On Fri, 24 Jul 2020 01:14:14 -0400, Pekka Aho wrote:

> Coming a bit late to the discussion, life and all kinds of twists and
> turns been getting on the way. I can see a lot of concerns being raised,
> as well as light being shed on a good deal of stuff already. Important
> info on eg. the state of development, things lurking in the background,
> even some history and what it has been taking for making POV go through
> all these years and having it working on modern equipment. My humble
> thanks for all that indeed! :)
> 
> At this point I'm afraid I haven't got much to say what it comes to for
> example hopping along in development, coding, maintenance etc., sadly
> it's all way outside of my expertise and capabilities. However, as both
> an active long time POV user and as visiting the news groups pretty much
> on a daily basis, I'd like to express my most sincere gratitude for the
> existence of POV-Ray as a whole.
> 
> I found POV back in the late '93, when a family friend gave me a 3.5"
> disk with a version 2.0 on it. I think it was included on some PC
> magazine of that time and there was a huge article on 3D and
> ray-tracing. I remember printing out the whole povdoc file with our dot
> matrix printer, and oh the joy of even trying to render anything with a
> 386SX 16 MHz. :D Somewhere during the first half of '94 we got a 486DX2
> 66 MHz in the house, and also got my hands on POV version 2.2, so things
> started rollin' wild for real. Although a ray-tracing joke for some, but
> at least I have ever since updated my comps according to how fast I can
> render with POV. :D
> 
> All the way up to this day and through every official version over the
> years, POV has been my main software of choice. In some random utility
> sense I've used for example TopMod, Silo 2 Pro, Wings 3D and PoseRay in
> my workflow for certain projects, but in the end it's always been the
> POV SDL environment where I really feel at home. Nothing else comes even
> close, and using any other software almost feels like a sacrilege. :D
> Back in the past I tried some old trial version of Moray, but didn't
> really get the hang of it. Perhaps, if it ever sees a comeback, I'd
> surely give it a new try though!
> 
> Now after all this time and many great years of POVing, I'm just so
> unspeakably happy that POV is still around. From the bottom of my heart
> I wish things would turn out well so we could have POV with us for the
> next 25 years as well! Cheers! :)

It's always fun to see folks who were around in the early days on 
CompuServe.  :)

My earliest images were rendered on a Vendex V20 system (took quite a 
while), and then a 386DX with a math coprocessor.  I had a chat with 
Chris a few years back, and he showed me the entry from the image library 
on CompuServe for a cribbage board that I rendered using POV-Ray and 
modeled in Moray.  The cards were scanned on a flatbed scanner my 
employer's marketing department had; I still have the deck (got it when I 
was in the USSR back in '88 on a concert tour).  The cribbage board 
itself is in my closet, though I've lost a few of the pegs over the years.

I never really got into the guts of SDL, always used Moray in the early 
days (I paid for a license and probably still have the key somewhere).

I've played with Wings3D a bit (though not recently), and have thought 
that that has potential, but from my (somewhat dated) experience with it, 
it was far better for building single objects rather than scenes.  But as 
a CSG modeler, it's pretty good for that.

But I always held those who worked in SDL directly and could translate 
their vision (not just shapes, but textures - I am awful at textures) in 
very high regard.  Giles Tran, Shay, and so many others produced 
absolutely jaw-dropping images; for me, it was like watching an 
illusionist perform magic and not knowing (or caring) how it was done.

Today I play in Blender when I need to put something together, but 
getting the POV-Ray plugin going is something that I've not fully 
completed.  I need to get back on that and re-render some of my more 
recent images with it.  It'd be interesting to see the differences in 
output compared to Cycles.

-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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