POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : Q: Displacement maps. Server Time
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  Q: Displacement maps. (Message 13 to 22 of 22)  
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From: Anthony Bennett
Subject: Reply2
Date: 28 Mar 1999 22:58:02
Message: <36FEE66C.2AA1CF19@panama.phoenix.net>
Did anyone notice the link I posted (second reply)?


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From: Gordon
Subject: Re: Displacement maps.
Date: 29 Mar 1999 05:46:25
Message: <36ff5a01.0@news.povray.org>
That does surprise me. Just how slow is MAX? I regularly do POVRay renders
that take 20 - 100 hours for a single frame(I am talking about 1025x768
AA=0.001, 10,000+ objects), does MAX take that long? How do people do the
neat animations in a realistic time?

Regards
Gordon

Lance Birch wrote in message <36fea482.0@news.povray.org>...
>Hmm, that's interesting, cause I've always found it faster... in both
>modelling and rendering.  Just going back to the point before though, I
>understand that inherently MAX is faster because it is a scan-line
renderer,
>but you also have to remember that MAX has adaptive degredation, so no
>matter how far you zoom in it will compensate by interpolating the faces
and
>recalculating the object.  This is especially useful in NURBS modelling
(for
>obvious reasons).
>
>MAX can also do raytracing though, it just uses the scan-line renderer, but
>when it calls the texturing function, that's where the raytracing is done
>(and it is very accurate BTW, it can do a lot of really cool things too,
>like reflective defusion, distance bluring, flurescence etc).
>
>Most of the time I'm modelling with NURBS, where it is impossible to have a
>real primitive.  Personally of course I like the idea of real primitives
>because they are accurate and allow easy booleaning.
>
>BUT!  Back to the question at hand of course (LOL, "you know you've been
>raytracing too long when you get in a flame war over rendering programs..."
>he he he)
>
>It still, if you didn't want to do it the mesh way that is, should be
>possible to incorporate this feature into POV-Ray.  I know the Isosurface
>patch can do it with its bump mapping (as in, formula based displacement),
>so surely if you created a few new mapping types and created a displacement
>function based on the intensity of an image it should be possible... Of
>course there's no way I could do it, I'm not a brilliant programmer like
all
>the poeple on the POV-Team :-)
>
>Back to the mesh idea though, as long as the function was well written
there
>shouldn't be problems with surface normals...  I don't think that it would
>be too hard (given a person that is a good programmer) to create a function
>that would auto-interpolate an object to the correct amount...  Of course
>this kind of advanced macroing would require some extra keywords to be
built
>into POV-Ray, such as object intersection, etc etc etc.
>
>Anyway, just a thought... Also, isn't there an external program which can
do
>this?  I can't remember the name of it... and it's only to meshes of
>course...
>
>--
>Lance.
>
>BTW, anyway how wants to see what MAX can do, go to
>www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/parallax/359/maxgallery.html
>
>---
>For the latest 3D Studio MAX plug-ins, images and much more, go to:
>The Zone - http://come.to/the.zone
>
>


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From: Lance Birch
Subject: Re: Displacement maps.
Date: 29 Mar 1999 06:13:31
Message: <36ff605b.0@news.povray.org>
MAX isn't a slow renderer at all, it's very fast actually.

Hmm, could take as little as 5 minutes depending on the scene (@ 1024x768
that is, some of mine take only a few minutes to render to that resolution).
I did a 5 minute long rendering once at full TV resolution (PAL) and it took
around 36 hours, but that animation was very simple really.  The most
complex animation I've done was a 30-seconder (@ full PAL res) and it took
about a week of rendering because of the complex objects and texturing
(including raytracing).

It really all depends on how well someone can optimise a scene.  For
example, you don't use raytracing where it isn't needed... Like
non-reflective or non-refractive surfaces don't need to be raytraced, so it
just scan-lines them.  It also has a great adaptive anit-aliaser.

--
Lance.


---
For the latest 3D Studio MAX plug-ins, images and much more, go to:
The Zone - http://come.to/the.zone


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From: Gordon
Subject: Re: Displacement maps.
Date: 29 Mar 1999 06:19:49
Message: <36ff61d5.0@news.povray.org>
My query was based on the statement that POVRay often/usually renders faster
than MAX, I though that was surprising.

Thanks for the info,
Gordon

Lance Birch wrote in message <36ff605b.0@news.povray.org>...
>MAX isn't a slow renderer at all, it's very fast actually.
>
>Hmm, could take as little as 5 minutes depending on the scene (@ 1024x768
>that is, some of mine take only a few minutes to render to that
resolution).
>I did a 5 minute long rendering once at full TV resolution (PAL) and it
took
>around 36 hours, but that animation was very simple really.  The most
>complex animation I've done was a 30-seconder (@ full PAL res) and it took
>about a week of rendering because of the complex objects and texturing
>(including raytracing).
>
>It really all depends on how well someone can optimise a scene.  For
>example, you don't use raytracing where it isn't needed... Like
>non-reflective or non-refractive surfaces don't need to be raytraced, so it
>just scan-lines them.  It also has a great adaptive anit-aliaser.
>
>--
>Lance.
>
>
>---
>For the latest 3D Studio MAX plug-ins, images and much more, go to:
>The Zone - http://come.to/the.zone
>
>


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From: Lance Birch
Subject: Re: Displacement maps.
Date: 29 Mar 1999 07:58:49
Message: <36ff7909.0@news.povray.org>
It does?  Since when?  IT'S MUCH FASTER THAN POV-RAY!!!

