in news:58285749$1@news.povray.org David Buck wrote:

> Thoughts?
> David Buck

Very often I wished for the opposite, different rendering backends to the 
POV-SDL. That could give a simmilar speed of development.

Modellers are nice for modeling, for putting together a complete scene I 
prefer scripts especialy when using procedural landscaping. I used to have 
a whole suite of small task oriented modelers, most have gone I think. 
Iirc the mac version had little tools like a spline editor. Those small 
things in an IDE would be nice, kind of the opposite of ALT-F3.

Yes, more "front end" would be usefull. Just look at how people work with 
trackers and sythesisers, nodes connected with wires and on the node you 
set some options.

Front ends could be scrips in all kind of languages that make it easy to 
get a visual result of a dataset. What I see is that often POV-SDL is 
"emulated" in python or Lua or something. Then you could just as well do 
it in POV-ray straight away.

A simple way to get motion sets into POV-ray would be nice. Or all this 
Iot data.

Ingo

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On 11/12/2016 11:02 PM, Sherry K. Shaw wrote:
> Thomas de Groot wrote:
>
>> Ah! There it is! This has been indeed one of the major complaints:
>> people (outside of POV-Ray) do not want to create using text editors
>> (any more).
>
> I Do Not Fingerpaint.

I do with my granddaughter :-)

... that's about it for my artistic abilities. I use modelers (blender) 
but I always do materials in povray. Blender is pretty good for cleaning 
up objects that I find here and there but I also objects purely in 
povray too. That said I hear what some of you are saying about the more 
artistic/paintbrush approach, well that's not for everyone but 
apparently some (probably a fair amount) but you know what that say ...

... pick your audience! I think there's far more scientific, and 
educational uses for povray, and it's IMHO povrays greatest strength. 
For example teaching high school geometry ... way more engaging than 
just books and boring lectures. A beginning programming class comes to 
mind a well!

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David Buck <dav### [at] simberoncom> wrote:
>
> What POVRay needs is its own user interface tailored to POVRay. Other
> user interfaces tend to break the world into triangles which don't
> translate well to POVRay.  The POVRay text files are cumbersome because
> they are non-visual and they force you to constantly switch from text
> mode to render mode.
>
> I would like to see a user interface that supports all of the POVRay
> primitives.  It would allow you select components of the scene with
> parameters that are alterable.  You don't necessarily need to see the
> text but rather a graphical representation of the text.  It would allow
> you to change any parameters and would re-render the scene automatically
> with those changes.  The rendering might be incremental - it renders in
> low resolution first and refines the image as you wait or renders
> without textures then with textures or it renders without reflections
> and later adds reflections - just some ideas.
>
> I often find myself asking "What happens if I change this parameter?"
> To answer that I need to keep editing and rendering until I understand
> it.  I'd rather select the parameter in a UI and use the mouse to change
> the value and see in real time what it does to the image.
>
> Thoughts?
> David Buck

Some years I post screenshots:
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3Cweb.5302425140bf5a347a3e03fe0%40news.povray.org%3E/?mtop=402018
&moff=109

http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3Cweb.56d33fab8302842a7a3e03fe0%40news.povray.org%3E/?mtop=407442

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On 13-11-2016 20:16, LanuHum wrote:

> Some years I post screenshots:
>
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3Cweb.5302425140bf5a347a3e03fe0%40news.povray.org%3E/?mtop=402018
> &moff=109
>
>
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3Cweb.56d33fab8302842a7a3e03fe0%40news.povray.org%3E/?mtop=407442
>
>

Yes, something like that would be nice indeed to have in POV-Ray.

