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From: Dudo
Subject: Q: POV RAY 2D
Date: 9 Nov 2009 08:05:00
Message: <web.4af8133e717d7fb2130ab9690@news.povray.org>
I'd like to ask, if it is possible to be using the POVRAY also for rendering 2D
pictures, such like 2D charts and color maps. Could you give me some
recommendation, if the POVRAY is useful for such the purpose o if there exists
an alternative program for 2D which you know..

Thanks a lot,
D


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From: Stefan Viljoen
Subject: Re: Q: POV RAY 2D
Date: 9 Nov 2009 08:21:23
Message: <4af81752@news.povray.org>
Dudo wrote:

> I'd like to ask, if it is possible to be using the POVRAY also for
> rendering 2D pictures, such like 2D charts and color maps. Could you give
> me some recommendation, if the POVRAY is useful for such the purpose o if
> there exists an alternative program for 2D which you know..
> 
> Thanks a lot,
> D

Isn't this wat "ortho" (orthographic) in a camera{} statement is for?

Blender's got an orthographic mode too, if I'm not mistaken, that seems to
work just fine. It's a completely different horse from PovRay though, and
will be quite strange to get used to if you've never seen it before.

http://blender3d.org

-- 
Stefan Viljoen


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From: Captain Jack
Subject: Re: POV RAY 2D
Date: 9 Nov 2009 09:40:27
Message: <4af829db$1@news.povray.org>
"Dudo" <nomail@nomail> wrote in message 
news:web.4af8133e717d7fb2130ab9690@news.povray.org...
> I'd like to ask, if it is possible to be using the POVRAY also for 
> rendering 2D
> pictures, such like 2D charts and color maps. Could you give me some
> recommendation, if the POVRAY is useful for such the purpose o if there 
> exists
> an alternative program for 2D which you know..
>
> Thanks a lot,
> D
>

I use it as a quick way to do function plots all the time. I set up an 
orthographic camera on the Z axis pointing at the origin, make a couple of 
thin cylinders for the X and Y axes, then I loop through some X values to do 
the plot. For each point, I draw a sphere at the point, and a cylinder back 
to the previous point to give a more or less smooth curve.

There might be better software for this purpose, but POV is just so darn 
flexible and solid that it's too much trouble to pick up other software.

--
Jack


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From: clipka
Subject: Re: POV RAY 2D
Date: 9 Nov 2009 10:04:33
Message: <4af82f81@news.povray.org>
Captain Jack schrieb:

>> I'd like to ask, if it is possible to be using the POVRAY also for 
>> rendering 2D
>> pictures, such like 2D charts and color maps. Could you give me some
>> recommendation, if the POVRAY is useful for such the purpose o if there 
>> exists
>> an alternative program for 2D which you know..
> 
> I use it as a quick way to do function plots all the time. I set up an 
> orthographic camera on the Z axis pointing at the origin, make a couple of 
> thin cylinders for the X and Y axes, then I loop through some X values to do 
> the plot. For each point, I draw a sphere at the point, and a cylinder back 
> to the previous point to give a more or less smooth curve.

For more smoothness, you can also use sphere_sweep to plot.

> There might be better software for this purpose, but POV is just so darn 
> flexible and solid that it's too much trouble to pick up other software.

... plus, it is definitely capable of creating animated charts and stuff.

And, as the icing on the cake, there's probably not much software out 
there that can add as much a variety of 3D effects to a chart, graph or 
whatever to liven it up :-)

@Dudo: Yes, the "orthographic" camera is probably what you want.


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From: Chris B
Subject: Re: POV RAY 2D
Date: 9 Nov 2009 11:19:34
Message: <4af84116@news.povray.org>
"Dudo" <nomail@nomail> wrote in message 
news:web.4af8133e717d7fb2130ab9690@news.povray.org...
> I'd like to ask, if it is possible to be using the POVRAY also for 
> rendering 2D
> pictures, such like 2D charts and color maps.

As already mentioned the answer is Yes. It's possible!
I'd recommend thinking carefully before doing that though.

