Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>
>   Most POV-Ray animations I have seen in YouTube do not pay almost any
> attention whatsoever to texturing and lighting quality. This has the
> negative effect of making POV-Ray look like a very primitive rendering
> program, like it was 15 years ago. It would be really nice if people
> making such animations would put a lit more work on the textures and
> lighting.

DISCLAIMER: My favorite 3D films (The Incredibles to Meatballs to Astro Boy)
wouldn't be what they are without ideal use of radiosity, lighting, and
texturing.


What is the purpose of art-- what is the purpose of tinkering with povray?
Reasons might include the search for what will sell for a buck, what is
entertaining, what brings joy, what will inform, what will inspire.


I would encourage folks not to follow Warp's advice.  My basis for making this
recommendation is that I am the creator of the  23rd, 31st, 45th, 51st, 54th,
55th, 59th, (and 813th!!) most "popular" of the 814 products labeled with
"povray" at zazzle.com.  Some of my works have a higher rating than some of
Giles Tran's.  While all of his work probably has higher artistic merit, its
possible that zazzle's page-view statistics could show that joy, entertainment,
or inspiration could come with simple forms over exhaustive photorealism.


So the advice, of:
"Please don't embarass the povray community by displaying work which doesn't
demonstrate optimum radiosity, lighting, and texturing."

.... should be counterbalanced with the advice of:
"Please don't embarass the povray community by displaying work that has wooden
demonstrations of radiosity, lighting, and texturing."

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gregjohn <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> What is the purpose of art-- what is the purpose of tinkering with povray?
> Reasons might include the search for what will sell for a buck, what is
> entertaining, what brings joy, what will inform, what will inspire.

  In general, art should aim to be visually pleasing. While a common view
is that an artist makes art for himself, not for others, the pragmatic
approach should be the opposite: If you are going to share your works of
art, it's good to aim for that art to be visually pleasing to others.

  No offense to the original author of the video, but I feel that often
these animations with simplistic textures pulled directly from the standard
include files as-they-are is not a result of expressing oneself as a form
of art, but just laziness. In other words, only a minimum amount of work was
put into making the animation.

  Of course anybody is entitled to do their animations in whichever way
they want, but I offered my suggestions on how he could better his work
to increase their quality (especially since he specifically asked for it).

  What personally bothers me about lazy texturing is, as I already said,
that it gives a rather poor perception of how good of a renderer POV-Ray
really is. If the images look like they were created in 1995, it doesn't
give a very good impression of the program.

> I would encourage folks not to follow Warp's advice.  My basis for making this
> recommendation is that I am the creator of the  23rd, 31st, 45th, 51st, 54th,
> 55th, 59th, (and 813th!!) most "popular" of the 814 products labeled with
> "povray" at zazzle.com.  Some of my works have a higher rating than some of
> Giles Tran's.  While all of his work probably has higher artistic merit, its
> possible that zazzle's page-view statistics could show that joy, entertainment,
> or inspiration could come with simple forms over exhaustive photorealism.

  As I said, there's a big difference between creating art and being talented
at it (even if the result is not very photorealistic, maybe because it's not
even supposed to be) and being outright lazy because you can't be bothered to
create better textures and lighting.

> So the advice, of:
> "Please don't embarass the povray community by displaying work which doesn't
> demonstrate optimum radiosity, lighting, and texturing."

> .... should be counterbalanced with the advice of:
> "Please don't embarass the povray community by displaying work that has wooden
> demonstrations of radiosity, lighting, and texturing."

  The bottom line is: If you want my advice, put some work in those textures
(regardless of what they are meant to represent). Don't just copy other
people's textures verbatim (especially not from the standard include files;
at least not those which look like made 15 years ago).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:

>   What personally bothers me about lazy texturing is, as I already said,
> that it gives a rather poor perception of how good of a renderer POV-Ray
> really is. If the images look like they were created in 1995, it doesn't
> give a very good impression of the program.
> 

That is one possible perception, obviously, since you took it that way. 
  But not the only one.  Another might see it as a very approachable 
program for amateur use, and be drawn to it.

I think the texturing was so understated that it can only be taken as a 
sort of placeholder.

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