Warp wrote:
> 
> Deaken <dwy### [at] sw-techcom> wrote:
> : Oh.  I thought you meant a raytracer actually written IN SDL
> 
>   It is.

Sorry.  Insomnia.  I see it now.  Section 4.2.

Wow.  This is sick.  I love it.

Deaken

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Mitchell Waite wrote:
> 
<snip>

> 
> I know very little about this other products: blender, spatch, hamapatch,
> anim8tor, amapi, rhino. I have tried blender but it would not run properly
> on my Win2K machine with dual LCD monitors. Are these all freeware programs,
> because the one disconnect with Moray is that its retail product and that
> does not work very well with the free nature of POV. What about including
> some of these products in the gray text, would that be a turn off?

No, that would not be a turn-off to me.  Rhino ain't free- that
thing is a costly beast.  sPatch and Hamapatch are (for now). 
Moray isn't too expensive and seems to have the perfect price
point to features balance to be successful.  Anyway, POVlab is
free and open source, isn't it?
http://pdelagrange.free.fr/povlab/  The difficulty of programming
a modeler seems to be a real problem with developing them, and as
a result no freeware modeler for POV compares to Moray's
completeness.

> 
> I wonder about the statment "it's impossible to really unleash povray's
> power without learning the scene description language"? How is that true?

Animation.  As yet no interface helps with all that you can do. 
There are other reasons, but that's my biggy.  Particles (which
sorta go hand in hand with animation), etc...

> "And some of the coolest povray stuff is not implemented in these modelers
> yet." Well there is SO MUCH stuff in POV Ray that is implemented in these
> modelers that I am not sure a book needs to cover everything in POV Ray,
> that seems like a daunting and almost impossible requirement.

Not if you forgo the basic: "this is a right-handed coordinate
system, this is a left-handed system, this is a cube see how it
works, this is a sphere, see how it works," part of the book
which always seems so obligatory whenever new books come out. 
Just skip that 30% of the book, use it for something else- at
most point out other free resources that a newbie can fetch to
get up to speed.

<snip>

> something in POV" could easily be parallel with "here is how its done in
> Moray", or whatever modeler you are using.

This about doubles the text on each subject, no?  IMO that should
be the responsibility of *Moray's* docs, not anyone's 3rd party
docs.  Maybe just review (briefly) the resources out there- have
you even checked ut POVlab?  IMO, getting people acquainted with
the scripting and power of POV seems like enough of a task, and
an interesting enough task.  Moray is a for-profit enterprise,
they can handle this responsibility on its own.  Your pointing
out where it can be found, and briefly describing it is enough, I
think.  As you'll probably include a CD, having the current
version on there would be a lot too- but also consider adding
alternative modelers to the CD.

> 
> I very much appreciate the feelback, its helping me calibrate my ideas for
> the team that is forming. Nothing has been decided so this is a great time
> for people to jump in and help shape this project.

Glad you're having this discussion! :o)

-peter

-- 
Current obsession: "Ballet pour ma fille."
http://www.applesnake.net

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I think that the docs for the matrix keyword are poor. And all of the
tutorial links I could find on the web were dead. I figured it out with
trial and error, but I think a better explanation in the docs would be nice.
For the most part, however, the 3.5 docs are VERY thorough.


"Christoph Hormann" <chr### [at] gmxde> wrote in message
news:3C4AA1A9.D9AC5E08@gmx.de...
> Could you give an example?  Of course the tutorials in the POV-Ray docs
> have their limitations.  There is not room for a lot of illustartions and
> they have to be quite technical, but i would not call any of them 'poor'.

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In article <3c4b6349@news.povray.org>, "Shay" <shi### [at] houstonrrcom> 
wrote:

> I think that the docs for the matrix keyword are poor. And all of the
> tutorial links I could find on the web were dead. I figured it out with
> trial and error, but I think a better explanation in the docs would be nice.
> For the most part, however, the 3.5 docs are VERY thorough.

http://enphilistor.users4.50megs.com/matrix.htm
http://www.shipbrook.com/jeff/raytrace/matrix.html

-- 
 -- 
Christopher James Huff <chr### [at] maccom>

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In article <chr### [at] netplexaussieorg>,
Christopher James Huff <chr### [at] maccom> writes
>In article <3C4AD7F1.47D921B5@sw-tech.com>, Deaken <dwy### [at] sw-techcom> 
>wrote:
>
>> Oh, PLEASE tell me that one or both of these are available on the web
>> somewhere or in someone's personal archive.  I am a huge fan of Just Plain
>> Wrong coding (I wrote a CGI script or two in make(1), and actually used,
>> albeit not for long, ddcalc), and these sound brilliant.
>
>The raytracer is part of the POV 3.5 documentation:
>http://www.povray.org/working-docs/
>
I have read through the sections of the docs about it, but the link to
download the complete source 404s.
-- 
David Parrott

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Thank you very much, Christopher.