> Could you give me some
> recommendation, if the POVRAY is useful for such the purpose

It depends what sort of charts and pictures you wish to create and whether 
you plan to use POV-Ray for anything else. If you're planning to generate 3D 
images and want to incorporate the same objects into some sort of 2D 
representations, and if you are already planning to learn (or already know) 
POV-Ray, then it may be appropriate to use it for 2D images. Some folk have 
used it in the past with high ambient levels to create cartoon-like effects. 
I'm currently doing some 2D style elevation maps of the Earth using an 
Orthographic camera, with only ambient lighting and with a color map to give 
different elevations different colors, but then I'm also planning to use the 
same POV-Ray objects for separate 3D representations.

> o if there exists an alternative program for 2D which you know..

There are lots of 2D graphics programs available that are very easy to 
learn. There are different types of application, with each type of 
application being best suited to a particular type of use. There are free 
examples of most of those types of application.  OpenOffice incorporates two 
applications that may be of particular interest to you for generating 2D (or 
fake 3D) charts:

OpenOffice Draw is what's known as a vector graphics application that 
enables you to draw boxes, lines, circles and randomly shaped 2D objects 
with the mouse and to add text with the keyboard. You can add shading to 
each object and 3D effects, such as shadows to objects text. This is a free 
equivalent to commercial presentation packages such as Freelance Graphics 
and Microsoft PowerPoint and enables you to do multi-slide presentations 
with some animation and transitional effects.

OpenOffice Calc is a spreadsheet, mainly for doing calculations, but also 
has a 2D charting function so that you can plot graphs of data held in the 
spreadsheet or calculated using mathematical formulae. This makes it very 
easy to make bar charts, pie charts, line charts and other 2D 
representations of data. You can also very easily switch between different 
representations if you change your mind. Commercial equivalents are Lotus 
123 and MS Excel. You can cut and paste charts from any of these into other 
2D graphics software such as OpenOffice Draw, enabling you to use the best 
features from each application.

Two other free 2D applications you might find handy (depending on exactly 
what you want to do) are Gimp (for photo editing) and Inkscape for 2D 
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) editing.  Inkscape falls into a similar 
category to OpenOffice Draw, but works with SVG files which are freely 
editable text files (a bit like POV-Ray scene files in concept). There are 
quite a lot of free SVG graphics and charts already available on the 
Internet that may avoid you having to start from scratch.

Sorry if I'm telling you stuff you already know, but it's hard to judge the 
level to aim a response at from the question :-)

Regards,
Chris B.


