"Greg M. Johnson" <pte### [at] thecommononethatstartswithYcom> wrote in 
message news:46bc5b0a@news.povray.org...
>I imagine if you were drawing for "the Simpsons" and wanted to align
> your "camera" such that you could see a tableful of characters in the
> foreground with a new one bursting in from an open door in the background,
> it would be easy-- just draw them where  you want them and draw and 
> outline
> around the one that's supposed to be in a doorway: call the line your 
> door.
>
> In setting up scenes in povray, sometimes I find myself spending a whole
> hobby-session on idiotic questions like that above-- tweak, tweak, tweak a
> scene for hours, then quit and go to bed.
>
> Does anyone have any mathematical tricks for how they stage their scenes?

Hi Greg,

Once again no mathematical tricks, but much like Mike and Jeff, I add things 
to a scene to help keep track of where things are, how they line up and 
where I'm looking at them from. Mostly I use little spheres or thin 
cylinders of different colours to show points and lines of reference.
I also try to stick to a consistent scale. Whenever I depart from 1m=1 
POV-Ray unit I end up confusing myself.

Sometimes I use three cylinders at right angles to show the axes. This could 
be x=0, y=0, z=0 or somewhere else.
While animating a finger I placed an axes at the rotational centres of each 
joint and added tiny spheres at each of the vertices of the mesh object so I 
could visualize which bits of the movement and the skin deformation resulted 
from which finger segment.

You can also use a cylinder to 'project' an edge out to where something else 
should line up with it.
Adding short cylinders at right angles, or spheres that are slightly bigger 
than the cylinder (and of a different colour) can make it into something 
like a measuring stick.

With all of these things I usually use a pure colour and turn ambient up to 
a ridiculously high value so that I don't lose my extra bits in shadowy 
areas.

Regards,
Chris B.

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