Simon de Vet wrote:

> No matter how much I work on it, it's always a struggle. Having a default
> I can scale is easier to understand. I can easily visualize a box scaled
> to <1, 2, 5>, but a box defined by corners <-0.5, -1, -2.5>  <0.5, 1,
> 2.5> is not something I can see in my mind.

Both methods require repetitious use before you become comfortable with
them. When I was first learning Pov I bounced back and forth between
various modellers I was evaluating and hand coding. Personally I found
more power in the hand coding environment but had I found a modeller
I was comfortable with I might have swung the other way. Regardless
I still think that with practice you would learn to use the various
control points of a box with the same ease that you do the scale feature
in your modeller of choice.

Besides defining a unit box is no more difficult than

box{-.5,.5}

Defining a unit sphere

sphere{0,1}

Defining unit cylinders you have a choice of which axis to align it to

cylinder {x*-.5, x*.5, 1}
cylinder {y*-.5, y*.5, 1}
cylinder {z*-.5, z*.5, 1}

etc.

-- 
Ken Tyler -  1300+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/

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Ron Parker wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 12 Mar 2000 07:56:08 -0500, Bill DeWitt wrote:
> >Since most people use a unit, at origin object, then scale
> >and translate, it could save tons of typing.
> 
> Who is this "most people" you talk about?  Most modelers do that, but
> I would think most people make the box where they want it.  I know I
> do.

The place where this "feature" of all modellers I've seen gets me is
with the cylinder.  Whenever I use a cylinder, it's along the lines of

  cylinder { <3,2,4>,<1,1,3>,.5 }

which with most modellers has to be done by calculating the scaling and
rotation outside of the program, and then entering them by hand.  This
is why I don't use them.

Regards,
John
-- 
ICQ: 46085459

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Francois Labreque wrote:

> box {
>     scale < 2, 2, 2 >
>     translate < 5, 5, 5 >
> }
>
> is actually more characters than
>
> box {
>     < 5, 5, 5 >
>     < 7, 7, 7 >
> }

or you could do box { 5 7 } :-)

--
___     _______________________________________________
 | \     |_          <dav### [at] faricynet> <ICQ 55354965>
 |_/avid |ontaine        http://www.faricy.net/~davidf/

"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." -Dali

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"Ron Parker" <ron### [at] povrayorg> wrote :
>
> Who is this "most people" you talk about?  Most modelers do that, but
> I would think most people make the box where they want it.  I know I
> do.
>

    Perhaps I am mistaken. I supposed that since the docs recommend it, new
users are often told to do it, and it make sense to do so in terms of
declarations, that most people would do so.

    Personally, BTW, I don't care about character count. My insert menu box
looks like:

/////////////// box ////////////////////////
box {
     < -0.5, -0.5, -0.5 >,
     <  0.5,  0.5,  0.5 >
     scale      < 1.0, 1.0, 1.0 >
     rotate     < 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 >
     translate  < 0.0, 0.0, 0.0 >
     texture { DefaultTexture }
        } // end box

    ... I do it like this so that I have to type less. I mouse delete
anything I don't need and modify the rest to my requirements.

       If I am putting it in a loop or something I will chop it down, but
otherwise...

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Ron Parker wrote:
> 
> Who is this "most people" you talk about?  Most modelers do that, but
> I would think most people make the box where they want it.  I know I
> do.

Only if you want it aligned to the major axes.
I usually consider it a good idea to create objects at the origin and then apply
the necessary transformations. I feel it gives more control over the final
placement of the object, and the look of the texture.

Margus

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On Mon, 13 Mar 2000 04:03:50 +0200, Margus Ramst wrote:
>Ron Parker wrote:
>> 
>> Who is this "most people" you talk about?  Most modelers do that, but
>> I would think most people make the box where they want it.  I know I
>> do.
>
>Only if you want it aligned to the major axes.
>I usually consider it a good idea to create objects at the origin and then apply
>the necessary transformations. I feel it gives more control over the final
>placement of the object, and the look of the texture.

That's true; I do create boxes that won't be axis-aligned at the origin, but
I still create them the correct size.

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Does anyone remember the shapes.inc file?
Make changes there and use predefined shapes from there.
Ken wrote:
> 
> Simon de Vet wrote:
> 
> > No matter how much I work on it, it's always a struggle. Having a default
> > I can scale is easier to understand. I can easily visualize a box scaled
> > to <1, 2, 5>, but a box defined by corners <-0.5, -1, -2.5>  <0.5, 1,
> > 2.5> is not something I can see in my mind.
> 
> Both methods require repetitious use before you become comfortable with
> them. When I was first learning Pov I bounced back and forth between
> various modellers I was evaluating and hand coding. Personally I found
> more power in the hand coding environment but had I found a modeller
> I was comfortable with I might have swung the other way. Regardless
> I still think that with practice you would learn to use the various
> control points of a box with the same ease that you do the scale feature
> in your modeller of choice.
> 
> Besides defining a unit box is no more difficult than
> 
> box{-.5,.5}
> 
> Defining a unit sphere
> 
> sphere{0,1}
> 
> Defining unit cylinders you have a choice of which axis to align it to
> 
> cylinder {x*-.5, x*.5, 1}
> cylinder {y*-.5, y*.5, 1}
> cylinder {z*-.5, z*.5, 1}
> 
> etc.
> 
> --
> Ken Tyler -  1300+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
> http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/

-- 
Mr. Art

"Often the appearance of reality is more important 
than the reality of the appearance."
Bill DeWitt 2000

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"mr.art" wrote:
> 
> Does anyone remember the shapes.inc file?
> Make changes there and use predefined shapes from there.

Actually for something like using a unit sized box I find it easier
to type

box{-.5,.5}

rather than

#include "shapes.inc"

object {cube}

-- 
Ken Tyler -  1300+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/

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Francois Labreque <fla### [at] attglobalnet> wrote in message
news:38CBAF9C.7C199D2B@attglobal.net...
>
> Something I'd like to be able to do is automatically place objects
> relative to others without having to do all the trig myself, but I guess

Now there's something I could have used at times - translate_relative as opposed to
the
existing translate_absolute.

Alf

http://www.peake42.freeserve.co.uk/
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Alf_Peake/

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David Fontaine wrote:
> 
> Francois Labreque wrote:
> 
> > box {
> >     scale < 2, 2, 2 >
> >     translate < 5, 5, 5 >
> > }
> >
> > is actually more characters than
> >
> > box {
> >     < 5, 5, 5 >
> >     < 7, 7, 7 >
> > }
> 
> or you could do box { 5 7 } :-)

OK.  The choice of numbers wasn't probably the best to illustrate my
point, but I think it came across nevertheless.   Anyway, most of my
boxes look more like this:

box {
    < 2.875, 5.5, 3.6333333 >
    < 7.142857, 9.3, 4 >
}

Which is wayyyyyyyyy easier than 

box {
    scale < 4.267857, 3.8, 0.2666666 >
    translate < 7.642857, 9.8, 4.5 >
}

-- 
Francois Labreque | It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion, it
     flabreq      | is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed,
        @         | the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a 
  attglobal.net     warning, it is by caffeine alone I set my mind in
motion.
                               - Unknown

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