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From: Paolo Gibellini
Subject: Re: POV RAY 2D
Date: 9 Nov 2009 12:09:06
Message: <4af84cb2$1@news.povray.org>
>Chris B  on date 09/11/2009 17:19 wrote:
> 
> "Dudo" <nomail@nomail> wrote in message 
> news:web.4af8133e717d7fb2130ab9690@news.povray.org...
>> I'd like to ask, if it is possible to be using the POVRAY also for 
>> rendering 2D
>> pictures, such like 2D charts and color maps.
> 
> As already mentioned the answer is Yes. It's possible!
> I'd recommend thinking carefully before doing that though.
> 
>> Could you give me some
>> recommendation, if the POVRAY is useful for such the purpose
> 
> It depends what sort of charts and pictures you wish to create and 
> whether you plan to use POV-Ray for anything else. If you're planning to 
> generate 3D images and want to incorporate the same objects into some 
> sort of 2D representations, and if you are already planning to learn (or 
> already know) POV-Ray, then it may be appropriate to use it for 2D 
> images. Some folk have used it in the past with high ambient levels to 
> create cartoon-like effects. I'm currently doing some 2D style elevation 
> maps of the Earth using an Orthographic camera, with only ambient 
> lighting and with a color map to give different elevations different 
> colors, but then I'm also planning to use the same POV-Ray objects for 
> separate 3D representations.
> 
>> o if there exists an alternative program for 2D which you know..
> 
> There are lots of 2D graphics programs available that are very easy to 
> learn. There are different types of application, with each type of 
> application being best suited to a particular type of use. There are 
> free examples of most of those types of application.  OpenOffice 
> incorporates two applications that may be of particular interest to you 
> for generating 2D (or fake 3D) charts:
> 
> OpenOffice Draw is what's known as a vector graphics application that 
> enables you to draw boxes, lines, circles and randomly shaped 2D objects 
> with the mouse and to add text with the keyboard. You can add shading to 
> each object and 3D effects, such as shadows to objects text. This is a 
> free equivalent to commercial presentation packages such as Freelance 
> Graphics and Microsoft PowerPoint and enables you to do multi-slide 
> presentations with some animation and transitional effects.
> 
> OpenOffice Calc is a spreadsheet, mainly for doing calculations, but 
> also has a 2D charting function so that you can plot graphs of data held 
> in the spreadsheet or calculated using mathematical formulae. This makes 
> it very easy to make bar charts, pie charts, line charts and other 2D 
> representations of data. You can also very easily switch between 
> different representations if you change your mind. Commercial 
> equivalents are Lotus 123 and MS Excel. You can cut and paste charts 
> from any of these into other 2D graphics software such as OpenOffice 
> Draw, enabling you to use the best features from each application.
> 
> Two other free 2D applications you might find handy (depending on 
> exactly what you want to do) are Gimp (for photo editing) and Inkscape 
> for 2D Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) editing.  Inkscape falls into a 
> similar category to OpenOffice Draw, but works with SVG files which are 
> freely editable text files (a bit like POV-Ray scene files in concept). 
> There are quite a lot of free SVG graphics and charts already available 
> on the Internet that may avoid you having to start from scratch.
> 
> Sorry if I'm telling you stuff you already know, but it's hard to judge 
> the level to aim a response at from the question :-)
> 
> Regards,
> Chris B.
> 
> 
> 
> 
gnuplot is very suitable to generate charts.
Paolo


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From: SharkD
Subject: Re: POV RAY 2D
Date: 9 Nov 2009 19:10:59
Message: <4af8af93$1@news.povray.org>
On 11/9/2009 9:41 AM, Captain Jack wrote:
> I use it as a quick way to do function plots all the time. I set up an
> orthographic camera on the Z axis pointing at the origin, make a couple of
> thin cylinders for the X and Y axes, then I loop through some X values to do
> the plot. For each point, I draw a sphere at the point, and a cylinder back
> to the previous point to give a more or less smooth curve.
>
> There might be better software for this purpose, but POV is just so darn
> flexible and solid that it's too much trouble to pick up other software.
>
> --
> Jack

It would be great if POV-Ray supported more 2D primitives, like the ones 
used in SVG. You can of course intersect a 3D primitive with two planes, 
but this requires more work.

Mike


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From: clipka
Subject: Re: POV RAY 2D
Date: 9 Nov 2009 19:59:33
Message: <4af8baf5$1@news.povray.org>
SharkD schrieb:

> It would be great if POV-Ray supported more 2D primitives, like the ones 
> used in SVG. You can of course intersect a 3D primitive with two planes, 
> but this requires more work.

Like, for instance?

I guess you're talking about extruded 2D shapes, right?


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From: SharkD
Subject: Re: POV RAY 2D
Date: 9 Nov 2009 20:05:23
Message: <4af8bc53$1@news.povray.org>
On 11/9/2009 7:59 PM, clipka wrote:
> Like, for instance?
>
> I guess you're talking about extruded 2D shapes, right?

That, or treat them like patch primitives.

Mike


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From: clipka
Subject: Re: POV RAY 2D
Date: 9 Nov 2009 20:25:11
Message: <4af8c0f7@news.povray.org>
SharkD schrieb:
> On 11/9/2009 7:59 PM, clipka wrote:
>> Like, for instance?
>>
>> I guess you're talking about extruded 2D shapes, right?
> 
> That, or treat them like patch primitives.

Well, how about cylinder and box for circles, ellipses and rectangles, 
text for text, and linear prisms for polygons.

Lines and polylines don't seem to make much sense in a solid 3D world.

What's left?


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