>> I spent 6 months on taught drawing classes. You know what? I *still* 
>> suck at drawing.
> 
> I've spent 3 years *living* in Germany, yet I still suck at speaking 
> German, some things some people just learn quickly, and some slowly.

I'm still puzzled by Benny boasting about having a German girlfriend 
even though he didn't speak German yet... How the hell does *that* 
work?? o_O

>> You make it sound like all you have to do is practise and you can 
>> become good at *anything*. This isn't actually true.
> 
> I bet it is, you just have to define "good" and how long you have to 
> practise for :-)

3 > 4 for sufficiently large 3, yes.

>> I don't remember. Maybe a week or two? After that I uninstalled it - 
>> it *was* illegal after all...
> 
> You spent two weeks rendering only spheres and cylinders - did you not 
> think to yourself that maybe there was a bit more to it than this and go 
> look?

Well, it *did* seem to have some pretty extensive texturing 
facilities... I spent most of the time playing with that. However, as 
far as shapes go, it seemed to only handle polygon meshes.

>> AFAIK, Google didn't exist in 1995. Even if it did, I didn't have an 
>> Internet connection.
> 
> I got a book from a bookshop called "3D Studio Max R3" or some such.

Our library tends to be very sparse on computer books. And I'm not going 
to *buy* a book about something that I'm not even going to keep!

>> It didn't take me long to get a few simple images out of POV-Ray. 
>> (OTOH, that comes with *a manual*...)
> 
> And OTHO it's not terribly complex compared to 3D Studio or other 
> commerical modelling/CAD software.

I'll take your word for that.

(Every day I see manufactured objects of such complexity that it seem 
completely clear that whoever designed them must be using something a 
tad more sophisticated than any of the software I've seen so far.)

> IIRC you posted something to the binaries group a long time ago and 
> received some good pointers on how to improve - that's another good way 
> to learn stuff, people are really helpful on here.

Actually, about that... I haven't poked my head in there for ages, but I 
did recently. Wow, what the hell? Apparently the IRTC has shut down, the 
POV-Ray HoF still has the same stuff it had in it 3 years ago, and the 
POV-Ray images group seems really quiet... What went wrong?

> You should make your own wood:
> Combine that with some simple CSG (like the table at the bottom) and 
> with Warp's tutorial and I fail to see how you can't come up with a 
> halfway decent scene.  But you have to spend TIME on it, don't expect it 
> to look amazing after just 5 iterations.

Heh. When I think about all the time I've spent on POV-Ray, and how 
feeble the results have been... POV-Ray renders stuff that's physically 
correct (mostly), but that doesn't necessarily mean that it will look 
"realistic" or "interesting".

My best creation so far:
http://www.zazzle.com/happy_birthday_pond_card-137647794293201138

Hardly impressive, is it?

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