Installation Guide "tucan Rev. 7.1" (25.04.2005) copyright 2005 awaron ag, steinhäuserstrasse 12, 76135 karlsruhe phone: +49 (0) 721-15109-0 email: info@awaron.de web: www.awaron.de The information contained in this document is subject to change without notice. Awaron AG makes no warranty of any kind with regard to this manual, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. Awaron AG shall not be liable for errors contained herein or for incidental or consequential damages in connection with the furnishing, performance, or use of this material. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SHORT DESCRIPTION You can install the following applications of "tucan" using your preferred RPM-package manager in Linux. Please take notice of the basic requirements like access rights, capacity of hard disk etc. In the following, please replace "??" by the release count of the actual version. tucan design: tucan_design-7.1-??.i386.rpm tucan view+ : tucan_view_plus-7.1-??.i386.rpm tucan view : tucan_view-7.1-??.i386.rpm tucan design student version: tucan_student-7.1-??.i386.rpm tucan multi channel slave: tucan_mcslave-7.1-??.i386.rpm Installing an application protected with a WIBU-Dongle the WIBU-Setup will be executed automatically in the background. PLEASE DISCONNECT ANY WIBU DONGLE DURING THE INSTALLATION OR DEINSTALLATION! Please note that all applications except of "tucan view" and "tucan mcslave" need a license file to start. If an application is protected with a WIBU-dongle the dongle must be plugged in the computer while running the application. You can find detailed information in the sections below. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS -------- The installation instructions contain the sections below. PRELIMINARY NOTE LINUX PLATFORM HARDWARE INSTALLATION PACKAGES LICENSES INSTALLATION TROUBLE SHOOTING STARTING APPLICATIONS FAQ FEEDBACK PRELIMINARY NOTE ---------------- Please take care that the login user possesses all required access rights for installation and deinstallation. All future users need the required rights to run the application. To run the application all required files must be installed onto the system. Please use the installation package corresponding to the application you want to run. Some of the applications and additional modules need license keys in the license file. If base license keys are missing the application can not be run. A dialog with a message about missing licenses will be shown. If module license keys are missing commands corresponding to the module can not be displayed or called. LINUX PLATFORM -------------- A working X and an OpenGL 1.3 implementation have to be installed on the workstation, where tucan will run. The software packages are tested to work on SuSE Linux 9.0, 9.1 and 9.2. Other versions of SuSE or other Linux distributions may work too, but can make some problems, especially for the sound, the movie and the USB subsystem. HARDWARE -------- Generally the Linux version of "tucan" are executable with Intel compatible personal computers. The requirements for CPU and RAM are depending extremely on size and manner of the scene to work on. Minimal requirements for small scenes: CPU Pentium 1 GHz RAM 256 MB Minimal requirements for medial scenes: CPU Pentium 1.5 GHz RAM 512 MB Recommended equipment: CPU Pentium 3 GHz RAM 1024 MB The application "tucan view" for viewing only perhaps requires to a smaller degree of capacity. It is recommended to install the application as trial. The graphic adapter must support OpenGL. It must support multitexturing capability to handle features as lightmaps, smooth light etc. Support of OpenGL from Rev. 1.3 is required. Performance and quality of the graphic output depends extremely on the concrete use graphic driver. The applications may be executable with others than the given graphic adapters. But officially released are the following graphic adapters only. Tested graphic adapters: NVIDIA GeForce3 NVIDIA GeForce4 NVIDIA Quadro4 550 XGL (3D-stereo support) NVIDIA Quadro4 750 XGL (3D-stereo support) NVIDIA Quadro4 900 XGL (3D-stereo support) NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT (3D-stereo support) NVIDIA Quadro FX 4000 (3D-stereo support) NVIDIA Quadro FX 3400 (3D-stereo support) NVIDIA Quadro FX 3000 (3D-stereo support) NVIDIA Quadro FX 1400 (3D-stereo support) NVIDIA Quadro FX 1300 (3D-stereo support) NVIDIA Quadro FX 1100 (3D-stereo support) The OpenGL drivers for these cards can be found on http://www.nvidia.com. Please use driver version 1.0-4496 or higher. You can find an installation instruction on the SuSE home page. Other graphics cards may work too. You can find further information at http://www.mesa3d.org. If you plan to purchase new hardware to use with tucan, its best to contact Awaron AG and ask for new hardware tests. IMPORTANT: To license the student version of tucan, you need a working Ethernet card. INSTALLATION PACKAGES --------------------- You can use the following installation packages to install on Linux. In the following, please replace "??" by the release count of the actual version. tucan_design-7.1-??.i586.rpm tucan_design_SL-7.1-??.i586.rpm tucan_mcslave-7.1-??.i586.rpm tucan_view-7.1-??.i586.rpm tucan_view_plus-7.1-??.i586.rpm Out of "tucan design" you can export scene files in the format "tucan view" (*.AVW). You can view these files with "tucan view" which is free of charge. The application "tucan view" is not protected with license