 -Shay
"Christopher James Huff" <chr### [at] maccom> wrote in message
news:chr### [at] netplexaussieorg...

Post a reply to this message

Deaken wrote in message <3C4A9CF0.7FFE3BA7@sw-tech.com>...
>Warp wrote:
>>
>> Deaken <dwy### [at] sw-techcom> wrote:
>> : Oh.  I thought you meant a raytracer actually written IN SDL
>>
>>   It is.
>
>Sorry.  Insomnia.  I see it now.  Section 4.2.
>
>Wow.  This is sick.  I love it.


Even worse: I'm working on an SDL and parser for the SDL raytracer. (Do I
have too much time on my hands or what?)

--
Mark

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Mitchell,

I am usually just a lurker on this group, but with the reception you have been
getting on here lately, I just had to speak up.

The Waite group books I remember were all excellent. Period.

Obviously, there would be interest in a new book.  Not to discount the idea of
doing some market research, but why don't you follow your own instincts about
what to include in your book.  They are your ideas, it would be your book, and
if you continue in your tradition of excellence, it will be a good book.  I
think (I say with my asbestos underwear on) that everybody currently pitching
criticism your way should just hold their comments and wait for your new book
(if there will be one) to come out.  It will speak for itself.

Respectfully,

    Randy Hawley


Mitchell Waite wrote:

> Some people say that the POV Ray SDL is a turn off for new users, others say
> that modeling programs are a turn off to scripters There seems to be a real
> scism here. There are issues with Moray's right handed polor coordinates,
> and some thing sPartch or Hamapatch are a better choce (tho I have not heard
> why they are). When I was speaking of putting Moray text in a gray box I did
> not mean that text would reproduce the user docs in Moray. I don't see my
> book idea as competing with either Moray or POV Ray docs, that would be a
> waste of trees. I want to improve the tutorials, not compete with them. I
> think that the tutorials in the POV Ray and Moray docs are very uneven, some
> are great, some are okay, and some are poor.
>
> I know very little about this other products: blender, spatch, hamapatch,
> anim8tor, amapi, rhino. I have tried blender but it would not run properly
> on my Win2K machine with dual LCD monitors. Are these all freeware programs,
> because the one disconnect with Moray is that its retail product and that
> does not work very well with the free nature of POV. What about including
> some of these products in the gray text, would that be a turn off?
>
> I wonder about the statment "it's impossible to really unleash povray's
> power without learning the scene description language"? How is that true?
> "And some of the coolest povray stuff is not implemented in these modelers
> yet." Well there is SO MUCH stuff in POV Ray that is implemented in these
> modelers that I am not sure a book needs to cover everything in POV Ray,
> that seems like a daunting and almost impossible requirement.
>
> "Furthermore the structure of a book about Moray would should be quite
> different from one about Povray." I don't see how this follows. Why would
> they have to have different structures? Seems like "here is how to do
> something in POV" could easily be parallel with "here is how its done in
> Moray", or whatever modeler you are using.
>
> I very much appreciate the feelback, its helping me calibrate my ideas for
> the team that is forming. Nothing has been decided so this is a great time
> for people to jump in and help shape this project.

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Christopher James Huff wrote in message ...
>I don't think the "virus" is available, and it wouldn't work with the
>security features in POV 3.5 anyway.


The virus is sitting in povray.binaries.scene-files (Title: POV-Ray Scene
Virus).  It was designed in POV-Ray 3.1, but it works just fine in POV-Ray
3.5.  With the default security settings, it will spend the next 80 years
infecting every file in the current directory.

(BTW, it doesn't *quite* work in POV 3.1 because of a bug in how escape
sequences are handled.)

--
Mark

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Mark Wagner wrote:
> 
> The virus [...]

Cut-n-paste + a handful of Perl == insane giggling.

That's truly sick, Mark.  Thank you.  :)

Deaken

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