"gregjohn" wrote:
> I would take less offense at the idea that my animation talent is not 
> world-wide
> in quality than that povray, per se, is inevitably doomed to be unable to
> produce in this field, even efficiently.

The scripting approach is doomed to be inefficient for modeling and 
animation of non-procedural things like characters. Using POV-Ray as a 
renderer is a different matter, and I find that much more realistic.

> It just needs the right SDL system.
> For example, with a little work, I could get my system to read mocap 
> files--

Sure. Then the animation would be done outside of POV-Ray, which would 
indeed be more effecient.

> characters could even be constructed directly from any arbitrary mocap 
> data.

Yeah, but characters modeled in POV-Ray always seem to be shaped more by the 
posibilities and limitations of the program, than by the imagination of the 
artist. You could import meshes and make code to adapt them to arbritary 
mocap data, but then the actual modeling would still be done outside of 
POV-Ray, which again would be more effecient.

> Two other points:
> i) I still think it's incredibly cool I can get my life's creative work on 
> one
> CD. (The SDL files). How many other artists can say that.

Not many, but I don't think many would think of it as important either, 
especially if it is limiting their artistic expression. And if you begin 
using detailed meshes, image maps and mocap data in your POV-Ray animations, 
it won't hold true anymore.

> ii) I once told a friend I was into computer animation. Soon his cousin 
> was
> emailing me to offer a hacked version of a high-end 3D program. This was 
> the
> life-- they had to hack software they couldn't afford to use otherwise.
> For some of those SIGGRAPH presentations, it seemed like the software 
> companies
> were sponsors.

POV-Ray is free and that's great; no doubt about that. That still doesn't 
mean it's an effecient tool for character modeling and animation. :) If it 
was, companies would be all over it, with all the money they could save on 
licenses for expensive 3D software.

Rune
-- 
http://runevision.com

Post a reply to this message