> The Legend Returns! Thank you for your contribution to what has become
> an excellent program and a lot of fun.

I'm flattered, but I hardly consider myself a legend.  I'm delighted, though,
that the program I wrote so many years ago has become such a success.  I, of
course, can't take credit for most of it.  It was the hard work of the POV-Ray
team that really built POV-Ray into what it is today.  I suspect that there is
hardly any of the original code in the current system.  That's the way these
projects work.

One thing I've always found is that the user community never ceased to amaze
me with their work.  When I wrote sample scenes in DKBTrace and POV-Ray, they
would normally be your classic textured spheres on checkerboard floors kind of
pictures.  I liked adding skys (because the texturing did them so well), but I
seldom worked hard to create a "really cool" image.  The only one I did that
was involved was the rendering of a Nortel switch with a computer, TV, and
telephone surrounding them.  I don't have the original sources, but I could
probably scan the image and post it so you can see it.

What I was saying was that the user community and the scenes they created were
always amazing to me.  For many scenes, I would have sworn that POV-Ray
couldn't have created it, but it did.  There was some talk earlier about Mike
Miller.  I found his scenes particularly incredible.  I also really like
"First Strike ar Pearl" and often use it as a sample image if I'm doing any
kind of image processing stuff.

These days, I'm working as a Smalltalk consultant.  (Did you know that
DKBTrace and POV-Ray had some Smalltalk concepts built into them?) I'm also
working hard on a commercial program which is a fun physics simulation package
for kids.  You can see a preview of the screen on http://www.simberon.com.  I
hope to have a public beta soon and a release in a few months.  I don't have
much time these days for raytracing, but I was talking about it to some people
I work with and showed them the povray.org site which led me here, so I
thought I'd say hi.

Anyway, I have to run for now.  Have fun (that was always the point anyway).

David Buck
dav### [at] simberoncom

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David Buck <dav### [at] simberoncom> wrote:
: What exciting things are happening these days in the POV-Ray world? I'm
: seeing some amazing things posted on the net.

  It's said that one image says more than a thousand words.
  This image is also my favorite:

http://www.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/2000-04-30/gt_city.jpg

-- 
char*i="b[7FK@`3NB6>B:b3O6>:B:b3O6><`3:;8:6f733:>::b?7B>:>^B>C73;S1";
main(_,c,m){for(m=32;c=*i++-49;c&m?puts(""):m)for(_=(
c/4)&7;putchar(m),_--?m:(_=(1<<(c&3))-1,(m^=3)&3););}    /*- Warp -*/

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"Chris Huff" wrote:
> I'm currently working on a "portal" pigment. (Basically,
> rays hit the pigment and stop, and reappear from somewhere
> else going in a different direction...at least that's what
> the user sees. Like a portal from one area to another.)

That so cool Chris! I've been thinking about such a feature lots of times.

Rune
--
\ Include files, tutorials, 3D images, raytracing jokes,
/ The POV Desktop Theme, and The POV-Ray Logo Contest can
\ all be found at http://rsj.mobilixnet.dk (updated January 6)
/ Also visit http://www.povrayusers.org

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Hi, I'm Rune S. Johansen and I've been using POV-Ray for 3 years only, but
what 3 years!

I want to thank you for starting all this! If it wasn't for you, POV-Ray
would not have been.

Here's a selected joke from my compiled list of raytracing jokes:

"You know you've been raytracing too long when you hear a name beginning
with the letter K and wonder if it's David Buck's middle name."

:)

Rune
--
\ Include files, tutorials, 3D images, raytracing jokes,
/ The POV Desktop Theme, and The POV-Ray Logo Contest can
\ all be found at http://rsj.mobilixnet.dk (updated January 6)
/ Also visit http://www.povrayusers.org

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"Rune" <run### [at] inamecom> wrote in message
news:3a6868e3$1@news.povray.org...
> "Chris Huff" wrote:
> > I'm currently working on a "portal" pigment. (Basically,
> > rays hit the pigment and stop, and reappear from somewhere
> > else going in a different direction...at least that's what
> > the user sees. Like a portal from one area to another.)
>
> That so cool Chris! I've been thinking about such a feature lots of times.
>

I seem to remember that this concept came up about 2 yrs ago... Was that you
or Chris?

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> "You know you've been raytracing too long when you hear a name beginning
> with the letter K and wonder if it's David Buck's middle name."

