Hi(gh)!

On New Year's Day, I decided for the first time to seriously start with 
a landmark building complex for Kabul, POVghanistan: the Soviet-built 
airport, as it looked like around 1970. So I googled for photos showing 
the airport back then, and found a close-up of the domestic flights 
control tower: 
http://footage.framepool.com/shotimg/qf/296679019-kabul-international-airport-hand-luggage-tower-airport-kabul-city.jpg

Another one from 1969, showing the whole building as seen from the 
airfield: http://www.airports-worldwide.com/img/w/kabul_airport_in_1969.jpg

And attached here is with what I came up after two months... pathetic, 
isn't it?

And then I see all your sophisticated projects (Gancaloon and many 
others) and I wonder how you get all that work done, beside your proper 
occupations, partners, family, other hobbies... as an early retiree, I 
have so much more free time available - and still hardly get anything 
done! Could it be that I simply do not have the talent required for 
doing 3D graphics? Or could it be that POV-Ray simply is not a software 
which supports an efficient workflow (are there any professional 3D 
designers using POV-Ray? I doubt...)?

Given the current speed of progress, this modest airport tower will 
occupy me for the entire year 2016 - not to mention the terrain 
heightfield, which will be completed around 2030, having started in 2004 
(unless there will be satellite elevation data of the same resolution 
readily available!). So I'll spend a vast portion of my life to cobble 
together a crude version of POVghanistan/Khyberspace, without ever being 
able to visit REAL Afghanistan (originally, Khyberspace was meant as a 
substitution for the unreachable real thing) and obviously lacking the 
basic skills necessary for POVing, let along using any other 
modeler/raytracer... Khyberspace probably will never be much more than 
Kabul International Airport... I just waste my life!

It's so frustrating... all these things are so huge, and I'm so small!

See you in... forget it!

Yadgar

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On 1-3-2016 4:38, Jörg 'Yadgar' Bleimann wrote:
> Hi(gh)!
>
> On New Year's Day, I decided for the first time to seriously start with
> a landmark building complex for Kabul, POVghanistan: the Soviet-built
> airport, as it looked like around 1970. So I googled for photos showing
> the airport back then, and found a close-up of the domestic flights
> control tower:
>
http://footage.framepool.com/shotimg/qf/296679019-kabul-international-airport-hand-luggage-tower-airport-kabul-city.jpg
>
>
> Another one from 1969, showing the whole building as seen from the
> airfield: http://www.airports-worldwide.com/img/w/kabul_airport_in_1969.jpg
>
> And attached here is with what I came up after two months... pathetic,
> isn't it?

Why pathetic? I don't think so.

>
> And then I see all your sophisticated projects (Gancaloon and many
> others) and I wonder how you get all that work done, beside your proper
> occupations, partners, family, other hobbies... as an early retiree, I
> have so much more free time available - and still hardly get anything
> done! Could it be that I simply do not have the talent required for
> doing 3D graphics? Or could it be that POV-Ray simply is not a software
> which supports an efficient workflow (are there any professional 3D
> designers using POV-Ray? I doubt...)?

I know it is difficult, but I have learned not to compare my own work to 
those of others, especially if they seem more 'talented'/ 
'knowledgeable' / 'faster', whatever, to me. I try to do my own thing 
(you mentioned Gancaloon) at my own pace and with my own means, which 
may not be smart and often rather clumsy in the eyes of others.

That said, you may look at the real effective time you spend on 
building. It may be that you spent far less time in this than you 
realise but spread over weeks. It may depend on the tools you use beside 
POV-Ray, Wings3D for example or another modeller. Sometimes that speeds 
up work, in some cases it slows it down. The amphitheatre I built with 
Silo2Pro for Gancaloon probably took me about six to nine months 
effectively, spread over almost two years or maybe more, including the 
time I spent tearing down the whole bloody thing and starting all over 
again. The Apollo temple was even worse... and I have forgotten how I 
did some of the details so that I may need to reinvent the wheel if I 
ever need to start something similar again. Very frustrating, which 
makes me repeat to myself again and again: "document your work, you 
nitwit!". Not that it helps much, though.

