Gilles Tran wrote:
> 2. Turn POV-Ray into a "pure" rendering library, <snip> 
> Problem 1: there's already some lively competition (Yafray, Indigo,
> Kerkythingie...) in the "pure" renderer field.

IMO, any renderer with a shader language is not a "pure" renderer. "Drag 
and drop" might be great for some surface shader effects, but will not 
create as many WOW shaders as are possible with programming.

Geometry tweaking is, with some models, as important as shader tweaking. 
I have created nice models which would look like crap with *any* kind of 
algorithmic vertex normal scheme. Yafray, AFAIK, doesn't even allow 
explicit definition of vertex normals!

I'm assuming from your Problem 2:

> Problem 2: will it be possible to keep intact the original simplicity
> and human-writeability of the SDL without excluding the non-programmer
> users?

... that by "Turn POV-Ray into a "pure" rendering library", you in fact 
mean "Turn POV_Ray into a 'pure(ish)' rendering library with a bit of 
accessible tweakability." Doing so would keep POV in a different 
category from the competition.

And as far as Problem 2, yes it will be possible if all potential 
additions to the SDL are very carefully measured by their utility in 
creating WOW pictures.

> Problem 3: the attractiveness (to users and programmers) of the software
> is linked to its attractiveness to artists able to create WOW pictures.
> Now, a language too "programmy" is going to limit those to the smaller
> population of good artists that are also serious programmers.

Exactly. I believe that POV-Ray should be a "pureish" renderer with nice 
Blender or Wings integration and the additional feature of accessible 
tweakability and scene scripting. The hand-coding contingent will figure 
out a way to do what we want to do with whatever the SDL becomes.

  -Shay

Post a reply to this message