Daniel Ngu wrote:
   Since I'm a new comer, would you please let
> me know if you had tried out Virtualight as well and what you think of it
> and how it differs from POVRay.   
>    I have been going through the Virtualight's manual, one note I'll like to
> make is how similar its language is to POVRay.  

You did better than me, I'll be darned if I could find the manual.



   However, there are times
> that I found Virtualight do provide features that are more readily
> available,
> such as the use of sunlight as a light source.  How do I achieve the same
> effect in POVRay?
> 

With POV-Ray, instead of a canned effect, such as sunlight, being 
readily available, there is instead a devoted community endlessly 
experimenting with newer and better ways to obtain such effects. 
POV-Ray lends itself to the spirit of investigation and experimentation. 
  You can monitor this spirit on the POV newsgroups.  Ultimately, this 
leads to greater originality and scope in the artwork produced.  After 
woorking with POV for four years I still find that experts on the server 
are working with effects whose refinement I can barely perceive, let 
alone understand and accomplish myself.

Virtualight seems to be trying to integrate with Maya.  This is a 
different niche from the one POV occupies.  However, if it supports a 
Scene Description Language similar to POV's, maybe its not so different.

I recently began investigating freeware raytracers in order to recommend
something to a neighbour who was getting interested in 3d cg.  He plans 
to attend an art college in the fall where he will presumably be 
introduced to some sort of commercial software.  But how to develop his 
interest in the meantime?  I readily recommended Wings 3D to him as a 
very usable mesh modeller with a shallow learning curve, and the added 
advantage the its interface mimicks that of a commercial product.  But 
when it came to finding a renderer with similar features, I was not so 
successful.  Virtualight was knocked out because it seems only to be 
available for Windows.  He has a Mac.  Art of Illusion seemed less than 
robust.  3Delight is renderman compliant so might be a way to go except 
for the steep learning curve.  POV is more accessible but its SDL is 
arcane relative to the commercial world. Blender by reputation is also 
arcane. Lightray3D might be the solution, I have to test it further.  In 
the meantime I have him doing his rendering in Bryce which he was 
introduced to in HS.  I am hoping Bryce's materials lab is similar 
enough in its metaphor to texturing in other commercial packages.  But I 
don't think Bryce 4 supports uv mapping.

So that got a bit longwinded but in summary, if your interest is 
freeware, and basically amateur in its goals, I would recommend POV over 
Virtualight unreservedly. You will become very skilled indeed before you 
"outgrow" it, and the community of other users is a rich resource. But 
the knowledge you gain that can be ported to the commercial world is 
relatively general.  If you are trying to accumulate knowledge toward a 
commercial career, you may need to be more crafty in the software you 
choose to learn.

-Jim

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