--
Lance.


---
For the latest 3D Studio MAX plug-ins, images and much more, go to:
The Zone - http://come.to/the.zone


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From: Ron Parker
Subject: Re: Displacement maps.
Date: 29 Mar 1999 08:48:32
Message: <36ff84b0.0@news.povray.org>
On Sun, 28 Mar 1999 12:46:55 +1000, Lance Birch <lan### [at] usanet> wrote:
>Well, it could be done... all you have to do is specify the bounds of an
>object and an XYZ threshold.  If there is an object intersection routine in
>POV-Ray (which there has to be somewhere!) then you could make a patch of
>POV-Ray to allow keyword access to such a function.  Then all you have to do
>is an ordered test from the top of the bounding box to the bottom calling
>the routine.  If it returns 1 then you know that the point lies on the
>surface of the object, so you can join the previous row of triangles to the
>current and so on...  And there you have it, a MESH!  WOO HOO!!!

I don't believe this will work as well as you might think, because it's not
always obvious even to a human how to connect the dots to make a surface, let
alone to a computer, but there are other ways of creating a mesh from an 
implicit surface.  Once you do create a mesh, you'll want to have a mesh that 
you can use reliably in CSG as well.

The superpatch does have keyword access to the object intersection routines,
but I think it would be unacceptably slow.  Better to implement something 
like this in core code, especially because it's trivial to generate meshes 
for some primitives.


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From: Gordon
Subject: Re: Displacement maps.
Date: 29 Mar 1999 11:07:10
Message: <36ffa52e.0@news.povray.org>
Lance Birch wrote in message <36ff7909.0@news.povray.org>...
>It does?  Since when?  IT'S MUCH FASTER THAN POV-RAY!!!

Read Rick's post, that is what I was replying to. I had already said that
MAX is faster, he objected that MAX is slower than POVRay so I was asking
for details as it seemed strange to me.

Gordon

>
>--
>Lance.
>
>
>---
>For the latest 3D Studio MAX plug-ins, images and much more, go to:
>The Zone - http://come.to/the.zone
>
>


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From: Margus Ramst
Subject: Re: Displacement maps.
Date: 29 Mar 1999 14:42:16
Message: <36ffd798.0@news.povray.org>
Ron Parker wrote in message <36ff84b0.0@news.povray.org>...
>
>I don't believe this will work as well as you might think, because it's not
>always obvious even to a human how to connect the dots to make a surface,
let
>alone to a computer, but there are other ways of creating a mesh from an
>implicit surface.  Once you do create a mesh, you'll want to have a mesh
that
>you can use reliably in CSG as well.
>

>The superpatch does have keyword access to the object intersection
routines,
>but I think it would be unacceptably slow.  Better to implement something
>like this in core code, especially because it's trivial to generate meshes
>for some primitives.

I have created a sampling macro (two, actually) using the trace() function;
it's not all that slow. But it only returns a point cloud. I once thought of
making a meshing macro (with the marching cubes system) but dropped the idea
due to lack of time. Marching triangles would be better, but I'm not
familiar with the principles. Anyway, all this would be much more viable
implemented in core code, having direct access to pattern functions for
displacement mapping.

BTW, Didn't somebody here mention, not so long ago, that he was working on a
meshing system for POV?

Margus


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From: Rick
Subject: Re: Displacement maps.
Date: 30 Mar 1999 01:16:33
Message: <37006c41.0@news.povray.org>
Hi all,
didn't mean to start a war!
but on, my machine I have had faster resultes with POVray compared to max,
admittadly i have only been trying quick scenes, not many objects etc.. ( a
few hundred or so)

but MAX tends to wipe out nearly everything my PC has, before you have even
done anything, and low system resources may be choking the render time up.

Rick

Gordon wrote in message <36ffa52e.0@news.povray.org>...
>
>Lance Birch wrote in message <36ff7909.0@news.povray.org>...
>>It does?  Since when?  IT'S MUCH FASTER THAN POV-RAY!!!
>
>Read Rick's post, that is what I was replying to. I had already said that
>MAX is faster, he objected that MAX is slower than POVRay so I was asking
>for details as it seemed strange to me.
>
>Gordon
>
>>
>>--
>>Lance.
>>
>>
>>---
>>For the latest 3D Studio MAX plug-ins, images and much more, go to:
>>The Zone - http://come.to/the.zone
>>
>>
>
>


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From: Lance Birch
Subject: Re: Displacement maps.
Date: 30 Mar 1999 03:05:34
Message: <370085ce.0@news.povray.org>
Ah yes, I see what you mean now.  MAX uses a HEAP of memory to be fast
(because it's polygon based).

If you have less than 128Mb it runs slow (more than 128Mb is comfortable).

--
Lance.


---
For the latest 3D Studio MAX plug-ins, images and much more, go to:
The Zone - http://come.to/the.zone


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