IMFPng 1.0

W.J. van der Laan <wj@goliath.darktech.org>
Based on IMFPsd by David Etherton <etherton@angelstudios.com>


:: What is this? ::

Maya is one of the most powerful 3D animation and visual effects programs. 
But Maya, in itself, lacks the ability to load images in the image format 
PNG (Portable Network Graphics).

This is a plugin for Maya 5.x for Windows that resolves this issue.


:: Why PNG? ::

- Very good compression

- 100% lossless, no quality is lost on saving like with JPEG

- Open format, this is the best format when texturing using an 
  open source program like The Gimp

- Easy to read/write in your own programs.


:: Features ::

- Use PNG images for textures, image backdrop, ...

- Read most PNG image formats
  - Reads RGBA images
  - Reads monochrome (single channel) images
  - Reads monochrome+alpha (two channel) images (untested)
  - Reads indexed RGB images
  - Reads indexed RGBA images

(see Known issues below for missing features)


:: Usage ::

- Copy IMFPng.dll to the Maya image plugins directory, this is
C:\Program Files\AliasWavefront\Maya5.0\bin\plug-ins\image on most systems

- Copy libpng12.dll and zlib1.dll to a directory situated in your path,
for example C:\Windows\System32 or the Maya bin directory
C:\Program Files\AliasWavefront\Maya5.0\bin

- restart Maya and you're done.

After this it is possible to use PNG images for textures, image planes and
almost every other feature in Maya where you need an image.


:: Source code ::

Complete source code is available at the following URL:

	http://www.fmf.nl/~orion/IMFpng/


:: Known issues ::

- Read only, not write

- PNGs still don't show up in the "Open" dialog in Maya. I've heard this is
  unfixable inside the plugin itself.

- Supports only 8 bit per channel, the lower 8 bits are dropped; 16 bit 
  should be added for high-definition images like created with The Film Gimp

- This plugin is unable to read interlaced (Adam7) PNG images as it reads 
  per-row.


:: License ::

Have fun with it, do with it what you want as long as you leave the credits
intact in some way.
If you implement some new feature or fix one of the issues above, please
be nice and contribute that.

- W.J. van der Laan <wj@goliath.darktech.org>