keys and can be given away joined with scene files of tucan free of charge. You may use "tucan view" only with the exclusion of any warranty. The application "tucan view+ (plus)" is protected by license keys. In addition to "tucan view" you can use more functionality.. With a license "tucan multichannel" you can work with multichannel projections. You need a module license additionally to start a multichannel master process inside "tucan design" with the required number of channels. Regarding to every channel you need a dedicated personal computer to start a specific multichannel slave process. All computers must be connected by a TCP/IP based protocol. The slave processes do not have an own user interface and will be controlled totally by the master process. The slaves can be installed using tucan_mcslave-7.1-??.i586.rpm For non-commercial use only (Educational Version, Student Version, Demo Version) you can get a specific version to install: tucan_design_SL-7.1-??.i586.rpm These versions fit with the product version of "tucan design" regarding to its substantial functionality. In contradiction to the installation package "setup_tucan_design_dl_7_1_windows.exe" there is no dongle necessary for protection. Therefore the WIBU-System will not be installed as well. LICENSES -------- Except of "tucan view" and "tucan mcslave" all applications are protected with license keys on to a security device to prevent misuse. You cannot run these applications without any security device or license key. The commercial versions are protected with the special dongle WIBU-KEY connected at the USB interface (Universal Serial Bus). To request that dongle the software of the WIBU-System must be installed. Do not disconnect the dongle while executing the application. To run the application on another computer please change the dongle. The applications and the license file fitting to the dongle must be installed. The non-commercial license types (Educational Version, Student Version, Demo Version) are protected by the MAC adress. A security device is not required. Please note that the applications require different licenses for Windows or Linux. It is not possible to execute the applications with the same license on Windows or on Linux through choice, even as the dongle was replaced. The license keys are generated as a complete license file in the format "licensefile.xml". This data requires specific syntax and may not be changed inadmissibly. Otherwise, the applications cannot run because of not analyzable license keys. Any valid license file must exist in the subdirectory "licensing" of the installation directory of "tucan". The installer creates an empty file "licensefile.xml". Please copy a license with valid license keys manually into the subdirectory "licensing" after the installation. It is recommended to name it as "licensefile_computername.xml", e.g. "licensefile_deepthought.xml". License files as that will be searched first. The component "computername" must fit with the actual (host) name of the computer. If such a file cannot be found, the file "licensefile.xml" will be evaluated regarding to the license keys. Please always create a backup file of the license file, especially in case of deinstallation or removing the installation manually. INSTALLATION ------------ Basic installation: ................... Please save all open files and close all running application before starting an installation or deinstallation. Because of the protection with a dongle, the software for the WIBU-System will be installed. Please remove the dongle during the installation. The application "tucan student" is not affected because it does not need any dongle. Just as "tucan view" or "tucan mcslave" which is not protected technically anyway. Use your preferred package manager (yast, kpackage, xrpm, konqueror, ...) for (un-)installation, or (un-)install the rpm packages on the command-line with: Install: rpm -ivh Un-install: rpm -e The tucan installation requires some additional packages (openal, hotplug, avifile), which are included in all newer distributions. If you know what you are doing, you can ignore these dependencies with the flag "--nodeps" of the rpm-command. For "tucan design", the default installation path is "/opt/tucan/tucan_design_7.1" and the executables are in "/opt/tucan/tucan_design_7.1/bin", so make sure that this path is in the PATH environment variable, or use the full path name to the binaries. After the installation process, its also possible to copy the tucan-directory to another path and start the applications from there. After you have installed the dongled version of the tucan, you should pull out the dongle off the usb port, wait 5 seconds and plug it in again, before starting the application. If you use KDE as window manager choose "Meta" as the special key in the windows settings dialog, so that you can use the "Alt" key for tucans fly mode. Movie support: .............. To read or write movies, there is a program called "moviedaemon" included in each software package in the directory "/binaries/moviedaemon". All basic AVI reading and writing ist located in this executable using the avifile library. Its source code can be found in "/documentation/MovieDaemon". If you have problems with movie support in tucan, you can try to build a moviedaemon on your system. Due to a bug in the avifile library of SuSE 9.1, the movie support will not work in this distribution unless you install the one from SuSE 9.2, which is possible in this special case. You can find it on a SuSE mirror server e.g. at ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/ftp.suse.com/suse/i386/9.2/... suse/i586/avifile-0.7.38-212.2.i586.rpm tucan supports a wide range of movie codecs through the avifile library, which can use windows codecs installed in "/usr/lib/win32". You can find a lot of codecs on the home page of mplayer: http://www4.