Blur 'N' Feather, Free Version
Copyright (C) Bendy's 3D Systems 1999.
www.bendys.com

Blur 'N' Feather is an Adobe Photoshop gaussian blur filter designed for specifically
for Caligari trueSpace 3. Blur 'N' Feather has the unique ability to expand and feather
the selection before blurring. This allows realistic glow and smoke particle effects to
be rendered directly in trueSpace without post composition. Additionally, Blur 'N' Feather
can 'burn' the colours of the blur to produce fire like effects (aLa Afterburner by
Alvaro Gregori. http://www.alzira.net/macromoon/cartoon/).

REQUIREMENTS:
trueSpace 3.1 or 3.2

INSTALLATION:
Unzip the contents of the zip file to your trueSpace 3 2D Plugin directory (making sure to
extract with directories). Make sure your 2D plugin path in trueSpace is pointing to that
directory (right click on 2D plugin icon) then the filter can be loaded from the drop list
in the 2D plugin interface. 

USAGE:
Active the trueSpace 2D plugin panel (left click on the 2D plugin icon). Select a mask type
(optional) and make sure you set the 'Plugin Scope' to Filter Image. Blur 'N' Feather
will not operate in any other mode. Pick a mask type (if required) and select Blur 'N'
Feather from the drop down list to active the main dialog window. Blur 'N' Feather contains
various presets which can be used to get started quickly.

The filter interface contains 3 sections, Gaussian Blur, Mask Operations and Burn.

Gaussian Blur:
The blur operators control the strength of the gaussian blur applied to the image. Radius
controls the strength of the blur, falloff controls the importance of distant pixels. At
high radius values the edges of the blurred object becomes more distinct. This is when
Mask Operations become involved to smooth out the edge of the blur.

Mask Operations:
The Mask Operations are only relevant when a mask is applied to the filter through the
Mask drop down list. Mask operations can be used to expand and feather the selection
mask. These values apply only to the mask and not the rendered image. Feather will
feather the edge of the mask by the given radius and falloff. Expand/Shrink allows you to
change the size of the mask before feathering. Positive values expand the
mask by that many pixels, negative shrink it. This allows the image outside the object to
be blurred as well, producing a more realistic effect. A preview of the mask edge profile
appears at the bottom of the dialog box. Each tick mark is one pixel or percentage point
in width. The green tick is the edge of the original mask, the blue is the edge of the
expanded selection. Finally, the Normalize option normalizes the selection to 100%.
Useful when working with transparent objects to mask sure they are fully selected.

Burn:
Colour burn works similarly to Afterburner, a Photoshop filter by Alvaro Gregori used to
remap the colours of an image to a flame-like colour map. Here, the colour burning replaces
the blurred pixel with a colour based on the intensity of the blurred pixel. Select the
burn option to activate the burn process. The colourmap ranges from black to red to yellow
to white and the positions of each within the colourmap can be controlled with the
red/yellow/white controls. Additionally, the 'to black' option fades the feathered portion
of the image to black before blur, ensuring that the object's edge fades to the black end
of the colourmap. 

Additional:
The final three controls are, OK (the green button), Cancel (the red) and Percentage. 
Radii and expansion settings are usually specified in pixels. In percentage mode Blur 'N'
Feather calculates the blur, mask radii, and mask expansion as percentages of the overall
mask size. This allows you to render your blur to different resolutions without having to
change Blur 'N' Feather settings. For example: a setting of 5 for blur radius will blur to
a radius of 5 pixels in normal mode. In percentage mode, Blur 'N'Feather roughly estimates
the diagonal size of the mask's bounding box in pixels, and sets the blur radius to 5% of
that value. Consequently, far away/small objects will blur less than loser/larger objects.
This is useful with animations where the source object moves towards or away from
the camera.

UPGRADE:
You can upgrade to the full version of Blur 'N' Feather at http://www.bendys.com. The full
version contains the following major enhancements:

Load/Save of Blur 'N' Feather parameters.
Falloff values specified in x and y directions.
File export to TGA.
Progress and mask preview.
Enhanced colour burning.

CONTACTS:
For upgrades and other plugins for trueSpace 3 and above please visit Bendy's 3D Systems at
http://www.bendys.com or email Brendan Hack at bendy@bendys.com

--
trueSpace Copyright (C) Caligari Corporation 1997.
Adobe Photoshop Copyright (C) Adobe Systems Incorporated 1989-1998.
Blur 'N' Feather Copyright (C) Bendy's 3D Systems 1999.