Mitchell Waite wrote:
> 
<snip>

> 
> I know very little about this other products: blender, spatch, hamapatch,
> anim8tor, amapi, rhino. I have tried blender but it would not run properly
> on my Win2K machine with dual LCD monitors. Are these all freeware programs,
> because the one disconnect with Moray is that its retail product and that
> does not work very well with the free nature of POV. What about including
> some of these products in the gray text, would that be a turn off?

No, that would not be a turn-off to me.  Rhino ain't free- that
thing is a costly beast.  sPatch and Hamapatch are (for now). 
Moray isn't too expensive and seems to have the perfect price
point to features balance to be successful.  Anyway, POVlab is
free and open source, isn't it?
http://pdelagrange.free.fr/povlab/  The difficulty of programming
a modeler seems to be a real problem with developing them, and as
a result no freeware modeler for POV compares to Moray's
completeness.

> 
> I wonder about the statment "it's impossible to really unleash povray's
> power without learning the scene description language"? How is that true?

Animation.  As yet no interface helps with all that you can do. 
There are other reasons, but that's my biggy.  Particles (which
sorta go hand in hand with animation), etc...

> "And some of the coolest povray stuff is not implemented in these modelers
> yet." Well there is SO MUCH stuff in POV Ray that is implemented in these
> modelers that I am not sure a book needs to cover everything in POV Ray,
> that seems like a daunting and almost impossible requirement.

Not if you forgo the basic: "this is a right-handed coordinate
system, this is a left-handed system, this is a cube see how it
works, this is a sphere, see how it works," part of the book
which always seems so obligatory whenever new books come out. 
Just skip that 30% of the book, use it for something else- at
most point out other free resources that a newbie can fetch to
get up to speed.

<snip>

> something in POV" could easily be parallel with "here is how its done in
> Moray", or whatever modeler you are using.

This about doubles the text on each subject, no?  IMO that should
be the responsibility of *Moray's* docs, not anyone's 3rd party
docs.  Maybe just review (briefly) the resources out there- have
you even checked ut POVlab?  IMO, getting people acquainted with
the scripting and power of POV seems like enough of a task, and
an interesting enough task.  Moray is a for-profit enterprise,
they can handle this responsibility on its own.  Your pointing
out where it can be found, and briefly describing it is enough, I
think.  As you'll probably include a CD, having the current
version on there would be a lot too- but also consider adding
alternative modelers to the CD.

> 
> I very much appreciate the feelback, its helping me calibrate my ideas for
> the team that is forming. Nothing has been decided so this is a great time
> for people to jump in and help shape this project.

Glad you're having this discussion! :o)

-peter

-- 
Current obsession: "Ballet pour ma fille."
http://www.applesnake.net

Post a reply to this message