You don't think I'd ever reveal my full name, now would you??

David Kirk Buck
dav### [at] simberoncom

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Warp wrote:

> David Buck <dav### [at] simberoncom> wrote:
> : What exciting things are happening these days in the POV-Ray world? I'm
> : seeing some amazing things posted on the net.
>
>   It's said that one image says more than a thousand words.
>   This image is also my favorite:
>
> http://www.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/2000-04-30/gt_city.jpg

Ok, I have a new favorite picture.  Was this created with POV or MegaPOV?
This is totally incredible.  Do people publish the scene files for pictures
like this?  I'm still in awe.

David Buck
dav### [at] simberoncom

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"David Buck" <dav### [at] simberoncom> wrote in message
news:3A687114.D58B3541@simberon.com...
>
>
> Warp wrote:
>
> > David Buck <dav### [at] simberoncom> wrote:
> > : What exciting things are happening these days in the POV-Ray world?
I'm
> > : seeing some amazing things posted on the net.
> >
> >   It's said that one image says more than a thousand words.
> >   This image is also my favorite:
> >
> > http://www.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/2000-04-30/gt_city.jpg
>
> Ok, I have a new favorite picture.  Was this created with POV or MegaPOV?
> This is totally incredible.  Do people publish the scene files for
pictures
> like this?  I'm still in awe.
>
> David Buck
> dav### [at] simberoncom
>

Megapov (it uses isosurfaces at the very least). Giles has written a nice
piece about its creation at:
http://www.oyonale.com/ressources/english/mkof11.htm

Giles' site has an amazing selection of his POV images.

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On Thu, 18 Jan 2001 15:45:01 -0500, David Buck <dav### [at] simberoncom>
wrote:

>Hi all.

<to all>

Sabunim kioh-ne!

>I'm the author of DKBTrace which, you may know, is the predecessor of 
>POV-Ray.  I offered the DKBTrace source to the POV-Ray team as a base 
>system and I served on the POV-Ray team for about two years.

Your name still appears in the credits section with each render :)

>What exciting things are happening these days in the POV-Ray world?  I'm
>seeing some amazing things posted on the net.

With all due regards, it was mostly the BBS crowd and some devoted
Compuserve folk who formed the POV-Ray community. It is now a world of
its own. People are constantly working on improvements, adding
features, hunting bugs, writing or re-writing documentation, creating
scenes and include files (and macros), etc. This very news server has
proven to be a binding force for POVers all over the world, with
visitors being helpful (mostly harmless :) ) folk with a strong sense
of community.

As of your appearance here, it is a honour for all of us. Your name is
likely as well known as those of Chris Young, Dan Farmer or Mike
Miller (there was a recent rush for locating Mike Miller's works). As
someone (Ken?) said, it has been immortalised. I hope your stay will
be long.


Peter Popov ICQ : 15002700
Personal e-mail : pet### [at] vipbg
TAG      e-mail : pet### [at] tagpovrayorg

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David Buck wrote:

> Warp wrote:
> > http://www.irtc.org/ftp/pub/stills/2000-04-30/gt_city.jpg
> Ok, I have a new favorite picture.  Was this created with POV or MegaPOV?
> This is totally incredible.  Do people publish the scene files for pictures
> like this?  I'm still in awe.

Hello
Like other people there, I'd like to thank you for starting all this, and
changing (for the best) many people lives in the process, including mine. I
started with POV 1.0 but then DKBTrace was still fresh. Strangely enough, I was
looking yesterday for information about Andreas Stabinger, the developer of
Raytrace, a nifty raytracer for Windows that was popular in Europe around
1992-1993. I switched to POVRay in 1993 because the scripting language made it
(already) more powerful.

About my "Wet Bird" pic (made with Megapov), one obvious thing is that POV-Ray
has become incredibly powerful and its output is now professional-looking.
However, complex scenes like this rely a lot on non-procedural objects and
textures (meshes and bitmaps, some of them bought from 3D vendors) which make
entire scenes files unfit to download either because of the size or because of
copyright reasons. So, in a way, Pov has become "mature", for the good and the
bad. Still, a  Pover will find on the net enough freebies to keep him/her happy
and busy for a while !

Gilles Tran

--

**********************
http://www.oyonale.com
**********************
Graphic experiments
Pov-ray gallery

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