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Christoph Hormann wrote:
> David Buck wrote:
> Nice to see you stray by. As you said a bit of the spirit of the good
> old times(tm) often would be good.
>
> Interesting reading and thanks for the flowers. ;-)
>
> I had a look at the DKBTrace source from the link you gave and it's
> amazing how much from this is still in POV-Ray today. The sad side is
> the amount of bloat added: your lighting.c is 835 lines, today
> lighting.cpp is 6287 lines.
At the time, of course, we didn't have photons or radiosity. That adds
a lot to lighting.cpp.
When we started, the C++ compilers weren't very mature and we coded it
in straight C with OO-like enhancements. I'm surprised that this
approach has survived all these years. POVRay still doesn't use C++
classes.
There was a time when we had implemented refraction wrong. The images
looked ok, but they weren't correct. To test it, we took a glass sphere
that a friend of mine had, put it on a real checkerboard and
photographed it. By modeling this scene in POVRay, we could see how well
the refractions matched.
> BTW what is Aaron Collins doing these days?
Aaron is doing some consulting work in Chicago. If I heard correctly,
he had a bout of cancer and is now in remission.
David Buck
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David Buck <dav### [at] simberon com> wrote:
> When we started, the C++ compilers weren't very mature and we coded it
> in straight C with OO-like enhancements. I'm surprised that this
> approach has survived all these years.
It's the weight of history. Changing from C to fully-OO-C++ requires a
complete redesign, which is not a trivial thing to do.
But your point is exactly why the team has been planning pov4 for so long...
> POVRay still doesn't use C++ classes.
POV-Ray 3.7 actually moved a big step towards that (although it's still
not a full redesign as pov4 ought to be). It was kind of forced due to
the difficulties in making the old code bend into multithreading...
--
- Warp
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> Congratulations, everyone.
>
> David (Kirk) Buck
Awesome to have you stopping by! I wish I'll sometimes spark something like
you did with DKBTrace, I'd be remembered forever!
Thanks for beginning it all!
Regards,
Tim
--
"Tim Nikias v2.0"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>
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David Buck wrote:
>
> When we started, the C++ compilers weren't very mature and we coded it
> in straight C with OO-like enhancements. I'm surprised that this
> approach has survived all these years. POVRay still doesn't use C++
> classes.
Well - it does in some parts and this is about to change for 3.7 for
objects and elsewhere as well but this is still in an early stage...
The fact that it survived for so long IMO indicates it is a good design
- it just got gradually overladen over the years. I guess if you would
start with the DKBTrace code now and add all the new functionality in a
clean and consistent way the result would be quite reasonable (i would
not really recommend to do this though).
> There was a time when we had implemented refraction wrong. The images
> looked ok, but they weren't correct. To test it, we took a glass sphere
> that a friend of mine had, put it on a real checkerboard and
> photographed it. By modeling this scene in POVRay, we could see how well
> the refractions matched.
I guess refraction is working all right meanwhile but i still have
doubts about some aspects of angle dependent reflection... :-)
>
> Aaron is doing some consulting work in Chicago. If I heard correctly,
> he had a bout of cancer and is now in remission.
Send him best wishes then (i guess it would be all right to do so from
the whole POV-Team).
Christoph
--
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Landscape of the week:
http://www.imagico.de/ (Last updated 07 Oct. 2005)
MegaPOV with mechanics simulation: http://megapov.inetart.net/
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PS: I'm baffled and honored to be mentioned in your blog... :-)
Regards,
Tim
--
"Tim Nikias v2.0"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>
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You da man, Dave!
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"David Buck" <dav### [at] simberoncom> wrote in message
news:4347254d$1@news.povray.org...
> After speaking to Aaron Collins today (Aaron helped me write DKBTrace
> which was later used as the basis of POVRay), I wrote a blog article on
> POVRay, its history, and its present state.
>
>
http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs/buck/blogView?showComments=true&entry=3306173249
>
> To everyone in the POVRay community, I commend you. POVRay is a
> phenominal program and the quality of the images the POV artists make with
> it is amazing.
>
> In the early days of DKBTrace, I toyed with the idea of making it a
> commercial product. Making it freeware, however, has allowed it to catch
> on and grow in ways I'd never imagined. I couldn't begin to count the
> number of people it has influenced and inspired. I can only claim a small
> part of the credit since I haven't been involved with the project since
> about 1993. The POVRay team and the community have made POVRay what it is
> today. It's still, however, a major source of pride for me.
>
> Congratulations, everyone.
>
> David (Kirk) Buck
The PoV-Ray community thanks and commends you in return :-)
You created something deserving of its own place in history and that has
grown to develop its independent life. It has influenced many thousands,
and will continue to influence many thousands more. Its use has and will
spread to be applied to many unexpected purposes and visualizations, as
people build new ingenuity with the foundation you laid down.
I think you can look upon your effort building this snowball and rightfully
feel proud that its rolling effect has spread so broadly in the world beyond
its small starting point.
Thanks,
Brian
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David Buck wrote:
>
> David (Kirk) Buck
Thanks,
All my life I've been facinated with 3D graphics and in 1994 my world
was opened... I found DKBTrace and then POV-Ray 2.2 on BBSs and my 3D
world took off.
