On Tue, 29 Jan 2002 04:25:26 +0100 Zeger Knaepen wrote:

>> Also, check out the additions to the standard includes...
>hmmm, I've never used standard includes... So I'm not really interested in the
additions
>:)

>> unicode support, etc.
>again: might be useful, but to me not reason enough to use 3.5

  How about if we paid you? ;)

-- 
Alan
ako### [at] povrayorg
a k o n g <at> p o v r a y <dot> o r g

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> I really don't understand why POV-Ray 3.5 was made.  IMHO it's a waste of
time.  The
> POV-Team should have concentrated on starting with POV-Ray 4.0.
> I mean: POV 4.0 will be a complete rewrite, so everything they do now will
have to be
> redone.  What's the point?

Uh oh.. Such comments are not gladly seen by the Pov-team, and I hope you
understand why.. Pov3.5 is their baby.. Well, I think ... surely Pov3.5 is
not a waste of time, you see, it cleans up all the features in Megapov. The
coders do their best to clean Povray - both the source code and SDL - so
that future coders will be able to understand what's going on in Pov and
easily move forwards from that point, to make further improvements.

Pov3.5 takes the best of Megapov, remove the bugs, and makes it the official
version from which all future versions will be build.. I don't see why
Pov4.0 should be a complete rewrite.. Anyway, making Pov3.5 first, is the
logical way to go.. It's like to climp up the stairs, instead of trying to
jump to the top.

> Maybe I'm just tired.  I've been awake for 17 hours :)

Okay, then I would definetely be tired.. Hope you had some rest, when you
read this..  :o)  Peace..

Regards,
Hugo

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I still use MegaPOV at the minute, but that's only because I'm waiting
for the final release (I just have a thing about beta software). I'm
kinda disappointed that mesh2's weren't added to POV3.5, but I've been
thinking about a #macro that can turn triangle data into a solid object
anyway, so...

On Tue, 29 Jan 2002 04:25:26 +0100 Zeger Knaepen wrote:
>hmmm, I've never used standard includes... So I'm not really interested in the
additions

You should try it sometime. I still find interesting things in the 3.1
stincs occaisonally.

-- 
signature{
  "Grey Knight"
  contact{ email "gre### [at] yahoocom" }
  site_of_week{ url "http://digilander.iol.it/jrgpov" }
}

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"Zeger Knaepen" <zeg### [at] studentkuleuvenacbe> wrote in message
news:3c561a65$1@news.povray.org...
>
> I really don't understand why POV-Ray 3.5 was made.  IMHO it's a waste of
time.  The
> POV-Team should have concentrated on starting with POV-Ray 4.0.
> I mean: POV 4.0 will be a complete rewrite, so everything they do now will
have to be
> redone.  What's the point?
>
> Maybe I'm just tired.  I've been awake for 17 hours :)
>

Hmm, is this a valid arguement? 4.0 may be a rewrite, but I wouldn't imagine
that that means throwing out everything that has proceeded it. More a question
of implementing the algorithms in a different framework.

Besides, what's there to complain about? Jam today and tomorrow suits me
fine....

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In article <3C56867C.BB10902E@namtar.qub.ac.uk> , Grey Knight 
<s16### [at] namtarqubacuk>  wrote:

>  I'm
> kinda disappointed that mesh2's weren't added to POV3.5,

Where and how did you get this idea?  You obviously never even bothered to
check either the program or the documentation 8which is available online after
all).  It is even listed on the Windows and Mac download pages as feature:
"More efficient mesh type".

    Thorsten

In the docs:
<http://www.povray.org/working-docs/id000017.html#2_6_6>
<http://www.povray.org/working-docs/id000165.html#6_5_2_4>


____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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Sorry, I just checked that. Someone said that solid meshes weren't being
added (although the official page says they are being "considered"), and
I, having not really used the MegaPOV meshes much assumed they meant
mesh2's. I think in future I'll double-check what I'm talking about
before I post; this is embarassing!

Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> Where and how did you get this idea?  You obviously never even bothered to
> check either the program or the documentation which is available online after
> all).  It is even listed on the Windows and Mac download pages as feature:
> "More efficient mesh type".

-- 
signature{
  "Grey Knight" contact{ email "gre### [at] yahoocom" }
  site_of_week{ url "http://digilander.iol.it/jrgpov" }
}

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Zeger Knaepen wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> I really don't understand why POV-Ray 3.5 was made.  IMHO it's a waste of time.  The
> POV-Team should have concentrated on starting with POV-Ray 4.0.
> I mean: POV 4.0 will be a complete rewrite, so everything they do now will have to
be
> redone.  What's the point?
> 

If you just don't use the features that are new or strongly improved in
3.5 there is of course no point, but for most people this won't be a valid
argument.  