>
> Given the current speed of progress, this modest airport tower will
> occupy me for the entire year 2016 - not to mention the terrain
> heightfield, which will be completed around 2030, having started in 2004
> (unless there will be satellite elevation data of the same resolution
> readily available!). So I'll spend a vast portion of my life to cobble
> together a crude version of POVghanistan/Khyberspace, without ever being
> able to visit REAL Afghanistan (originally, Khyberspace was meant as a
> substitution for the unreachable real thing) and obviously lacking the
> basic skills necessary for POVing, let along using any other
> modeler/raytracer... Khyberspace probably will never be much more than
> Kabul International Airport... I just waste my life!

To begin with the end, no, I would not consider it a waste of life if 
you get enjoyment from what you are doing, at whatever pace you are 
progressing. It is the toiling itself which is important, more that the 
end product. From a SF novel, I recently noted the following:

"For the artist the real joy is in the creation of a thing. When you 
feel something growing under your hands, you grow with it. You're alive, 
the energy flows. When it's finished, you stop growing. You stop living. 
You only live for the next act of creation." Fate Ravenglass Winter (in: 
Joan D. Vinge: The Snow Queen, 1980).

I think this is very true (at least for me).

Khyberspace is inside your head, Yadgar, and that is where it really and 
only can be great and wonderful. Gancaloon is in my head and every 
render I make of it is just a pale approximation of the real, thriving, 
populous, raw, thing. I shall never visit Gancaloon as you never will 
visit Khyberspace, except in your head and in your dreams. And yet we 
are compelled to build those virtual spaces.

>
> It's so frustrating... all these things are so huge, and I'm so small!

That is life indeed. And yet, your mind is larger still.

>
> See you in... forget it!
>

In Khyberspace. Why not?


-- 
Thomas

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El 01/03/16 a las 04:38, Jörg 'Yadgar' Bleimann escribió:
> And then I see all your sophisticated projects (Gancaloon and many
> others) and I wonder how you get all that work done, beside your
> proper occupations, partners, family, other hobbies... as an early
> retiree, I have so much more free time available - and still hardly
> get anything done! Could it be that I simply do not have the talent
> required for doing 3D graphics? Or could it be that POV-Ray simply is
> not a software which supports an efficient workflow (are there any
> professional 3D designers using POV-Ray? I doubt...)?

   I'm tempted to reply "it's not you, it's POV-Ray", but to be frank, it
may be a mix of both things.

   POV-Ray IS cumbersome, no doubt. No sane mind will use it for big
modeling projects (but we Povers are not sane minds, after all). But it
might be the case that your mind is not predisposed to "think in 3D",
and it that case, POV-Ray is definitely not the best choice for
modeling. Maybe a visual modeling tool will be better in your case.

   BTW, I'm sitting on the opposite side: visual modeling tools are not
my thing, and I find them waaay too much more cumbersome than POV-Ray.
Some of the things I model with POV-Ray will take me ages using any
other 3D software.

--
jaime

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On 3/1/2016 3:38 AM, Thomas de Groot wrote:

Wow, Thomas.  All that's missing from that speech is some pov-triotic 
music and a pov-flag.  Very inspirational.

dik

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Yadgar,

Dude.
Take it easy.  I know it can feel, and even BE frustrating to work out the
building of something, and then apply the magic of texturing and all that other
fancy stuff, but you've just got to calm down, chill, and pace yourself.

Like Thomas said - you really can't compare what _YOU_ are doing to anyone else.
 That way lies madness.  With the internet, and near-instant access to decades
of information, and the incessant work product of BILLIONS of people, you can
easily get ...  just LOST in the immensity of it all.

I do, and have done, all sorts of things - and I can tell you that there will
always be some people who are and will never be satisfied with anything you do.
With 10+ billion people (reproducing), and with new methods and technologies,
there will always be someone "better" or "faster" or "more-whatever-er".  But
there will always be people who know the real deal, and can see who you are, and
understand what you do and how much work it really takes, and can appreciate
what you put into it.

So don't sell yourself short, and don't sell yourself out to the occasional and
perhaps inevitable bout of frustration and burnout and depression - that's just
a lie.  The truth is that you have vision, inspiration, and love for the things
you do, and after all this time, you're STILL here with the rest of us lunatics
pecking away at a command-line raytracer, building things big and small one
primitive object at a time.

