abx### [at] abxartpl news:hd7411hv5mm9bair56pgc4j0g4qd2m9i3i@4ax.com

> Can I ask you about writing in points in shortest possible words
> advantages and disadvantages of using plugins including what needs to
> be done or added to the current state of the sources. Something like:


By "plugins" I ment this advanced shader-thingies as described in previous 
post, ok, IMHO Pov-RAY with support of such shaders:

- precompiled shaders not portable
+ but they can be compiled from source in *.pov
+ can be parsed into some bytecode and then execute (slower)

* can be parsed into C/C++ code and linked with "main" Pov-RAY while 
executing a render 
  - need to create executable, access to compilers, to POV source
  - longer parsing time
  + very fast render time 
  + can be cached, as in shader1.c shader1.md5 shader1.o md5 is digest of 
    .c and .o, if they match then the code will not be compiled again, if 
    not, then it will be compiled and re-linked
  - more work
  + can use make/gcc (I suggestt using it on all platforms, not to use 
    MSVC on win32, because of legal - everyone can download MinGW for free)
  - it will require probably to recompile povray from source using same     
    compiler, or to have PovRAY for win32 compiled in mingw/gcc not MSVC 

+ give greate flexibility
+ no need to write a patch to do some more advanced things
+ easy way to conert a shader into a patch and perhaps use it in mainstrem 
Pov-RAY in future versions
+ encourages to develop POV-Ray, new effects, patterns
+ will force to clean Pov-Ray code, since most elements must be accessible 
using Shader functions
- wil need a lot of work

-- 
http://www.raf256.com/3d/
Rafal Maj 'Raf256', home page - http://www.raf256.com/me/
Computer Graphics

Post a reply to this message