> > I have also made a raytracer - in Java of all things! (Well, the
original
> > was made with Smalltalk - but who else actually has that?)
>
> You mean your original raytracer? Because "the original" raytracer was a
> piece of twine. ;-)

<groans>

Yes, I ment *my* original. And actually, it's just occurred to me - the
*very* _first_ prototype of it was actually done with Borland's Turbo Pascal
5.5 for DOS. (Anyone remember that ol' thing?)

> If you mean your original, it sounds interesting...I've always been
> interested in Smalltalk. I know of another raytracer written in
> Objective C, which is basically a halfway point between Smalltalk and C.

C hurts my head. I tried to make an interpreter for my own OOP language that
I designed... But pointers to arrays of pointers to pointers to functions is
just _not_ fun.

> (Actually, waaaaay back I tried emailling one of the POV-Team
> > members about the math, but never got an answer. Hardly suprising - they
> > probably get daft emails like this every second wednesday...)
>
> Try a post on one of these newsgroups, maybe advanced-users.

Mmm... will maybe do that sometime... although it's not strictly
POV-related...

> > PS. Isn't building a raytracer with OOP so confusing? Which kind of
"object"
> > are you talking about... ;-)
>
> Do what I did for my tracer: physical things are "shapes", objects are
> bundles of information/behavior. Gets rid of the ambiguity nice and
> neatly.

The way my tracer works, a "shape" described the 3-dimensional form of an
object; a "texture" basically maps points to surfaces, and a "surface"
described the object's surface characteristics. (I.e., by the wonder of
polymorphism, subclasses of Surface implements light-sourcing, reflection,
refraction one day, etc.) And "object" itself is the combination of a shape
and a texture. So anyway, I just renamed it to "item"... (Java doesn't like
you declaring classes called "Object"; could have done "Object3D" or
something, but "Item" is less typing ;-)

> > PPS. If I were God, POV_Ray's SDL would be object-oriented (in the
> > programming sense).
>
> It already comes close in some ways. I think it could be made into a
> prototype-based OO language with little modification.

I thought about writing some sorta thingy that would parse an input file in
my own custom-designed language, and spit out a result in ordinary POV-Ray
SDL. But I don't understand POV-Ray's SDL well enought to do it. (Ahhhh...
tell the trueth: you can't write a parser to save your life! :-(

Andrew.

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> Actually I have written it in Java first as well - I needed to learn java
> for my study. But it was a factor 3-10 slower than the c++ version.

I'll bet! (The speed part, that is.) Don't like Java much, but it's the only
way to reach a larger audience...

> While I already had algreba courses I pretty figgured out all the
> neccessary transformations for ray tracing myself... The nice thing was
> that when I came to think about how isosurfaces and volumetric media works
> I could perfectly make usage of the root finding and numerical integration
> techniques that I had been taught just before.
>
> Actually I just today started having a graphic course which will bring me
a
> bit deeper into the things and algorithms behind rendering.

Ah, now we did do a term studying computer graphics... Everyone thought the
guy was joking when we said our assignment was to write a program to draw an
antialiased STRAIGHT LINE using Bresenham's Algorithm... Ahh, memories...
(What am I on? It was only 5 months ago!)

> > PS. Isn't building a raytracer with OOP so confusing? Which kind of
> > "object" are you talking about... ;-)
>
> Well, I called the objects' base class 'Object3D'. When you are talking of
> 'classes' and 'instances' about OOP there is no name conflict.

Yeah, but Java has a class called "Object". Like you say, "Object3D" would
work fine; I chose "Item" instead - it works better in English as well as in
code...

Andrew.

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On Fri, 25 Oct 2002 17:08:09 +0100, "Andrew Coppin" <orp### [at] btinternetcom>
wrote:
> Yes, I ment *my* original. And actually, it's just occurred to me - the
> *very* _first_ prototype of it was actually done with Borland's Turbo Pascal
> 5.5 for DOS. (Anyone remember that ol' thing?)

I don't remember version but that was my first tool for renderings too. 

ABX

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In article <3db96c70@news.povray.org>,
 "Andrew Coppin" <orp### [at] btinternetcom> wrote:

> C hurts my head. I tried to make an interpreter for my own OOP language that
> I designed... But pointers to arrays of pointers to pointers to functions is
> just _not_ fun.

I know what you mean...I just finished redoing the memory management for 
G. It now uses some pretty low level pointer magic to use the same 
memory block as both stack and data space, function calls have very 
little overhead now, but my brain is pretty well fried. The STL helps 
sometimes, but in this case a more specialized structure was needed.


