On Sun, 17 Mar 2002 18:28:15 -0500, "Corey Woodworth" <cdw### [at] mpinetnet>
wrote:
> I know that I'm still a newbie here

I know that too, but probably I can help you pointing you some interesting
features of latest 3.5.

> 1. Everyone knows pov is slow as molasses. Lets just throw out the old
> deprecated C and convert the whole program to ASM. Everyone has Pentiums now
> anyway.

It is already converted by the team. They even use two different converters:
Visual C (to convert GUI) and INTEL C (to convert engine for processor).

> 2. With the speed afforded to us from improvement number one we can now
> throw out all the old hacks that give us refection and refraction in favor
> for a much better system: Forward ray tracing.

Personally I've always looked forward while tracing. You mean the reason why
it took 335 hours to render 365 lines in my failed shortest code contest entry
is that is is done backward ? Why I didn't stopped this render at begining!!!
Doh, I could save my image.

> 3. I don't know about you guys but this typing crap is hard. It's the new
> millennium and time for a GUI. Lets mimic a proven formula for productivity
> and intuitiveness. A system that is both easy to use and feature rich. All
> you real CG experts of course know I'm talking about the interface found in
> Bryce! I mean those arrows are so pretty! How come pov doesn't have pretty
> arrows?

Newest 3.5 has pretty smart gui. Last time when I used this I achived pretty
nice render of bluish submarine with mines. Name Wizard even choosed name for
this submarine. It was ABYSS or something. I heard there is also teapot wizard
builded in.

> 4. I like listening to music when I'm modeling, but it's such a pain to
> alt-tab back and forth between pov and winamp, why don't we make pov a
> winamp plug-in?

Again I advice you to download 3.5. Check the Editor menu. There is entry
"Play Macro". Everything you need now is to click (as I said in GUI you can't
type now, only click) on "Inser Menu", then click on "Statements" and click on
"Noise generator". Did you hear some noise. It's sound of string.

> 5. Speaking of winamp, isn't about time that pov's UI was skinnable?!

You mean Options->Message Window->Choose Background ?

> 6. CSG would be a lot easier if we had more primitives to work with. Cubes
> and spheres were great in preschool but the world is a complex place and we
> need complex shapes to describe it. Here are my suggestions for some new
> primitives: Dodecahedron, Buckyball, Leggo brick, Shreck.

As I heard the time for 3.5 feature requests is closed but I agree with you
that rendering of Mickey Mouse is difficult. Anyway I reached nice animation
of "Pluto on Mily Way - Daily Adventures" episode. The only problem.. it was
monotonous animation.

> 7. Its so much fun to return to the pov site after the beta expires to get
> the next one! It makes sure I visit regularly and I have the newest version.
> I think that the final version should expire as well, even if there aren't
> any new versions to download.

I don't agree with you. I only suggest to require in specification machines
without network cards. Only artwork cards should be allowed.

> 8. While I commend whoever wrote the tutorials, FAQs, and docs that come
> with pov we all know that nobody reads them. How about we convert them all
> to wav files? If pov becomes a winamp plugin then it would integrate nicely.

Or going further - why gui don't read scripts to the parser ? Perhaps to
avoid: "Parse Error: What did you say ?"

> I hope the dev team will take these suggestions to heart when considering
> what features to add to pov4.

Can I have my own suggestion ? Sell all useless bytes of code to Pixar and
save only important part. It should speed up renderings very much.

> Thanks for hearing me out!

Reciprocally

ABX

BTW: I could write ;-) after every sentence but becouse you couldn't ...

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