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From: GreyBeard
Subject: Pov 2.2 and Crossroads
Date: 1 Jan 2004 11:28:00
Message: <3ff44a90$1@news.povray.org>
Just a general question, before I drag the old 166 P2 out and try it.  Keith
Rule's Crossroads, if I read the menu right, will convert POV 2.0 to other
formats, which could make life a bit simpler for me.  I don't have 2.0, but
have the 2.2 version that came with the Ray Tracing Creations book.  Were
the changes between 2.0 and 2.2 enough that it would have problems?  Most of
what I'll be doing consists mainly of primitives, I'm not into animations,
all I want to do is import props into Poser so I can make the figures fit
before I render in POV-Ray.  Poseray does a fair job of translating the
Poser files to Pov, but it would be nice if I could see the prop I'm trying
to make the figure fit, while I'm trying to make the figure fit.


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From: Ken
Subject: Re: Pov 2.2 and Crossroads
Date: 1 Jan 2004 11:50:19
Message: <3FF45061.6C47671A@pacbell.net>
GreyBeard wrote:
> 
> Just a general question, before I drag the old 166 P2 out and try it.  Keith
> Rule's Crossroads, if I read the menu right, will convert POV 2.0 to other
> formats, which could make life a bit simpler for me.  I don't have 2.0, but
> have the 2.2 version that came with the Ray Tracing Creations book.  Were
> the changes between 2.0 and 2.2 enough that it would have problems?  Most of
> what I'll be doing consists mainly of primitives, I'm not into animations,
> all I want to do is import props into Poser so I can make the figures fit
> before I render in POV-Ray.  Poseray does a fair job of translating the
> Poser files to Pov, but it would be nice if I could see the prop I'm trying
> to make the figure fit, while I'm trying to make the figure fit.

Fundamentally there was no major difference between v2.0 and v2.2. Be aware,
however, that Crossroads will only read in a union of triangles and has no
ability to handle POV-Ray's internal primitives.

-- 
Ken Tyler


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From: GreyBeard
Subject: Re: Pov 2.2 and Crossroads
Date: 1 Jan 2004 12:24:00
Message: <3ff457b0@news.povray.org>
>
> Fundamentally there was no major difference between v2.0 and v2.2. Be
aware,
> however, that Crossroads will only read in a union of triangles and has no
> ability to handle POV-Ray's internal primitives.
>
Yeah, my bad.  Crossroads reads 2.2.   I shouldn't be trying to do POV
scenes at 2:30 in the morning and trying to think at 8:00.  For some reason
it doesn't work.

Rich


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: Pov 2.2 and Crossroads
Date: 1 Jan 2004 12:45:54
Message: <3ff45cd2@news.povray.org>
It doesn't really matter which version of *POV-Ray* you have installed.
Whether crossroads can read your pov-file or not depends on the pov-file
itself (ie. which version of POV-Ray it is written for). The POV-Ray
binary version you have installed doesn't have any effect on this.

-- 
#macro N(D)#if(D>99)cylinder{M()#local D=div(D,104);M().5,2pigment{rgb M()}}
N(D)#end#end#macro M()<mod(D,13)-6mod(div(D,13)8)-3,10>#end blob{
N(11117333955)N(4254934330)N(3900569407)N(7382340)N(3358)N(970)}//  - Warp -


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From: nathen watson
Subject: Re: Pov 2.2 and Crossroads
Date: 1 Jan 2004 17:41:59
Message: <3ff4a237@news.povray.org>
I also tried using Crossroads to convert POV meshes to other formats, but I
couldnt figure out how to use the program to do it. Also, it seemed
pointless to me to try to use a much older version of POV, since the current
version of POV is much more capable, and has many more features.

I like the way that a person can use the programming and mathematics
capabilities of POV to create shapes and objects. I have always wanted to
make shapes and objects with POV, and then export them to other formats, so
I could render them with other renderers, like Bryce 4.

POV 3.5 does has the ability to export triangle meshes to other formats, if
you write macros to do it.