My desk is filled with scraps of paper and endless scribbles about x,y,z
(literally), trig functions, weird diagrams for whatever "computer math" or
algorithm I'm trying to work out to do "THIS _thing_".  I make models with
cardboard boxes and graph paper, and use 7 other pieces of software to do what
some people might simply sit down and hammer out the code for in 5 minutes.
But now _I_ know how to do it, and it's a new tool and resource I can use and
play with.   It's a new skill that _I_ have.

If you think there's something holding you back - find out what it is.  Lack of
focus?  Can't sit still? Distracted by something? Can't visualize something
right?   Can't get that POV-Ray directive to work the way you want it to and
thought it should?   Can't write loops, splines, circular formulas....?    Write
down what you feel thwarted by every time it happens and see if there's a major
stumbling block and then work on removing it.

Also just accept that for many things that working with POV-Ray is SLOW - Accept
it, and just let the frustration go.   It doesn't accomplish anything and it
just wastes your time.

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Preview of image 'bsipvzjiuaa2kpr.jpg'

Hi(gh)!

On 01.03.2016 09:38, Thomas de Groot wrote:

> I know it is difficult, but I have learned not to compare my own work to
> those of others, especially if they seem more 'talented'/
> 'knowledgeable' / 'faster', whatever, to me.

To me, life is still a marathon run... and I'm lagging far behind the 
main runners' field, not to mention the top runners!

> I try to do my own thing
> (you mentioned Gancaloon) at my own pace and with my own means, which
> may not be smart and often rather clumsy in the eyes of others.

Clumsy? Not smart? I'm truly awed by your creations!

> That said, you may look at the real effective time you spend on
> building. It may be that you spent far less time in this than you
> realise but spread over weeks. It may depend on the tools you use beside
> POV-Ray, Wings3D for example or another modeller.

I tried Wings3D some years ago, but now I'd prefer Blender!

> Sometimes that speeds
> up work, in some cases it slows it down.

Especially if you first have to learn the whole program... and Blender 
has a VERY steep learning curve! I tried several times to work through 
various tutorials but pretty soon gave up - such things do only sink in 
one's mind if learning is done as a DAILY routine! Unfortunately I'm 
really not good in organizing myself, so I mostly fail to cut off an 
hour or so for learning...

> The amphitheatre I built with
> Silo2Pro for Gancaloon probably took me about six to nine months
> effectively, spread over almost two years or maybe more, including the
> time I spent tearing down the whole bloody thing and starting all over
> again.

I wish I could focus that much on a single task... currently, my daily 
routine looks like this - in theory:
- Getting up (mostly around 12 o'clock)
- Brewing coffee, starting the computer(s, with a laptop running XP to 
update my calories consumption table)
- doing pixeling work on my Kabul heightfield, usually two music albums 
long, which equals to 70 to 100 minutes
- archiving recent e-mails and newsgroup postings, answering e-mails and 
postings
- browsing through the recent eBay ads, looking for computer parts (or 
even whole vintage computers!) offered for free in and around Cologne, 
hoping to make a few euros by re-selling them (I plan to visit friends 
in Berlin this summer, by bike from Cologne, and getting around in 
Germany is expensive!)
- cooking a meal (thank my brother for the dishwasher, otherwise I 
mostly would turn to sandwiches)
- in case of interesting offers for eBay: fetching them, which also 
gives me some physical exercise, as I do this by bicycle
- otherwise: doing stupid household chores (much too seldom - my wohnklo 
(a German slang word for "tiny little apartment") is a sheer mess!)
- talking an hour or so to my loved one on the telephone (also an avid 
"raytracerer", but he prefers Blender)
- scanning magazines and books and dumping them to gradually make space 
for more computer parts to be sold
- finally: POV-Ray! Currently, as I mentioned in the original post, I 
try to model Kabul International Airport (as it was in the early 1970s - 
there once will be two versions of POVghanistan: the 1973 mode and the 
Afghatopia mode - the latter as a vision of what Afghanistan could have 
turned out if history took a more beneficial turn in the late 1970s)
- reading a portion of a book to be scanned away in the near future
- learning Blender
- go to sleep - mostly at 4 o'clock in the morning

This is the IDEAL version, when a day really runs well - in reality, it 
is mostly disrupted by unexpected events or, very often, my tendency to 
overeat - and then taking naps many hours long.

