Affine Bitmap Tools Package

(7-11-01)

The Affine® Bitmap Tools Package was merged into the latest Affine® Toolkit release.

Download information is at: Affine® Toolkit.

Below is the old web page listings features added back in July, 1998:

Features

Support for Maya's IFF files has been added with iffinfo, iff2tiff, tiff2iff, and iff2iff. This package is based on the code in the Affine® Toolkit's affine/pixNtiff/ subdirectory. New TIFF tools have also been added. For those who find Maya 1.0 "upside-down" oriented TIFF files to be annoying, the tifforient tool can be used to change the orientation of a set of TIFF files.

Also included is a tool to invert the image of a TIFF file with tiffinvert and a tool called tifftile that can assemble CropWindow created TIFF files from both Pixar's PRMan and BMRT's rendrib.

New Maya IFF Tools:

Both Maya 1.0 and Composer 4.5 IFF files (8bit, 12bit and 16bit) can be read. The code writes the IFF files out in Maya's 8bit and 16bit format. The 12bit format written out by Composer 4.5 can only be read not written. Also the odd GEND tags that Composer 4.5 adds to its 8bit and 12bit files are handled when reading by are not written by the tools here. The format choosen when writing matches that of Maya 1.0.

Basically Maya IFF files are fully supported both compressed and uncompressed. Composer 4.5 does not appear to support Maya 1.0 16 bit IFF files and instead uses some odd IFF format that the tools included here can read.

iffinfo -- Utility to print out descriptions of structures in Alias/Wavefront IFF files. Also can print some information on sound files (AIFF) and Maya binary scene files.
iff2tiff -- Convert Maya IFF image files to TIFF format.
tiff2iff -- Convert TIFF format to Maya IFF format.
iff2iff -- Test program to copy Maya IFF image files to a separate Maya IFF file. A change in compression and bit depth can be done.

New TIFF Tools:

tifforient -- Changes the orientation of TIFF file images. Can also be used to simply change the TIFF orientation flags, which is useful sometimes for testing.
tifftile -- Assembles CropWindow images into a single image. This tool works with both PRMan and BMRT TIFF files. This tool does not have problems with the TIFF tags TIFFTAG_XRESOLUTION and TIFFTAG_YRESOLUTION set to a pitch of 72.0 and not 1.0. Many applications use 72.0 when writing TIFF files including BMRT 3.6.
tiffinvert -- Changes the given TIFF files to have inverted images.

Original Tools:

fp2tiff -- Store ASCII printed floating point values into an IEEE TIFF file of a user specified size.
normfptiff -- Adjust the min to max range of values in an IEEE TIFF file to be from 0 to 1.
pix2tiff -- Convert Alias PIX files into TIFF.
pixinfo -- Print size information of Alias PIX files.
showbits -- Displays Alias PIX, TIFF and TGA files. Showbits will try to figure out the file format if the user doesn't indicate which.
tga2tga -- Test program to convert TGA uncompressed/compressed to TGA compressed.
tga2tiff -- Convert TGA to TIFF.
tgainfo -- Print size information of TGA files.
tif2tif -- Test program to convert TIFF uncompressed/compressed to TIFF compressed files.
tiff2X -- Convert a black and white TIFF into X Window's ASCII format.
tiff2fp -- Print IEEE values in an IEEE TIFF file.
tiff2pix -- Convert TIFF to Alias PIX.
tiff2tga -- Convert TIFF to TGA compressed.
tiffedge -- Composite TIFF images of constant surface shaded objects, normal-variance shaded object, and depth maps into a Sobel filtered image that looks like the ink lines of a cartoon. Some additional filtering is really needed to smooth out the lines a bit. I will try to add this in later.
z2tiff -- Takes Pixar's Z format and converts the data into a TIFF image.

Reading and Writing Various 2D Image Formats

Located in affine/pixNtiff/ are several C files that are used to read and write Alias's PIX, Maya IFF, TIFF, and TGA file formats. Included is also the ability to write X Windows bitmaps or read Pixar's zfile format.

Each fully supported format has two self-named C files prefixed with a 'r' for reading and a 'w' for writing. TIFF for example has rtiff.c and wtiff.c with the functions ReadTiff() and WriteTiff() respectively. Each 'r' and 'w' file has an associated header file with a ".h" filename extension. Refer to these headers for the main function exported by its associated C file.

The writing functions rely on a data structure called simply BITMAP defined in the header affine/pixNtiff/bitmap.h with the following code:

     typedef struct _BITMAP {
        unsigned int  xres;
        unsigned int  yres;
        unsigned int  xpos;
        unsigned int  ypos;
        unsigned int  sampleformat; /* uint8, uint16 or IEEE floats. */
        unsigned int  orientation;  /* Refer to flags in bitmap.h. */
        unsigned int  nsamples;  /* How many channels. */
        unsigned int  bitspersample; 
        unsigned int  rowbytes;  /* for an RGB image rowbytes = 3*xres */
                          /* rowbytes is needed incase padding is needed */
        PBITS  pbits;
     } BITMAP;
     typedef BITMAP *PBITMAP;

Most of the code in affine/pixNtiff/ avoids issues with the processor's endedness. But some code does use a flag called LITTLE_ENDIAN. For information on big-endian and little-endian refer to the section Ten Little Endians for a brief overview of what the term "endian" means.

[Affine Toolkit] [RIB Utilities] [Bitmap Utilities] [Handy Little Utilities] [Libraries] [Using the Libraries]

  Copyright (c) 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 Thomas E. Burge.  All rights reserved.
  
  Affine is a trademark of Thomas E. Burge
 
  THIS SOFTWARE IS DISTRIBUTED "AS-IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND
  AND WITHOUT ANY GUARANTEE OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A 
  PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  
 
  In no event shall T. Burge be liable for any indirect or
  consequential damages or loss of data resulting from use or performance 
  of this software.
  
 
                   The Affine® Libraries and Tools are 
           Copyright (c) 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 T. Burge.  
                           All rights reserved.