Thanks bunches!
Tom
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Tom Austin wrote:
> David Buck wrote:
>
>>
>> David (Kirk) Buck
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> All my life I've been facinated with 3D graphics and in 1994 my world
> was opened... I found DKBTrace and then POV-Ray 2.2 on BBSs and my 3D
> world took off.
>
> Thanks bunches!
>
>
> Tom
I first got interested in graphics around 1978 when I saw a 3D vector
animation (no hidden line removal). When I took linear algebra in by
last year of high school (1980-81), I was mostly interested in how to
use matrices for 3D graphics.
Somewhere around 1981-82, I remember discussing a graphics technique
with a friend of mine. My idea was to shoot rays from a viewpoint out
through a virtual image into a 3D world, find the closest point of
intersection with objects in that world, then color the pixel with the
appropriate color. Sound familiar? Unfortunately, I didn't have the
hardware to do the calculations or the display.
It was only after I got an Amiga that I had the color capacity to do
raytracing. I had done some line graphics in 3D before, but when a
friend brought over a C program that did raytracing, I was intrigued.
It only rendered grayscale images and only supported spheres. I got it
running on my Amiga and later adapted it to support color.
I then abandoned it and started writing my own from scratch. The first
version of DKBTrace I released only had quartics (no primitives for
spheres, planes, cylinders, cones, etc), CSG, and procedural textures.
The procedural textures were implemented based on a paper in the 1985
SIGGRAPH conference called "Solid Texturing of Complex Surfaces". I
thought they looked cool.
DKBTrace and POVRay are excellent examples of programs that were grown,
not built. It started from a small core and grew from there. We didn't
do a design of the complete system and build it from that. I'm
convinced that the organic growth technique works best.
Anyway, I'm glad others have had fun with it. I've always found
computers and programming to be fun and like to let others to have fun
with them as well.
David Buck
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David Buck wrote:
> Tom Austin wrote:
>
>> David Buck wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> David (Kirk) Buck
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> All my life I've been facinated with 3D graphics and in 1994 my world
>> was opened... I found DKBTrace and then POV-Ray 2.2 on BBSs and my 3D
>> world took off.
>>
>> Thanks bunches!
>>
>>
>> Tom
>
>
> I first got interested in graphics around 1978 when I saw a 3D vector
> animation (no hidden line removal). When I took linear algebra in by
> last year of high school (1980-81), I was mostly interested in how to
> use matrices for 3D graphics.
>
Around 1988 or 1989 - just before I entered high school - I found a book
at the local library titled Microcomputer Graphics by Roy E. Myers -
it's one f those things you will never forget. I was always interested
in computer graphics, but this did it to me. It allowed me to design my
own 3D objects with hidden line removal. I forever wanted to tell the
library that my dog ate the book and regret that I did not do that. At
the time I didn't understand the math behind the graphics, but who knows
where I'd be today if I had the book as I grew up and referred to it as
I learned the concepts in school.
But I still had the programs.... So in 9th grade I taught myself
assembly and machine language on the Apple IIe so that I could do some
mini animations. The BASIC programs would computer all of the data and
store the points in memory. Then the assembly program could use the
memory to quickly display the precomputed images for an animation. I
didn't go much beyond that, but it was a lot of fun.
> Somewhere around 1981-82, I remember discussing a graphics technique
> with a friend of mine. My idea was to shoot rays from a viewpoint out
> through a virtual image into a 3D world, find the closest point of
> intersection with objects in that world, then color the pixel with the
> appropriate color. Sound familiar? Unfortunately, I didn't have the
> hardware to do the calculations or the display.
>
That sounds like that start of a ray tracer :-)
It's amazing how far computing power has come in the past 10-20 years.
Things that were virtually impossible a decade ago are common place
today - just because of the speed available.
> It was only after I got an Amiga that I had the color capacity to do
> raytracing. I had done some line graphics in 3D before, but when a
> friend brought over a C program that did raytracing, I was intrigued. It
> only rendered grayscale images and only supported spheres. I got it
> running on my Amiga and later adapted it to support color.
>
> I then abandoned it and started writing my own from scratch. The first
> version of DKBTrace I released only had quartics (no primitives for
> spheres, planes, cylinders, cones, etc), CSG, and procedural textures.
> The procedural textures were implemented based on a paper in the 1985
> SIGGRAPH conference called "Solid Texturing of Complex Surfaces". I
> thought they looked cool.
>
SIGGRAPH still produces some interesting topics. One I recently ran
across was dual photography.
http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/dual_photography/
> DKBTrace and POVRay are excellent examples of programs that were grown,
> not built. It started from a small core and grew from there. We didn't
> do a design of the complete system and build it from that. I'm
> convinced that the organic growth technique works best.
>
When you allow an outlet for others with talent to help improve
something, you aren't just hearing their clamors for new features, you
are getting the new features.
> Anyway, I'm glad others have had fun with it. I've always found
> computers and programming to be fun and like to let others to have fun
> with them as well.
>
I can't agree more.
LAter... Tom
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