-- 
Thomas

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"LanuHum" <Lan### [at] yandexru> wrote:
> David Buck <dav### [at] simberoncom> wrote:
> >
> > What POVRay needs is its own user interface tailored to POVRay. Other
> > user interfaces tend to break the world into triangles which don't
> > translate well to POVRay.  The POVRay text files are cumbersome because
> > they are non-visual and they force you to constantly switch from text
> > mode to render mode.
> >
> > I would like to see a user interface that supports all of the POVRay
> > primitives.  It would allow you select components of the scene with
> > parameters that are alterable.  You don't necessarily need to see the
> > text but rather a graphical representation of the text.  It would allow
> > you to change any parameters and would re-render the scene automatically
> > with those changes.  The rendering might be incremental - it renders in
> > low resolution first and refines the image as you wait or renders
> > without textures then with textures or it renders without reflections
> > and later adds reflections - just some ideas.
> >
> > I often find myself asking "What happens if I change this parameter?"
> > To answer that I need to keep editing and rendering until I understand
> > it.  I'd rather select the parameter in a UI and use the mouse to change
> > the value and see in real time what it does to the image.
> >
> > Thoughts?
> > David Buck
>
> Some years I post screenshots:
>
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3Cweb.5302425140bf5a347a3e03fe0%40news.povray.org%3E/?mtop=4020
18
> &moff=109
>
>
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3Cweb.56d33fab8302842a7a3e03fe0%40news.povray.org%3E/?mtop=4074
42


Indeed, as one of the latest capture shows in his thread, we strived hard with
Lanuhum to make the pov primitives dynamic into Blender and they are more
dynamic and parametric than all native Blender primitives ! They are all shipped
with official version of Blender.
https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Render/POV-Ray

At least try it! that's all we're begging for, with no feedback we can't improve
it! also of course some help with Python development would be welcome now that
the POV scenes can be imported and some pov primitives passed in and out of
Blender, things get more complex to maintain and might be broken without us even
knowing it. so even just a simple try and report is very precious to us.
Making a picture in the same go is a nice bonus.
If Moray was as capable as Blender for "finger painting" I would gladly
switch... But let's be pragmatic. That's why I chose POV: It had caustics when
Blender had none, Cycles didn't exist, and Lux Render had no perfectly curved
mathematical primitives.

I started learning Python specifically for this exporter, only to achieve this
very goal several years ago now. Not because Blender's"finger-painting" is
better than scripting... nor because POV scripting is better (no matter my own
preference, the needs must direct just like when pixar made movies with
renderman SDL) Why choose, when we can have both?... and even more! This is
called a synergy.

LanuHum joined me to develop a more experimental version and I try to port his
developments to the stable version whenever I can, and if they fit without
breaking too much. We receive even less feedback in the Blender community
because of the loudness of Cycles development there and belief that POV is too
old to be good. So we're counting on you ! Thanks for your very precious
attention along these past years!
With very special thanks to Clipka who has been very responsive to our requests,
such as alternative shading models, I hope you don't blame him for that...

By the way, about several renderers for one POV SDL, it's already available as
well with UberPOV, trying its stochastic AA should be compulsory for all povers
to see real life render times, promising to bring POV back in the race without
as much noise as Cycles! can't wait for the Spectral revolution as well !

I'm digressing, I hope not high-jacking... What I meant to say is I'm so glad
the original developer of POV seems to feel the same about the power of having
user interfaces and scripting stop resenting each-other!

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Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> On 13-11-2016 20:16, LanuHum wrote:
>
> > Some years I post screenshots:
> >
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3Cweb.5302425140bf5a347a3e03fe0%40news.povray.org%3E/?mtop=40
2018
> > &moff=109
> >
> >
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3Cweb.56d33fab8302842a7a3e03fe0%40news.povray.org%3E/?mtop=40
7442
> >
> >
>
> Yes, something like that would be nice indeed to have in POV-Ray.
>
> --
> Thomas

Where is it? This is for Povray.
:)

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That's disappointing in some ways but take into account that after, what?, 30
years?, if you go back to DKBTrace, POV-Ray is still around, a pioneer in open
source, the "stone soup group" it was called on CIS, and still has a devoted
following. SketchUp and Blender are only about half that old and really only
caught on in the last few years. After all POV is fundamentally a coder's
program which is both it's strength and why many people don't feel comfortable
not being able to see what they will get. In the 2D world Processing is also a
coding graphics tool but they have done much more to cool-ify it & to make it
more accessible and more in touch with current mediums of presentation,
especially on the web. My only suggestion for sprucing up this old house would
be to do some modernizing of the front end and put a few coats of paint and add
a few new time-saving appliances on the editor, which hasn't changed much from
when it was put up.

