aaglo wrote:

> My civ3-units - modelled and animated with pov-ray:
> http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2036938&postcount=4
> 


Great models!  Thought they seem incomplete without a scene or game to 
contain them.

(And this, in a way, colors your question, which might also encompass 
the larger issue of scene building.)

POV-Ray levels the playing field, in a manner of speaking, because it 
offers only the scene langauge interface.

Mesh models must either be generated with the scene language directly (a 
practice that may be quite unique to POV artists) or modelled in an 
external product then translated into scene language.

Models composed of "primitives" and employing CSG also may be 
articulated in the scene language directly or composed in an external 
product where either a model, or a complete scene, can be built and 
translated.

This stands in some contrast to renderers that have scene modelling GUI 
interfaces built into them.  These products, which may also support 
scene language, arguably, may induce a tendency away from experimenting 
with program generated effects, and away from the use of primitives, and 
toward the apparent homogeneity and flexibility that mesh can offer 
within that integrated context.

It is sometimes argued here that the modelling potential of POV's scene 
language is the unique and powerful aspect that differentiates it from 
the crowd.  Maybe so.  I tend to see it as uniquely neutral and 
encompassing.  It keeps techniques distinct by remaining neutral to them 
all.

So with POV you may find artists who model entire buildings, brick by 
primitive brick (Ib), or by hand with program generated mesh (Shay), or 
from large primitives with image and bumpmaps applied (Gilles), or from 
mesh-based height-fields tilted to form walls (Jaime), or from 
isosurfaces formed with math functions alone (Mike and others), or brick 
by preformed brick, preformed from generated mesh (Bill), or from a 
collection of primitives to suggest pillars and walls (Everybody), or 
modelled in a mesh modeller first then imported (Gilles).

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