I have had no problems with the output from CrossRoads3d in any
version of Pov I have used. While it was released sometime ago the
syntax has not changed in so long it is not a relevant issue.
WCVT2POV has the limitation that it declares unions of triangles,
smooth or otherwise, but CrossRoads3d being it's successor declares
them as meshes of triangles, smooth or otherwise, and is compatible
with all current versions of Pov. Keith Rule just hasn't updated his
page to reflect the fact that it is compatile with pov v3.1x.

  3Dwin will produce smooth triangles for you. It uses a more
sophisticated method than many other programs in that it evaluates
the vertice junction and faces then decides if it meets the criteria
for smoothing as established by the smoothing angle you choose in the
options section. If you choose a border line amount of smoothing then
it may only produce 20% of the triangles as smooth triangles and the
rest will be as normal triangles. If you set the angle higher it will
start to add more smooth triangles accordingly. There will still be a
mix but there is no reason that you can't have both present inside the
same mesh statement.

  The other programs I have used have only two options. They either use
all triangles or they use all smooth triangles. 3Dwin on the other hand
only uses smooth triangles as needed to give the smoothing angle that you
the user decides is necessary for your model. This has the advantage
of not stressing areas that don't need smoothing and it also aids in
file size reduction since regular triangles require considerably less
data in the scene file to represent the model.

  Using .DXF files off the net in pov is problematic. They generally
contain only face data or vertices data, sometimes both, and conversion
programs are notorious for taking only certain parts of the data for
the conversion. Additionally .DXF files do not contain the original
texturing data that the original modelling package used to produce the
file so usually you get very little control over how many parts of
the file are segmented for texturing individual sections.

  The .3DS file format as well as several others overcame this by using
a completely different method of describing the models characteristics.
3DWin is excellent for maintaining a close approximation of the colors
used in the original, and it will not group everything into one single
mesh that will take but one texture. DXF files are notorious for this.
Several other file formats offer far more versatility than the .DXF
format and for that reason when shopping for models this limitation in
the DXF file format should be kept in mind.


 I hope you have found this informative as well as answering your question.

--
Ken

John M. Dlugosz wrote:
> 
> Thanks for the pointer to the FAQ, but I already tried that.  It says,
> 
> Q. How can I convert my scenes from format X to POV-Ray format?
> A. You can try WCTV2Pov and Crossroads3D by Keith Rule and 3DWin by Thomas
> Baier.
> 
> Well, 3DWin didn't work.  It output plain, not smooth, triangles, and the
> resulting .inc file couldn't be read by POV 3.1 "Superpatch" anyway!
> 
> Crossroads doesn't handle POV in this version, according to the web page.
> 
> So, any other ideas?
> 
> --John
> 
> Nieminen Mika wrote in message <36e2eca5.0@news.povray.org>...
> >John M. Dlugosz <joh### [at] dlugoszcom> wrote:
> >: The subject says it all...
> >: What programs are good at manipulating this and turning it into a POV
> >: include file, and what kinds of issues are involved?
> >
> >  http://iki.fi/warp/povVFAQ.html#convertingtopov
> >
> >--
> >main(i){char*_="BdsyFBThhHFBThhHFRz]NFTITQF|DJIFHQhhF";while(i=
> >*_++)for(;i>1;printf("%s",i-70?i&1?"[]":" ":(i=0,"\n")),i/=2);} /*-
> Warp -*/

-- 
Ken Tyler

mailto://tylereng@pacbell.net

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