I have been working on a set of macros, that export triangle meshes to .OBJ
file format. (Of all the file formats that I looked at, .OBJ seemed to be
the simplest). I have got these macros working enough to export a few basic
mesh shapes, like spheres, cones, and cylinders, to .OBJ file format.  I
have rendered a few models that were created from these POV macros in Bryce
4, Vue dEsprit 4, and Blender.

I use the Poseray program extensively in developing the macros, as Poseray
lets me view the .OBJ shapes that these POV macros create. Poseray also
removes degenerate triangles, and can clean up the models, add normals, etc.

I think the solution to the export question is to use the current
capabilities of POV, rather than using older versions of programs which are
no longer supported.

I hope that in future versions of POV, the POV development team will add
native export capabilities that can export POV primatives to popular mesh
file formats.

Nathen Watson


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: Pov 2.2 and Crossroads
Date: 1 Jan 2004 18:38:41
Message: <3ff4af81@news.povray.org>
nathen watson <nxw### [at] volcanonet> wrote:
> POV 3.5 does has the ability to export triangle meshes to other formats, if
> you write macros to do it.

  I would be surprised if this was so because AFAIK there's no way of
getting information about a mesh in POV-Ray. (I once made a patch for
this purpose, but it kind of died because the tesselation patch which
was the main idea in that patch didn't quite work well.)

  However, you can use eg. the triangle mesh compressor program to
convert a POV-Ray mesh or mesh2 (at least with the new version 3 beta)
to PCM format which is easily readable in POV-Ray, and you can use that
info to export to almost any other (ascii) format with a proper POV-Ray
SDL script.

  (The original idea of the PCM format was that it was much smaller than
the mesh format (mesh2 didn't yet exist back when PCM was developed), but
currently the PCM format is more handy for making pov-scripts which make
all kinds of handy operations to meshes, such as deformations, hair-growing,
subsurface division, exporting to other formats...)

-- 
#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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From: nathen watson
Subject: Re: Pov 2.2 and Crossroads
Date: 1 Jan 2004 19:59:49
Message: <3ff4c285@news.povray.org>
Im not sure if the word "export" is the right word to use for what my macros
do. However, here is an explanation of what they do.

The idea is pretty simple. There are three ways to 'export' shapes that I
tried. The first way that I tried was very inefficient and produced lots of
redundant vertexes. It is as follows: Write a macro that creates a mesh
shape, such as a cylinder. (The mesh object that the macro creates is not
actually seen in the SDL file)  Every triangle has 3 corners. As the macro
creates the first triangle of that mesh cylinder, write out 3 vertexes to a
.OBJ file, corresponding to the corners of that triangle.
for example,
when the macro makes:   triangle {<-1, 0, 0>, <1, 0, 0>, <0, 1, 0>}
write out in the .OBJ file:

                v   -1    0    0
                v    1    0    0
                v    0    1    0

Then connect those 3 vertexes with a face in the .OBJ file.
i.e:           f   1   2   3

Do the same with the next triangle and continue this process until the macro
finishes.

The second way that I tried was more efficient. Write a macro that displays
a POV primative, such as a sphere, as a marker for the corresponding .OBJ
mesh object. Then in that same macro, write out vertexes and faces, to an
.OBJ file, which creates a .OBJ mesh sphere with the same scale, and
transforms as the POV primative.


The third way that I tried was sort of a combination of both ways explained
above. Write a macro that generates and displays a POV mesh shape, that is
used as a marker for the corresponding .OBJ mesh shape. Then in that same
macro write out vertexes and faces, to the .OBJ file, which creates a .OBJ
mesh shape, with the same scale and transforms as the POV mesh shape.

After the POV macros write out the .OBJ file, open that file with Poseray to
view the shape, and possibly clean up the model.

Even if this process is not technically "exporting", it still has the same
result. I can use POV, and Poseray, to create shapes, which I can render in
other rendering packages.

Hope this was helpful.

