On 28.11.2010 15:46, Stephen Klebs wrote:
> More on the bigger issue:
> I hope I'm not over-reacting here but here goes:
>
> Like most who have used POV for many years, we rely on past examples rather than
> having to reinvent the wheel each time from scratch. This is particularly true
> since POV has evolved into a much more complex SDL - radiosity and photons and
> media and other envelope-pushing features - that, while they expand the horizon
> of possibilities, have also made it much more difficult to efficiently use.
> There seems to be an almost infinite fiddling with parameters and tweaks and
> coefficients to the point that it is all the more necessary, when trying to just
> get something done, to merely borrow on some successful solution others have
> found that just works. It is little wonder that beginners and accomplished
> graphic artists like Gilles Tran have lost interest in POV as a workable,
> practical tool. The addition of macros has helped some but it's gotten so
> cumbersome even long-time users aren't sure what to do to get what they expect.
> Does anyone else still miss "halo, for example, or MegaPov's "glow". Not
> "technically realistic" perhaps but they got the job done.
>
> But as it is now with 3.7, that's all out the window. I tried for example to
> test Steve Gowers' famous "Bucket of Shells", which was originally created in
> 3.0 but still renders the same in 3.6. No matter what I tried, setting #version
> 3.0, #version 3.6, #version 3.7 with any and every possible Display_Gamma or
> File_Gamma or assumed_gamma or gamma whatever, the results in 3.7 came out
> dramatically different. There is in effect no practical backward compatibility
> with the whole tradition of POV. And as for trying to tweak the lighting and
> ambient and diffuse ad infinitum of every light source and color and finish
> etc., etc., one might as well start from scratch. So while a good case has be
> made that POV in the past was technically "wrong", is this more important than
> how it is actually used. Whatever the technical issues, POV worked fine. It
> played well with others. Images came out as expected on the web, in Photoshop,
> on Macs and PCs and Linux. To just say that we were just doing it "wrong" all
> those years for using assumed_gamma for artistic effect misses the point. Who
> cares how we got there as long as we made it and it didn't take a week of
> futzing around. I sometimes think, with all due respect for the enormous and
> wonderful work the developers have freely put into it, that POV has lost sight
> of the end-user who's out there not just to play with the dials and controls but
> just to get something off the ground.
>
>

Just to make sure the OP does not speak for all (or even the majority, I 
hope) of POV-Ray 3.7 users: *I* am very grateful for all the hard work 
that has been put into the change of the gamma handling.

I am a long time POV-Ray user (since 2.0 IIRC) and prior 3.7 I was 
always forced to use workarounds to make sure POV-Ray is indeed working 
internally in linear color space. And I will not repeat once more why 
this "linear color space" thing is important for a ray-tracer as this 
has been said so often that I'm seriously bored by its repetition.

And I'm also glad that POV-Ray 3.7 now works without the need of time 
consuming workarounds together with applications like Poser, Blender and 
Photoshop.

just my 5ct
-Ive

P.S.
and I do not like that the OP does imply that Gilles Tran's (who was 
always one of the first who did use every new feature POV-Ray had to 
offer and did quickly adapt to all changes) motivation to switch over to 
some commercial render engine was in any way related to the OP's 
complains. As far as I remember Gilles reasons where more along the 
lines that he thought POV-Ray is taking to long to adapt to new render 
technologies like e.g. physical based rendering and such...

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