POV has its strengths and weaknesses. One of POV's strengths is that it is a
very good tool to use to learn about math, and programming. One of POV's
greatest weaknesses is that it doesnt export to other renderers or modelers.
When we learn POV, we must invest a lot of time and energy into learning the
program. Once we learn the program, we can do some powerful and gratifying
things with it. However, currently, the things we make with POV can only be
rendered with the POV raytracer. I think there may be many POV users out
there who would like to take the investment of time and energy that they
made in learning POV, and use it to make or help make large or important
projects, such as commercial movies, scientific documentaries, etc. In order
to do this, I believe that POV must be able to export to commercial
rendering, modelling, and animation packages. For me, this would be one of
the most important wish list features for a new version of POV.


In the mean time, I have been experimenting with writing a set of POV
macros, which export a few basic shapes to .OBJ file format. Initial results
are encouraging. I submitted a drawing to the IRTC, where all the models
were made with POV macros, and the scene was rendered with my favorite
renderer, Vue d'Esprit 4.

If a new version of POV could export models, (and even textures), to other
renderers and modellers, this would open up POV to a much wider world of CG.
This might also make POV much more important and well known in the CG
community.
It would also be gratifying to those who struggle hard to learn POV, that
their knowledge of POV could be well used and appreciated by the wider CG
community.

Maybe this post would be more appropriate in another thread, but it seemed
relevant here also.


sinc.

Nathen Watson

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