> The Apollo temple was even worse... and I have forgotten how I
> did some of the details so that I may need to reinvent the wheel if I
> ever need to start something similar again. Very frustrating, which
> makes me repeat to myself again and again: "document your work, you
> nitwit!". Not that it helps much, though.

Documenting is really, really time-consuming, especially when done 
publicly, in the form of web pages (like I did with a - still 
unfinished, of course! - C++ project of a conversion tool from SVG to 
POV-Ray textures)...

> To begin with the end, no, I would not consider it a waste of life if
> you get enjoyment from what you are doing,

If it only WOULD BE enjoyment... mostly, it is so frustratingly difficult!

> Khyberspace is inside your head, Yadgar, and that is where it really and
> only can be great and wonderful.

Mostly I'm too exhausted from the daily toil to form any grand visions 
of Khyberspace in my mind...

> Gancaloon is in my head and every
> render I make of it is just a pale approximation of the real, thriving,
> populous, raw, thing. I shall never visit Gancaloon as you never will
> visit Khyberspace, except in your head and in your dreams.

O.k., Gancaloon is a fictitious place... but Afghanistan is not! But 
still, I probably (very probably!) never will see real Afghanistan in my 
life...

> That is life indeed. And yet, your mind is larger still.

Hardly ever!

> In Khyberspace. Why not?

It's a long, long, long, long way...

See you there!

Yadgar

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On 3/1/2016 3:16 PM, Jörg 'Yadgar' Bleimann wrote:
> Hi(gh)!
>
> On 01.03.2016 09:38, Thomas de Groot wrote:
>
>> I know it is difficult, but I have learned not to compare my own work to
>> those of others, especially if they seem more 'talented'/
>> 'knowledgeable' / 'faster', whatever, to me.
>
> To me, life is still a marathon run... and I'm lagging far behind the
> main runners' field, not to mention the top runners!
>

In Scotland there is a saying that life is a "sair fecht", a sore fight. 
And so it is. Everyine struggles through life.

>> I try to do my own thing
>> (you mentioned Gancaloon) at my own pace and with my own means, which
>> may not be smart and often rather clumsy in the eyes of others.
>
> Clumsy? Not smart? I'm truly awed by your creations!
>

They are good but so are some of the animations and images you have posted.



> Especially if you first have to learn the whole program... and Blender
> has a VERY steep learning curve! I tried several times to work through
> various tutorials but pretty soon gave up - such things do only sink in
> one's mind if learning is done as a DAILY routine! Unfortunately I'm
> really not good in organizing myself, so I mostly fail to cut off an
> hour or so for learning...
>

The thing I do and did with Blender. Is to have a project and you learn 
as you need to.
I built a model that I had built earlier in PovRay. By the time I had 
finished it, I was halfway competent.
Just learning for the sake of learning can be boring and soul destroying.



-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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I also recommend to look around. There are several tools for several sorts of
projects.

POV_Ray is for Artists with a unique talent AND for people mostly with a
scientific or mathematical background.

Such people think in formulas, and the things they design in POV eay are
modelled in 3D already in their mind - before they start writing the first line.

There are other programs that are easier to use for "just modelling" like
- Blender (free, change the left-mouse button in settings!)
- Cinema 4d (commercial)

In believe in C4D you would be ready with the tower long time ago.
One week for learning "How to use it" is enough, then you can modell nearly
anything. But its at least 750 EUR.

POV Ray has unique strengths in making mathematical formulas iand ideas visible.
Growing landscapes and Crystals out of formulas.
Like Jamie does.

Such things are not easy with 3D Modellers, may be impossible with Blender
(don't know if you use Phyton?) and hard to realize with C4D
("Coffee"-Scripting?).

Also POV Ray can be used to visualize mathematical Data from experiments.
Universities can use it.

To use it "just to modell an real life object" its maybe not the easiest choice
- especially not for beginners.

