Jim Charter <jrc### [at] msncom> wrote in message
news:40479763@news.povray.org...
<snip>
> With the recent boom in
> the availability of mesh (polygonal) modellers in the
> freeware/shareware/hobbiest space, more and more POVers seem to be
> embracing mesh modelling as an creative tool.
>
> What are peoples' thoughts on this.  Who are beginning to experiment
> with mesh tools and what tools are you using?  How do you see them
> fitting in with your style and expressive intentions?

For me two things heavily define my tools.  The first is cost.  I have very
limited funds to spend on a hobby, so any tool I can get free is a good
tool.  I do have Bryce and Poser, but only because someone gave them to me
as gifts a few years ago.  I will also pay for inexpensive shareware
programs if I find them useful enough, but that is usually limited to the
under $25 - $30 range.  I may extend that range and register Terragen since
even though I find it fairly useless for creating heightfields, it does such
great skies that I keep finding myself going back to it just for the sky.

The second thing is workflow.  Anything that speeds up the process is good.
I was pretty good with Hamapatch, but only for certain things.  I tried
Wings3d sometime ago, but didn't like it because I was trying to do the same
things I did in Hamapatch, and they simply didn't work as well.  But having
just spent the last IRTC round actually learning Wings3d, I am quite
impressed with how quickly I can create good models. I will definitely be
using it a lot more in the future.

Back to your original question specifically regarding mesh tools, they're
great!  I am not mathmatically inclined, so building meshes in POV is pretty
much an exercise in frustration.  While there is a lot that can be done in
POV with CSG, prisms, lathes and sphere_sweeps, some things just require the
ability to work with a model in a more interactive and intuitive way, and
mesh tools provide that.  You can't take a CSG shape and bend it just to see
what it looks like.  In both Hamapatch and Wings, I'm free to experiment
with my shapes and change them on the fly.  That leads to new ideas and
often produces something that I would simply never be able to produce using
SDL.

Blender has some interesting and powerful modeling tools also, but I have
been put off in the past by it's non-friendly interface.  I see that since
it's gone open-source it has changed a lot, so I'll be giving it another try
again soon.  (Well, if I can ever get linux running on this machine
   otherwise it will have to wait til spring when I get another box...)


> Further, commercial software producers seem to understand the role of
> the amateur market in creating a workerpool with software skills.  So
> marketshare there can influence marketshare in the commercial venue.
> This has lead to highend vendors making training versions of these
> powerful products available to the hobbiest community.

Key word "training versions"...  I haven't noticed that the commercial
products are being marketed to hobbyists so much as they are trying to lure
CG students into spending the big bucks on a full version.  And student
versions are still out of my price range, at least the good ones like 3DS &
Maya.  The free versions of lesser apps like Truespace are crap IMO, awkward
interfaces and crippled features that have you running back to POV in short
order.


> What role does this leave for POV?

POV is a whole different approach to CG as far as I can tell.   While some
of the high end apps have scripting languages built in to do some of the
things POV does, the bottom line is the SDL gives a flexibility that a
strictly mesh based app just doesn't have.  As long as that is true, POV
will have it's own niche.  It certainly has more geek appeal.  I constantly
see posts about different kinds of optical projects or scientific
visualizations people are trying to work POV into, and I don't think even
the high end apps can do some of that stuff, again because of the
flexibility of SDL.  And you'll never see a short code contest in 3DS, I
guarantee it.

Plus, POV forces you to actually learn what you're doing, since you have to
code it all yourself.  Since I started using POV, my Bryce images have
gotten a lot better because now I actually know what some of those buttons
and sliders do.  One of the first things POVers taught me was "ambient 0".
Going back to Bryce's texture editor and looking at the defaults for its
textures, most of them default to the equivilent of "ambient .28".  No
wonder I could never get decent looking lighting and shadows!  I have since
gone back and completely redone all the textures in several of my Bryce
scenes.

RG

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