Just curious, what happened with the "superpatch" I saw mentioned a lot in
the near past? Is it postponed until 3.1 is out? Yesterday I downloaded
poviso and tmpov from Twyst's site, I guess they are the newest versions.
What about a merge of them both? I am also curious if the light dispersion
and infinite light patches will be in the "superpatch" some day. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

--Peter

pet### [at] usanet

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On Wed, 19 Aug 1998 22:07:07 +0300, Peter Popov <pet### [at] usanet> wrote:
>Just curious, what happened with the "superpatch" I saw mentioned a lot in
>the near past? Is it postponed until 3.1 is out? Yesterday I downloaded
>poviso and tmpov from Twyst's site, I guess they are the newest versions.
>What about a merge of them both? I am also curious if the light dispersion
>and infinite light patches will be in the "superpatch" some day. Any ideas?

I was doing it, and indeed I have decided to wait until 3.1 is out.  It's 
pretty much done for 3.0 except for the documentation, though.  With a few
hours of work I could get it ready to go.  Maybe I will go ahead and do this,
because when 3.1 is released I would rather concentrate my energy on adding
plugin functionality.

Isosurfaces are in the superpatch, as are sphere sweeps and a couple of the
other things that are popular about TMPOV.  Infinite Light and Dispersion 
have not been added, for the simple reason that there was never any working 
source code for either one.  In particular, Daren Scot Wilson said that he 
could never get certain critical parts of the dispersion patch, such as 
writing the results to a file, working correctly.  Slope-dependent textures
have also not been added, but only because I haven't found the time.

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Ah, so there're macros and arrays in one place? Cool. Is there an url where
Win95 binaries available anywhere or can you post them in p.b.programming or
even e-mail them to me? Source would be fine, too, especially if you've
changed the Win95 version. In that case I may be able to incorporate the
slope dependent textures patch myself (it shouldn't be very hard), thougn I
may have some trouble with MSVC5.0 . In any case, it's a great job you've
done it!

Curious again, what do you mean by "plugin functionality"? Do you mean to
develop a "hey-look-what-great-texture-this-dll-can-make" kind of api? If
so, cool!

Thanks for your input and keep up the good work!

--Peter

pet### [at] usanet

P.S. If you're to send e-mail attachments please use my brother's e-mail
sas### [at] smartcombg , here in Bulgaria I'm having troubles reaching usa.net

>Ron Parker wrote in message <35dc24ce.0@news.povray.org>...
>I was doing it, and indeed I have decided to wait until 3.1 is out.  It's
>pretty much done for 3.0 except for the documentation, though.  With a few
>hours of work I could get it ready to go.  Maybe I will go ahead and do
this,
>because when 3.1 is released I would rather concentrate my energy on adding
>plugin functionality.
>
>Isosurfaces are in the superpatch, as are sphere sweeps and a couple of the
>other things that are popular about TMPOV.  Infinite Light and Dispersion
>have not been added, for the simple reason that there was never any working
>source code for either one.  In particular, Daren Scot Wilson said that he
>could never get certain critical parts of the dispersion patch, such as
>writing the results to a file, working correctly.  Slope-dependent textures
>have also not been added, but only because I haven't found the time.
>
>

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 21 Aug 1998 04:30:21 +0300, "Peter Popov"
<pet### [at] usanet> wrote:

>Ah, so there're macros and arrays in one place? Cool. Is there an url where
>Win95 binaries available anywhere or can you post them in p.b.programming or
>even e-mail them to me? Source would be fine, too, especially if you've
>changed the Win95 version. 

Well, actually, um, the arrays haven't been put in yet either.  Here's
a list of what's in there now:

- isosurfaces
- rational bezier patches
- sphere sweeps
- object bounds (see http://www2.fwi.com/~parkerr/traces.html)
- built-in spline calculator

If I did add arrays, it'd probably be along the lines of what's in
TMPOV rather than what's in POV 3.1.  Adding slope-dependent textures
wouldn't be too difficult, either.  I used to have a system for adding
patches, but I lost my old machine when I changed jobs and only just
got a Pentium-class machine again.  Even I'm not enough of a masochist
to try building POV on a 486.

>Curious again, what do you mean by "plugin functionality"? Do you mean to
>develop a "hey-look-what-great-texture-this-dll-can-make" kind of api? If
>so, cool!

That, among other things.  My goal is to provide an interface so you
can make a DLL with a new type of object, new warp, new camera, new
texture, new bitmap i/o support routines (jpg, tiff, whatever), new
functionality for existing objects (procedural heightfields, meshes
with an "insideness" function), new functions (object bounds,
primitive collision detection, color_at, normal_at).  Basically, about
85% of what people patch POV to do. (The other 15% is massive patches
like my motion blur patch, DSW's dispersion patch, or the PVMPOV patch
that affect everything fundamentally.)

Of course, unless this whole thing is cross-platform capable, it'll be
useless, so I hope to enlist support from the Linux, Amiga, Mac, and
other users out there in making it work with shared libraries on those
systems as well, as much as practical.  DOS doesn't do shared
libraries, but I want it to be easy for DOS users to statically link
with as many plugins as they want without having to merge things like
I did for the superpatch.

Will it ever be distributed?  I don't know.  The new POVLEGAL leaves
that somewhat in doubt, due to the clause forbidding the creation of
new interfaces to external code.  The POV-Team has tossed the ball
around on this one, and right now it looks like portability will be a
major sticking point, but they've promised me they'll return to the
issue after 3.1 is released and come up with a definitive ruling on
it.  In the meantime, I'm trying to find the time to throw together a
working model in 3.0 to show that it really can be done and can be
cross-platform.

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> DOS doesn't do shared
> libraries,

Boralnd had a C++ compiler that used DLLs in DOS - same DLLs as Windows
would use (as long as you don't call any Windows functions, of course)

Just gotta use the right tools...
-- 
Daren Scot Wilson
Member, ACM
dar### [at] pipelinecom

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There goes my name again...   Yeah, I've been busy (darned full time
well-paying  jobs!) but I intend to make these features available for
everyone.  Stay tuned...

-- 
Daren Scot Wilson
Member, ACM
dar### [at] pipelinecom
www.newcolor.com
---
   "If you saw the poisons we put on them you wouldn't ask that
    question. You'd never eat another ..."
What is this farmer talking about?
Find out at http://www.ratical.com/LifeWeb/Erthdnce/chapter21.html

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