gregjohn <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> Should you use povray for modeling? Some say no

  Who says no? Saying "povray is not a modeler" is not the same thing as
saying "povray should not be used for modeling".

  In common parlance in the computer graphics community "modeler" means
the same thing as a graphics modeler with a GUI and a real-time preview
of the scene which can be manipulated directly graphically.

  If you are going to call the SDL a "modeler" because of a technicality,
you are going to confuse people. It's not what people understand the word
to mean.

  If you say that the SDL is a "modeler", that's the same thing as saying
that C++ is a "modeler", Haskell is a "modeler" and writing executable
machine code with a hex editor is a "modeler". While you *can* create a
model by writing an executable with a hex editor which will produce the
model, that doesn't make the hex editor a modeler.

  So what if the SDL is not a modeler? Why do you even care? Does that
stop you from creating scenes with SDL? Why does it bother you?

> To say, "Povray is a renderer, not a modeler," inherently limits the imagination
> of the users and the number of new users who will want to come to it.

  If you are going to say "povray is a modeler" you will be effectively
lying, and people are going to get disappointed because they expect a
modeler, which they don't get.

  Assume that POV-Ray was just a C++ library, and to create an image you
would have to write C++ code to create the scene. Would you call C++ a
"modeler" in this case?

  You shouldn't, because it would be wrong. Just because a rendering
library exists for C++ doesn't mean that C++ magically becomes a "modeler".

  If C++ cannot be called a modeler, why the SDL can be? Because it has
a slightly simpler syntax and various shortcuts to do the same things?
There isn't really all that much difference between C++ and the SDL.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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