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Am 22.06.2018 um 12:34 schrieb dick balaska:
> +++
> Oy freakin' vey! It installs a device driver?? That's a pretty obtuse
> way to convert from one format to another.
> http://ldd2povray.lddtools.com/index.php?p=3_1_Installation
There's a reason behind this:
The LDD software is an original proprietary piece of software by the
LEGO company, and comes with pretty exact definitions of all the LEGO
pieces.
The LEGO company considers the part definitions proprietary information,
and would normally not tolerate any 3rd party to reverse-engineer them
and create a piece of software that would allow the information to be
exported in a different format.
The author of the LDD to POV-Ray Converter seems to have reached a
special agreement with the LEGO company (not sure whether express or
silent) that they tolerate (and maybe even support the creation of) this
particular piece of software. Apparently the LEGO company recognizes
POV-Ray as an established tool to render LEGO models.
However, /the/ major condition for this special agreement seems to be
that the converter must make converted piece definitions available only
to approved pieces of software, which most notably includes official
POV-Ray for Windows v3.7.0, but no unofficial builds, nor even most
development builds.
To meet this condition, the LDD to POV-Ray Converter cannot convert
piece definitions to actual include files for later rendering (because
that would make the data available to arbitrary software). Instead,
corresponding include "files" are provided via a special driver, which
listens to the path `\\.\LDDIncludes\` and produces the necessary files
"onl the fly" from the original LEGO data -- but only to whitelisted
applications. Other applications trying to access that path will get
nothing.
So while at first glance this approach might /seem/ obtuse, it is pretty
much the only way LEGO will allow LDD models to be rendered with POV-Ray.
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