> > Try a post on one of these newsgroups, maybe advanced-users.
> Mmm... will maybe do that sometime... although it's not strictly
> POV-related...

Not POV specific, but raytracing related...post in the programming or 
advanced users groups.


> The way my tracer works, a "shape" described the 3-dimensional form of an
> object; a "texture" basically maps points to surfaces, and a "surface"
> described the object's surface characteristics. (I.e., by the wonder of
> polymorphism, subclasses of Surface implements light-sourcing, reflection,
> refraction one day, etc.) And "object" itself is the combination of a shape
> and a texture. So anyway, I just renamed it to "item"... (Java doesn't like
> you declaring classes called "Object"; could have done "Object3D" or
> something, but "Item" is less typing ;-)

My raytracer has a Tracer object instead to manage things, shapes are 
mainly concerned with geometry, and it uses a tree of objects to 
evaluate the texture.


> I thought about writing some sorta thingy that would parse an input file in
> my own custom-designed language, and spit out a result in ordinary POV-Ray
> SDL. But I don't understand POV-Ray's SDL well enought to do it. (Ahhhh...
> tell the trueth: you can't write a parser to save your life! :-(

Thats what CSDL (now Sapphire) was originally supposed to be, just a 
translator. The first name was CSDL, for C-like Scene Description 
Language, then C-like Simulation Description Language, and then Sapphire 
because it isn't limited to either of those and I didn't like the 
acronym.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

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Christopher James Huff wrote:

> Thats what CSDL (now Sapphire) was originally supposed to be, just a
> translator. The first name was CSDL, for C-like Scene Description
> Language, then C-like Simulation Description Language, and then Sapphire
> because it isn't limited to either of those and I didn't like the
> acronym.

http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/09/sapphire.html

-- 
Ken Tyler

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In article <3DB9E7FB.ECE938C3@pacbell.net>, Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet> 
wrote:

> http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/09/sapphire.html

Uh-oh...and I was pretty sure the name wasn't taken. I did find out 
about some kind of audio editing/generating tool called Sapphire, but it 
seemed unrelated enough to not matter. This seems to be a specific 
implementation of the Perl API instead of a language...any opinions?

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

Kids these days...5.5?  That's kinda late.  I've still got a
copy of version 2 around here somewhere - probably on 5 1/4" floppy.
That's ONE floppy mind you.

And, yes, I had a raytracer I wrote in it too...
Still have it! Originally ran it on a 8Mhz 286.  One scene I gen'd
had 48 glass triangles and took over 80 hours to render at 320x200
on a 20Mhz 386. (Compaq 386 20E)

Guess I'm showing my age...;)

Emory

ABX wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 25 Oct 2002 17:08:09 +0100, "Andrew Coppin" <orp### [at] btinternetcom>
> wrote:
> > Yes, I ment *my* original. And actually, it's just occurred to me - the
> > *very* _first_ prototype of it was actually done with Borland's Turbo Pascal
> > 5.5 for DOS. (Anyone remember that ol' thing?)
> 
> I don't remember version but that was my first tool for renderings too.
> 
> ABX

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Keep the name. It's cool, and there must be hundreds of projects with the
same names.

--
Anthony

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>>http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/09/sapphire.html
>>
> 
> Uh-oh...and I was pretty sure the name wasn't taken. I did find out 
> about some kind of audio editing/generating tool called Sapphire, but it 
> seemed unrelated enough to not matter. This seems to be a specific 
> implementation of the Perl API instead of a language...any opinions?
> 


It seems like most common stones have already been used.
You can check http://www.astrogallery.com to see if you can find some 
stone name that hasn't been used for a language project yet.

How about "Schorl"? It doesn't sound like something that is likely to 
have been used :)

/Ib

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In article <3DB### [at] ibrasdk>, Ib Rasmussen <ib### [at] ibrasdk> 
wrote:

> It seems like most common stones have already been used.

By languages?


> How about "Schorl"? It doesn't sound like something that is likely to 
> have been used :)

Eh, no thanks.
If this other "Sapphire" is too close, maybe I'll rename it after a 
metal...Copper, Iron, Cobalt. Lithium might be a good choice for one of 
the "esoteric" languages. Carbon is already used for a common API, 
Mercury is probably taken. Or just a substance: Glass (maybe for my VR 
simulator). Or maybe a scientific/math constant:
C already exists of course...speed of light in a vacuum.
Pi is obvious.
E
Maybe "V" instead of "G" for my second language, it is going to have 
very good support for vector math. (it already fully supports 3D 
vectors, it will eventually support vectors of any size)

Maybe "mongoose". (they kill snakes)

Maybe I should make 4 languages named after the 4 elements: earth, air, 
fire, and water.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

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