I can understand your point of view perfectly... but...

> You are perfectly right when you say that you gain a lot by having 3dsmax,
> but what is the gain compared to the price? In my opinion, POV-ray is
*much*

> download POV-ray?

OK, here's the deal.  Can you imagine modelling and animated something like
Lost in Space intro sequences from the movie in POV-Ray?  VERY time
consuming and I assure you it just wouldn't be worth even trying to get the
same quality.

Think of it this way, if you take something for free like POV-Ray, you end
up spending WAY too much time and you get results (in a time constraint)
that aren't as good as they should be.  If you go for something high-end
like Maya or Softimage, you can get it done in time and with excellent
quality, but you end up paying WAY too much for the software and the
hardware to use it!

The middle is MAX, it runs on NT/95/98 and doesn't require the massive
processing power that Softimage and Maya do.  Meanwhile, it lets you get the
job done very quickly.

Can you imagine paying for 10 artists to work around the clock doing an
intro sequence in POV-Ray, compared to paying 10 artists working normal
hours and getting the job done quicker with MAX?  The cost of the software
becomes very marginal.

Also, MAX is designed specifically for people that need to get things done
FAST.  Take for instance its video post system and its real time motion
bluring.  The motion blur is the BEST I've seen from an NT/9x based
renderer, and not only that but it's lightning fast.  Try to do that in
POV-Ray and you'll either have to make a special renderer or render the
image 20 times and average them out (which takes a long time!).

Also, the video post allows for extended capabilities of the renderer, like
adding glows, highlights, crossfades, merges, wipes, fades, lens flares,
depth blurring, texturing, non-linear editing of clips, etc etc to rendered
images.  I can tell you from experience there is no way I could have done
that in POV-Ray.

Next, the modeller.  The modeller would have to be the most powerful part of
MAX.  It allows you to do whatever you want to do, in real time, with a
shaded preview, and automatic real time rendering to a video system (like
Perception).  This is invaluable.  It also does real time media based
particles system rendering in the viewports!

The use of "Superpatch"-esque Spacewarps introduces further enhancements of
the system.  Any object can be bent, contorted, twisted etc in any way, in
real time, and also animated.  All sections of all settings in MAX can be
keyframed using normal keyframe input methods and setting or real time
capture devices (MIDI, motion capture etc).

I could go on and on and on about all this but I think you're getting the
point (I haven't even touched on character animation yet!  aka, the Dancing
Baby).

> And there is a subtle difference between 3DS and POV that is important:
POV
> is based on *models* of mathematical objects: A sphere *is* an exact
sphere;
> so is a cylinder, torus, and so forth. In polygon-based rendering systems

I realise this, and that's the powerful part of POV-Ray, it's a TRUE
raytracer.  However, polygon based systems have their advantages over
equation based systems too.  For example, there are no real time previews,
there are no real time rendering methods, no real time warpages.  And in
fact it's usually quite hard in POV-Ray (unless you're very good at the
Superpatch) to bend an object say, with an FFD (Free Form Deformation)
method.  Polygon systems allow you to do things that just aren't possible
with equation based renderers.

Also things like (back to the modeller here) NURBS just aren't possible to
do in POV-Ray without another helper modeller.  NURBS modelling is one of
the most powerful parts of MAX, along with its built in character animation
system (Character Studio, which is a combination of Physique and Biped).
Biped does all the motion work, which allows you to take any skelaton model
and animate it, and then fit it onto any mesh object (it will automatically
resize everything).  Physique allows all the things such as tendon
stretches, muscle buldges etc to take place in real time through spline
"painting".  An interesting part of Biped is being able to animate a mesh
person just by placing the imaginary footsteps on the ground.  It works out
all the arm swinging, head tilting, running speeds etc for you.

> 2. User defined proceural surfaces. The user should be able to define
> something like:
>
> pigment {
>     use_procedural sin(y) * cos (x) + x*y*sin(z);
>     color_map {
>         ...
>     }
> }

Yes, I think that POV-Ray (while not trying to put it down here, it IS a
great renderer!) is lacking a little in the surfaces and texture side.

I like to be able to see how a texture will appear as I change values for
colour, maps, surface bump mapping etc etc in real time and then being able
to apply it just by dragging it off onto the object.

When it comes to procedural textures, I think that the Superpatch can do
this can't it?  (by user defined equations I mean)

Anyway, off to render some stuff :)

But first, here is an image I did in MAX in about 30 minutes.

http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/lancebirch/thezone/max_crystal_ball.html

It uses specific lighting, volumetric object-contained fog, particle systems
with 6 gravity reactors (looks kewl when animated!!!), twisted loft objects,
raytraced reflections, video post glow and lens flare effects and I think
that's about it.  Render time is about 2 minutes.

Althought the image isn't that great, it was the first image I made with
MAX, and I still like it :)

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