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"Stephen Klebs" <skl### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> That's disappointing in some ways but take into account that after, what?, 30
> years?, if you go back to DKBTrace, POV-Ray is still around, a pioneer in open
> source, the "stone soup group" it was called on CIS, and still has a devoted
> following. SketchUp and Blender are only about half that old and really only
> caught on in the last few years. After all POV is fundamentally a coder's
> program which is both it's strength and why many people don't feel comfortable
> not being able to see what they will get. In the 2D world Processing is also a
> coding graphics tool but they have done much more to cool-ify it & to make it
> more accessible and more in touch with current mediums of presentation,
> especially on the web. My only suggestion for sprucing up this old house would
> be to do some modernizing of the front end and put a few coats of paint and add
> a few new time-saving appliances on the editor, which hasn't changed much from
> when it was put up.

For such an effort to be noticed is hard because other programs do that all the
time, changing website theme (not by much) or even changing software name though
as a user, I wouldn't be against any of these... even switching back to an older
name and theme would be cool for the renderer's image, people forgot them
they're as brand new... Renaming pov DKB trace /PVRay/Persistence or anything
would look like it's really back for instance, any change is better than
asleep...  Anyway these are easy quick changes to decide after discussions

The hardest part of the job is really being done by pov developers currently I
don't think more than what is being done is necessary, but it does take time!
almost done, the good thing is that changes are more apparent now that they
happen in the main trunk because developers of experimental versions like
Uberpov pay attention to synchronise with trunk regularly and port back their
stable changes as opposed to the pov vs megapov gap of older days.

I agree with previous statements on one other thing that could currently be done
more, as said before:For end users to post more work in progress and finished
images outside of here!

Blenderartists.org does have an "other software" section, CG society,
Behance... whatever works.

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On 11/14/2016 05:43 AM, Mr wrote:
>
> Indeed, as one of the latest capture shows in his thread, we strived hard with
> Lanuhum to make the pov primitives dynamic into Blender and they are more
> dynamic and parametric than all native Blender primitives ! They are all shipped
> with official version of Blender.
> https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Render/POV-Ray
>

I've "borrowed" several of the sample materials over time - Thanks.

I'm not much of a modeling user. My POV-Ray use over the years being 
primarily utilitarian-work or utilitarian-community related. Creating 
figures, presentation, advertising and event materials, etc. with 
POV-Ray. It's a VERY capable, general tool in this respect.

Weighting my view as an infrequent user of modelers, it's my opinion any 
further investment in a general scene modeling interface should be 
Blender based.

I know there were plans for Moray on its acquisition, but given the 
actual state of Moray today with respect to 3.7 support today, I think 
it very unlikely it will be upgraded to support 3.7 onward(1).

I think we should admit this reality and change the last sentence of the 
opening paragraph of the Wikipedia POV-Ray wiki page at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POV-Ray

from:

"Many methods for generating the 3-D models are used, including a 
companion program "moray" for interactive modeling."

to perhaps:

"Many methods for generating the 3-D models are used, including the
the free and open source 3D creation suite Blender."

and then only lightly mention Moray in the body of the page. No new user 
to POV-Ray will pick up Moray as is. Thoughts? Want me to make this 
update?

Yes, there are other things on the POV-Ray Wikipedia page that should be 
updated I think. Of late, I've been making updates to the preview 
release portion of the page as Christoph puts out 3.7.1 releases, but 
nothing more.

Aside: One thing Blender, MakeHuman and the like do better than POV-Ray 
with respect to attracting new users is create cool, splash advertising 
web pages for features old and new. Another is there tends to be ready 
to grab linux packages - via the debian/ubuntu Personal Package Archive 
(PPA) mechanism, for example.

Bill P.

(1) - As important as any initial modeling implementation, is ongoing 
support. Blender has this covered to a degree due the Blender Foundation.

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On 11/13/2016 8:37 AM, Thomas de Groot wrote:
> Age? well above average I am sure.

Not to be discounted.


> So, what to do about it?

Well, I am going to spend some more time in Blender. To see what I can 
break. ;-)


-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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