Wolfgang Thaller wrote:

> Daniel Matthews <dan### [at] 3-enet> wrote:
>> Yes please,  or just a makefile for *nix systems.
> 
> A linux binary is now online.
> 
> ----
> Notes on the Linux version
> 
> The installation instructions in the manual have not yet been adapted
> for Linux, all the things said about paths and environment variables
> are basically the same for Linux.
> 
> VOP was compiled on my RedHat 7.1 box.
> It needs a working version of OpenGL (tested with slightly outdated
> nVIDIA XFree 4 drivers, and there's no reason why it shouldn't work
> with Mesa) and a current version of GLU. AFAIK, Mesa's GLU library
> misses some required features, but SGI's GLU library is Open Source,
> works fine, and is available from Mesa's web page, too.
> 
> Other notable dependencies:
> libc.so.6
> libglut.so.3
> libgmp.so.3
> libncurses.so.5
> 
> Source code is available separately, but there's no proper Makefile
> and you first have to install a compiler and some libraries for
> an exotic programming language that even most computer specialists
> have never heard of (Haskell - see www.haskell.org).
> 
> VOP's home page is at:
> http://www.kfunigraz.ac.at/imawww/thaller/wolfgang/vop-intro.html
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> Wolfgang Thaller

Thanks, nice work.

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Wolfgang Thaller wrote in message <3c834262$1@news.povray.org>...
>and I'm not sure if it is feasible
>at all to try to emulate POV-Ray's texture support using OpenGL.

You could easily add support for the quick_color portion of POV-Ray pigments

--
Mark

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"Wolfgang Thaller" <wol### [at] gmxnet> wrote in message
news:3c838737@news.povray.org...
>
> BTW, has anyone already tried out the program?
> I'm desperately waiting for feedback on the program _itself_.

As far as I can see, there is no support for arrays.
Is it true? And if so, is there any chance to get them somehow?

I think previewer for animations will be very useful.

Atb,

Gleb

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Wolfgang Thaller wrote in message <3c82b64c$1@news.povray.org>...
>I've just released a new freeware utility program
>that might interest you:
>http://www.kfunigraz.ac.at/imawww/thaller/wolfgang/vop-intro.html
>
>VOP is a program that parses POV-Ray scene
>description files and renders them using OpenGL.
>While the resulting 3D images are not as nice as
>POV-Ray's, VOP is anywhere from five to two thousand
>times faster (depending on situation and measurement
>method).

I just realized -- if you were to add a file output mode to VOP, you'd have
a program that can convert POV-Ray scenes to other file formats.

--
Mark

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"Gleb" <gk1### [at] sotonacuk> wrote:
> As far as I can see, there is no support for arrays.
> Is it true? And if so, is there any chance to get them somehow?

Yes, I have to admit, no arrays yet. It should be no big problem to
implement them. For big arrays, there might be problems with memory usage -
as VOP tries to save _time_ by not executing a POV-Ray script line by line,
it may waste some "space" (i.e., memory) by having to keep multiple copies
of a variable around - maybe some special optimisation would be necessary
for big arrays.
How do you use arrays in your scenes? I realize they can be useful, but I
never needed them for my own scenes.

"Mark Wagner" <mar### [at] gtenet> wrote:
> I just realized -- if you were to add a file output mode to VOP, you'd
have
> a program that can convert POV-Ray scenes to other file formats.

Yes, that should be possible. I have already thought of that, but I had no
particular interest in any particular file format. All that's needed is an
exact specification of a file format and a viewer program to try it out.
Just like VOP itself, the converter would support no textures, however.
Is there any particular file format that you think I should put on my "TODO"
list?


Cheers,

Wolfgang Thaller

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Wolfgang Thaller wrote in message <3c9270cb@news.povray.org>...
>"Mark Wagner" <mar### [at] gtenet> wrote:
>> I just realized -- if you were to add a file output mode to VOP, you'd
>have
>> a program that can convert POV-Ray scenes to other file formats.
>
>Yes, that should be possible. I have already thought of that, but I had no
>particular interest in any particular file format. All that's needed is an
>exact specification of a file format and a viewer program to try it out.
>Just like VOP itself, the converter would support no textures, however.
>Is there any particular file format that you think I should put on my
"TODO"
>list?

Since VOP doesn't support textures, I'd recommend the Alias Wavefront .OBJ
format.  It's a very straightforward format to write, if all you're doing is
writing untextured triangles.  The complete format specification can be
found at http://www.wotsit.org/download.asp?f=w_obj

--
Mark Wagner

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Mark Wagner wrote:
> Since VOP doesn't support textures, I'd recommend the Alias Wavefront .OBJ
> format.  It's a very straightforward format to write, if all you're doing
is
> writing untextured triangles.  The complete format specification can be
> found at http://www.wotsit.org/download.asp?f=w_obj

Thanks! I'm already working on it.
Can anyone recommend a good (and free) OBJ viewer (win,mac or linux/x86)?
The ones that I found are mostly crap - they support only half of the OBJ
format, and they don't do surface shading well (I can't tell if I'm
outputting the normal vectors correctly).

Cheers,

Wolfgang Thaller

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"Wolfgang Thaller" <wol### [at] gmxnet> wrote in message
news:3c9270cb@news.povray.org...
> "Gleb" <gk1### [at] sotonacuk> wrote:
> For big arrays, there might be problems with memory usage -
> How do you use arrays in your scenes? I realize they can be useful, but I
> never needed them for my own scenes.

Arrays are useful in most cases, the obvious is to use them for storing
points data, which is closely related to splines.
I consider, that VOP doesn't have splines either(does it?), but one can
somehow implement them with the help of arrays.
As far as VOP is oriented to animation, splines(arrays at least) will be a
great plus.

Gleb

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"Gleb" <gk1### [at] sotonacuk> wrote:

> [...] that VOP doesn't have splines either(does it?) [...]
> As far as VOP is oriented to animation, splines(arrays at least) will be a
> great plus.

You're right, the _published_ version of VOP doesn't have them yet. I've
been working on them.
So far, I've got linear splines and cubic (catmull-rom) splines. I don't
know the mathematical formulas for the quadratic splines, and I'm not sure
about the "natural" splines. I have implemented catmull-rom splines, but now
that I've seen them in action, I don't like them (my camera, animated using
a spline, did a strange looping and sudden speed changes). [OT: What kind of
splines would you use for a "fly-through" style animation?]

I'll upload an updated version in the next few days.

Cheers,

Wolfgang

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"Wolfgang Thaller" <wol### [at] gmxnet> wrote in message
news:3c98dcac$1@news.povray.org...
> a spline, did a strange looping and sudden speed changes). [OT: What kind
of
> splines would you use for a "fly-through" style animation?]

Imho for smooth movements the natural cubic splines would be the best.

Regards,

Gleb

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