alternate Segment' was checked (stupid me).
- Added exception handling for deficient values (it was about time).

v0.99c : 
- Added 'ThingExtras : you can apply a Head, Tail, Link, Series, Interval objects to your Thing.
- 'Drag and Drop adding' predeclared segments/objects. So you are no longer restricted to writing them yourself in the textboxes.
- 'Combined' in the features tab : you can edit one bio, then another and combine them.
- Split SpiralWorm : you can now split the spiralworm if you want to.
- New WormType : DoubleSpiral (is also interesting on his own).
- Random viewangle in postprocessing Thing to allow exploring the Thing in a random way.
- Cosmetic changes to the interface.
- Bugs fixed.

v0.99 : 
- It had to happen one day ... the routines are now within Biowin (no bioform.inc anymore). This way it gives me far more possibilities for the future.
- I'am afraid most of the *.bio files are NOT compatible anymore. Sorry it is the last time this will happen.
- You can save the forms in Pov 2.2 format so it's now possible to bring your Thing into Moray.
- Tab for extra additions you would like to include before rendering it. 
- Many, many bugfixes ... since I had to rewrite it. 
- suspended textureOverSegment, difsegm, append, difworm, animation. In the way they were implemented they couldn't be used as pov22 output and so for Moray (I'll bring them back in later). 

v0.98 : 
- added a simple texture-editor.
- added textureOverSegment.
- added difsegm : with difsegm checked segment-values can be interpolated between two values in building up the worm, for segment only the texture-values.
- added multiple (append) as feature : you can append a second thing if you press the AppendButton, you can model (or open an existing bio) and rerender until you think it's right ... as long as the appendCheck stays checked. For a third you press the AppendButton again ... and so on. For the time being the whole  cannot been saved as one bio but you can save each thing apart. 
- serious bugs fixed and reorganised bioform.inc (probably not compatible anymore with previous versions).(didn't hit the streets)

v0.97 : 
- added difworm : with difworm checked worm-values can be interpolated between two values in building up the thing. A second set of values is being shown for that purpose. 
- added Trilobyt setmirroroff : if you don't want a rib (the worm alone). 
- added Horn : a new thing called horn. 
- several bugfixes.(didn't hit the streets)

v0.96 : added breeding, added notes.
v0.95 : added animation support.
v0.94 : povray 3.1 syntaxis.
v0.93 : added evolve, mutate.
v0.92 : added random.
v0.91 : initial release.



Happy tracing ...