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/codecs.html See also "/usr/share/doc/packages/avifile/README.SuSE" for further information. Sound support: .............. For sound support to work correctly, no other application source may use the sound device. You can test it by trying to start the "esd" sound daemon in a shell. All tucan applications use OpenAL library for sound rendering, which supports different sound devices like esd from the Gnome desktop or arts from KDE. If you have problems with sound in tucan, you can try to change the order in which OpenAL searches for a valid output device in "~/.openalrc": (define devices '(esd arts native alsa sdl null)) If you dont need the sound support in tucan, its best to disable it completely by removing the associated plugin "/plugins/soundpluginopenal.so" Keyboard shortcuts: ................... Window managers like KDE or Gnome use many keyboard shortcuts for their actions. So, its possible, that some shortcuts in the tucan applications will be hidden and do not work. You can avoid that, changing or disabling the corresponding keyboard shortcut in your window managers configuration utility. Online help: ............ Although we have removed the requirement of the netscape package, you need a browser, to display the online help. As default the tucan applications use "konqueror", the browser of the KDE project. If you want to change this, please edit the entry "BROWSER" in the file "~/.tucan-7.1/configuration/config.xml". If the keyboard shortcut for the direct help (Ctrl+F1) doesnt work, please read the section "Keyboard shortcuts". STARTING APPLICATIONS --------------------- The executables for the tucan applications are located in the subdirectory "bin" of the installation path, e.g. "/opt/tucan/tucan_view_plus_7.1/bin/tucan_view_plus". You can create a link to these executables on your desktop, or start the program in a shell. Its possible, to directly open a scene file when running a tucan application, or giving some options. You can find the correct syntax for calling the tucan applications, when you start it with option "-h". TROUBLE SHOOTING ---------------- All programs included in the tucan series 2005 write log files to "~/.tucan-7.1/log". FAQ --- Q: My graphics card supports features like full scene anti-aliasing or active stereo view. How can i use this with the tucan series 2005? A: These features have to be provided by the Linux graphics driver and configured there. Look in your X-Servers documentation for further information. Q: The tucan online help doesnt work correct, whats wrong? A: Please read the section INSTALLATION->"Online help" of this file. Q: A keyboard shortcut doesnt work, whats wrong? A: Please read the section INSTALLATION->"Keyboard shortcuts" of this file. Q: Sometimes, if i start tucan, no window will appear, but i can see a tucan process in the process list. A: When the sound plugin will be initialized, it waits until it can connect to the sound device (/dev/dsp). So, close all applications, which use the sound device (e.g. xmms), or if you dont need sounds in tucan, remove the sound plugin from "/plugins/" Q: Some wave samples sound ugly. A: Convert the sample to one of the following formats: - 16 bit, stereo, 22050 Hz - 16 bit, stereo, 44100 Hz - 8 bit, mono, 22050 Hz You can use "sox" for conversion. Q: If i disconnect the usb dongle, the application will be deactivated after a while, if i re-connect the dongle, the application will not be re-activated like in windows. So, i cannot save my work. A: This is a bug. It will be fixed in the near future. For now, dont touch the dongle, when tucan is running!! Q: Movie reading/writing doesnt work. A: Please read the section INSTALLATION->"Movie support" of this file. Q: the fly mode doesnt work, when using kde as the window manager. A: Choose "Meta" as the special key in the windows settings dialog. Q: I have installed a dongle licensed version of tucan. The dongle ID shown by a tucan application is "no dongle". A: It seams, that the dongle was not found by the application. Disconnect the dongle and reconnect it after a few seconds. The WIBU-box should be seen in the output of the command "cat /proc/bus/usb/devices" and its device in "/proc/bus/usb/00*" should have read and writte permissions for the current user. Q: A scene with an AVI texture will be rendered with very low framerate. A: Please convert the texture to a format 2^n x 2^m (like 256x128). Q: tucan slaveview will not start. A: It seams to be a problem with the fullscreen mode in SuSE 8.2. So its necessary to start tucan_mcslave in a smaller window with "tucan_mcslave -g 400x300" and switch to the fullscreen mode after that with key F11. Q: tucan disappears just after the splash screen was shown. A: Mostly this is a problem of the graphics system. Look in the log files in ~/.tucan-7.1/log. For a NVidia graphics card, the current user have to be in the "video" group. FEEDBACK -------- We would be pleased to receive feedback from you. Please send it to support@awaron.de