Nathen Watson

"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:3ff4af81@news.povray.org...
> nathen watson <nxw### [at] volcanonet> wrote:
> > POV 3.5 does has the ability to export triangle meshes to other formats,
if
> > you write macros to do it.
>
>   I would be surprised if this was so because AFAIK there's no way of
> getting information about a mesh in POV-Ray. (I once made a patch for
> this purpose, but it kind of died because the tesselation patch which
> was the main idea in that patch didn't quite work well.)
>
>   However, you can use eg. the triangle mesh compressor program to
> convert a POV-Ray mesh or mesh2 (at least with the new version 3 beta)
> to PCM format which is easily readable in POV-Ray, and you can use that
> info to export to almost any other (ascii) format with a proper POV-Ray
> SDL script.
>
>   (The original idea of the PCM format was that it was much smaller than
> the mesh format (mesh2 didn't yet exist back when PCM was developed), but
> currently the PCM format is more handy for making pov-scripts which make
> all kinds of handy operations to meshes, such as deformations,
hair-growing,
> subsurface division, exporting to other formats...)
>
> --
> #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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From: Warp
Subject: Re: Pov 2.2 and Crossroads
Date: 1 Jan 2004 20:22:35
Message: <3ff4c7db@news.povray.org>
What you are trying to do is not to export a POV-Ray mesh to another
format but to tesselate primitives (and write them to a file in the
process).
  The problem with your idea is that you can't take an existing scene
and "export" it to an OBJ file. You need to basically rebuild the whole
scene by replacing every primitive with a correspondent macro call.

  And you can't convert every scene this way either. I bet your macros
won't support CSG nor the most complex primitives of POV-Ray nor meshes.

  I'm afraid that if the macros don't support at least CSG, they are
more or less useless because it's difficult to construct any decent
scene using primitives but without CSG. Such scenes will be rather
simple in nature.

-- 
plane{-x+y,-1pigment{bozo color_map{[0rgb x][1rgb x+y]}turbulence 1}}
sphere{0,2pigment{rgbt 1}interior{media{emission 1density{spherical
density_map{[0rgb 0][.5rgb<1,.5>][1rgb 1]}turbulence.9}}}scale
<1,1,3>hollow}text{ttf"timrom""Warp".1,0translate<-1,-.1,2>}//  - Warp -


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From: Tim Cook
Subject: Re: Pov 2.2 and Crossroads
Date: 2 Jan 2004 00:05:49
Message: <3ff4fc2d@news.povray.org>
Warp wrote:
> Such scenes will be rather simple in nature.

Sphere, reflective.  Plane, checkered.

What more could anyone ask?


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From: nathen watson
Subject: Re: Pov 2.2 and Crossroads
Date: 2 Jan 2004 00:51:29
Message: <3ff506e1@news.povray.org>
True, there is no CSG. (That would be an interesting challenge to tackle).
But I think it is a first step in the right direction.


"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:3ff4c7db@news.povray.org...
>   What you are trying to do is not to export a POV-Ray mesh to another
> format but to tesselate primitives (and write them to a file in the
> process).
>   The problem with your idea is that you can't take an existing scene
> and "export" it to an OBJ file. You need to basically rebuild the whole
> scene by replacing every primitive with a correspondent macro call.
>
>   And you can't convert every scene this way either. I bet your macros
> won't support CSG nor the most complex primitives of POV-Ray nor meshes.
>
>   I'm afraid that if the macros don't support at least CSG, they are
> more or less useless because it's difficult to construct any decent
> scene using primitives but without CSG. Such scenes will be rather
> simple in nature.
>
> --
> plane{-x+y,-1pigment{bozo color_map{[0rgb x][1rgb x+y]}turbulence 1}}
> sphere{0,2pigment{rgbt 1}interior{media{emission 1density{spherical
> density_map{[0rgb 0][.5rgb<1,.5>][1rgb 1]}turbulence.9}}}scale
> <1,1,3>hollow}text{ttf"timrom""Warp".1,0translate<-1,-.1,2>}//  - Warp -


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