Post a reply to this message

> Yadgar,
>
> Dude.
> Take it easy.  I know it can feel, and even BE frustrating to work out the
> building of something, and then apply the magic of texturing and all that other
> fancy stuff, but you've just got to calm down, chill, and pace yourself.
>
> Like Thomas said - you really can't compare what _YOU_ are doing to anyone else.
>   That way lies madness.  With the internet, and near-instant access to decades
> of information, and the incessant work product of BILLIONS of people, you can
> easily get ...  just LOST in the immensity of it all.
>
> I do, and have done, all sorts of things - and I can tell you that there will
> always be some people who are and will never be satisfied with anything you do.
> With 10+ billion people (reproducing), and with new methods and technologies,
> there will always be someone "better" or "faster" or "more-whatever-er".  But
> there will always be people who know the real deal, and can see who you are, and
> understand what you do and how much work it really takes, and can appreciate
> what you put into it.
>
> So don't sell yourself short, and don't sell yourself out to the occasional and
> perhaps inevitable bout of frustration and burnout and depression - that's just
> a lie.  The truth is that you have vision, inspiration, and love for the things
> you do, and after all this time, you're STILL here with the rest of us lunatics
> pecking away at a command-line raytracer, building things big and small one
> primitive object at a time.
>
> My desk is filled with scraps of paper and endless scribbles about x,y,z
> (literally), trig functions, weird diagrams for whatever "computer math" or
> algorithm I'm trying to work out to do "THIS _thing_".  I make models with
> cardboard boxes and graph paper, and use 7 other pieces of software to do what
> some people might simply sit down and hammer out the code for in 5 minutes.
> But now _I_ know how to do it, and it's a new tool and resource I can use and
> play with.   It's a new skill that _I_ have.
>
> If you think there's something holding you back - find out what it is.  Lack of
> focus?  Can't sit still? Distracted by something? Can't visualize something
> right?   Can't get that POV-Ray directive to work the way you want it to and
> thought it should?   Can't write loops, splines, circular formulas....?    Write
> down what you feel thwarted by every time it happens and see if there's a major
> stumbling block and then work on removing it.
>
> Also just accept that for many things that working with POV-Ray is SLOW - Accept
> it, and just let the frustration go.   It doesn't accomplish anything and it
> just wastes your time.
>
How do I forward this image to Dilbert's pointy haired boss?

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Interesting project. And after that, Rome of the year 117 AD?   :-)





On 29.02.2016 22:38, Jörg 'Yadgar' Bleimann wrote:
> Hi(gh)!
> 
> On New Year's Day, I decided for the first time to seriously start with
> a landmark building complex for Kabul, POVghanistan: the Soviet-built
> airport, as it looked like around 1970. So I googled for photos showing
> the airport back then, and found a close-up of the domestic flights
> control tower:
>
http://footage.framepool.com/shotimg/qf/296679019-kabul-international-airport-hand-luggage-tower-airport-kabul-city.jpg
> 
> 
> Another one from 1969, showing the whole building as seen from the
> airfield: http://www.airports-worldwide.com/img/w/kabul_airport_in_1969.jpg
> 
> And attached here is with what I came up after two months... pathetic,
> isn't it?
> 
> And then I see all your sophisticated projects (Gancaloon and many
> others) and I wonder how you get all that work done, beside your proper
> occupations, partners, family, other hobbies... as an early retiree, I
> have so much more free time available - and still hardly get anything
> done! Could it be that I simply do not have the talent required for
> doing 3D graphics? Or could it be that POV-Ray simply is not a software
> which supports an efficient workflow (are there any professional 3D
> designers using POV-Ray? I doubt...)?
> 
> Given the current speed of progress, this modest airport tower will
> occupy me for the entire year 2016 - not to mention the terrain
> heightfield, which will be completed around 2030, having started in 2004
> (unless there will be satellite elevation data of the same resolution
> readily available!). So I'll spend a vast portion of my life to cobble
> together a crude version of POVghanistan/Khyberspace, without ever being
> able to visit REAL Afghanistan (originally, Khyberspace was meant as a
> substitution for the unreachable real thing) and obviously lacking the
> basic skills necessary for POVing, let along using any other
> modeler/raytracer... Khyberspace probably will never be much more than
> Kabul International Airport... I just waste my life!
> 
> It's so frustrating... all these things are so huge, and I'm so small!
> 
> See you in... forget it!
> 
> Yadgar

Post a reply to this message