Megapov, although being quite stable and containing various features that
are not in 3.5 has some serious flaws, especially in the
isosurface/function part like 'trace()' not working on isosurfaces and
much more limited functions.  

I totally understand if people don't use the current betas because they
don't want to regularly download large packages, don't want to have
problems with the various bugs still present and don't want to start
learning a syntax still subject to changes, but just saying Povray 3.5 has
no worthy improvements does not seem a very qualified opinion to me.

-- 
Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde>
IsoWood include, radiosity tutorial, TransSkin and other 
things on: http://www.schunter.etc.tu-bs.de/~chris/

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Zeger Knaepen <zeg### [at] studentkuleuvenacbe> wrote:
:>   Like pattern functions, fractal patterns with exponents >4, transmit
: Aren't pattern functions part of MegaPov?

  There are only pigment functions, which is a bit different beast.

  Note that you can also use pigment functions in pov3.5, but it's more
versatile: You can not only get the gray value of the pigment as its value,
but also any of the color channels or even a hf value.

  I also forgot to mention that in megapov you can only have 3 parameters to
functions, while in pov3.5 you can have any number of parameters from 1 to
some bigger value (which I don't remember). This means that you can do things
like, for example:

#declare MyFunction = function(x,y,z,s) { s*(sin(x)*sin(y)*sin(z))^2 }

and then use it like for example:

  pigment
  { function { MyFunction(x,y,z,(x+y)^2) }
    color_map { [0 rgb 0][.5 rgb x][1 rgb 1] }
  }

:> behaviour outside the range 0-1,
: they have changed the transmit behaviour outside the range 0-1 ???
: :(
: I liked it the way it was...

  Really? Do you know how it was previously? It was pretty illogical and didn't
make much sense.

:> support for reading JPEG and TIFF,
: useful, but not reason enough to use 3.5 instead of MegaPov.  Not for me at least.

  If you are ever going to use imported 3DS files, you'll probably appreciate
the JPEG support, as 3DS textures are often given in JPEG format.

  Other big advantages include the new windows editor, which is much nicer,
the greatly improved documentation and the greatly improved include files.

-- 
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -

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Dave Dunn <poi### [at] aolcom> wrote:
: Reflection blur - I've seen enough workarounds in these groups to know this
: is needed.

  Why? With the "workarounds" you get a nicer result, often even faster. It's
also more versatile, as you can scale non-uniformly the blur amount, and even
make the blurring amount to follow a pattern (or function). This is not
possible with the "hack" in megapov.

: Heightfield_height_at (no way trace works better on hfs, sorry).

  I don't understand why not.
  Tracing is also a lot more versatile than height_at, as you can trace also
from other directions than just directly from above (for example suppose that
you want to simulate meteorites falling and creating holes on a heightfield
at an angle of 60 degrees). Tracing also works if you have a union of a
heightfield with other primitives, which is just not possible with height_at.

: Text object enhancements (why use a macro when you can just use this?).

  Why not?

  I have explained several times why using macros is better than making an
internal feature (if the macro is not annoyingly slower). Macros should always
be preferred to internal support whenever possible.
  Macros are more versatile (internal support is fixed and rigid), changeable
(you can't change internal support) and you can learn from macros (they are
much more readable than reading the povray source code) and make your own
macros based on it.

: Ini_option (why in the world was this removed?).

  Because it breaks the boundaries of what a scene file should be able to
do. It's up to the user to specify rendering settings (such as image
resolution), not the scene file.
  Suppose that you have a really huge scene file with an extremely obfuscated
ini_option which sets the resolution of the rendering to 500000x500000 pixels.
Happy swapping then...

: Mesh Type 2 (parsed much faster and came out smoother).

  Uh? You mean pov3.5 has no mesh2?
  And what do you mean "smoother"?

: OK, there are a few things I like about 3.5 Beta+, like the easier
: dispersion and improved functions (especially for isos), but, let's face
: it, MegaPOV in general is more powerful.

  Not that more powerful. Most of the things you said made just no sense.

-- 
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -

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Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde> wrote:
: I totally understand if people don't use the current betas because they
: don't want to regularly download large packages

  Honestly speaking, I don't.
  Installing the newer beta over the older one is a question of a couple
of minutes. I don't have any trouble with that.
  (Granted, some settings are reset to their defaults in winpov when
installing the new beta, and you have to set them back to what they were,
but fortunately at least the codemax settings (eg. syntax coloring) is
preserved.)

-- 
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -

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