3c4a67cf$1@news.povray.org...
> 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?

With Hamapatch going shareware, the number of freeware, actually popular,
presently supported modelers is close to 0 right now (blender is a special
case and blender-to-pov scripts are currently under development). New
modelers are popping up every week though.

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

Currently, two features allow povray 3.5 to produce results as good as the
latest batch of costly professional renderers : radiosity and photon
mapping. AFAIK, the 3.5 version of these features is not implemented in any
modeler yet (OK, I suppose that there may be plans to do so for Moray).
Isosurfaces are also a very important feature, quite unique by what it
allows users to do (and again not supported elsewhere). And of course, the
programming features of the SDL (such as macros, loops etc.) have become
essential. Sure, you can get far without these features, but only 1997-far.

Again, I suggest that you get acquainted with how current users are actually
using povray these days. A good start would be reading some of the *.txt
files that go with the IRTC images, for instance (just look at the 6 top
entries of each round) : that will give you a good idea of the various tools
used. Browsing through past povray.binaries.images would help you to get an
idea of the features that people appreciate most. You could also look up
what the "competition" is in terms of rendering quality (see
http://www.splutterfish.com) , since this is what many people expect now.

G.

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