Minor correction to my first note:

Vic Pary wrote:

> 2) Are ther tutorials online for making luminous spheres?  I need to
> make 2 or more luminous spheres in the foreground similar in appearance
> to the sky_sphere.

That should be similar to the sun with halo effect that can be made with
sky_sphere.

> -Vic Pary

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In article <38308548.67E5A6B1@pacbell.net>, lin### [at] povrayorg wrote:
>Speaking of finding links does anyone know of a good Mac online warehouse
>of share/free ware ? Something of the order of winsite.com but the Mac
>equivelant.

I usually use the Info-Mac Hyperarchive, at
http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive/Abstracts/Recent-Summary.html

And I use http://www.download.com/, although I've found them to be
becoming less and less useful over the last year.

Jerry

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In article <38308548.67E5A6B1@pacbell.net> , Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet>  
wrote:

> Speaking of finding links does anyone know of a good Mac online warehouse
> of share/free ware ? Something of the order of winsite.com but the Mac
> equivelant.

Well, one main one are the mac-info archives which are cached by all major
universities around the world. They (finally) have a website at
<http://www.info-mac.org/>. however, the archive (ftp) is a bit hard to
navigate...


    Thorsten


____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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Chris Huff wrote:

> >1) what are the import/export options?
>         e.g. Color-It! to POV-ray
>         e.g. Bryce 4 to POV-ray
>         e.g. 3D Modeller (like Blob Sculptor) to POV-ray
>                 e.g. POV-ray to RDS
>                 e.g. POV-ray to AfterEffects or Premiere<
>
> You can't export from POV-Ray to anything.

I take this to mean you can't export POV-ray models to another
modeling program.

I'm guessing you could output a quicktime movie and touch it up with
Premiere or AfterEffect.  Do many POV-ray users do this?  or is it easy
to get lens flares, animated smoke, flames, or explosions using just
POV-ray?

> Color-It is an image editing
> program, you can use it to generate image maps, height fields, and so
> on, as long as the files are in something like TGA or PNG so POV-Ray can
> read them.

I have experimented with GraphicConverter.  It seems to work.

>
> There are programs that convert from other formats to POV, but I don't
> know anything about them and don't know what Mac versions are available.

I know Blob-Sculptor exports to POV-Ray scripts -- what about Poser 4?.
And one of the posts here implies that Bryce4 exports results to POV-ray.
These are programs I am considering buying.

> >2) Are ther tutorials online for making luminous spheres?  I need to
> make 2 or more luminous spheres in the foreground similar in appearance
> to the sky_sphere.   The POV.doc seems vague on how to use Object Media
> to create halo effects or perhaps I need to read more on transparent
> pigment filters.<
>
> The sky_sphere is just for the background, I am not sure what you mean
> there.

Sorry, I meant like the sun/halo effect I produced with sky_sphere.

> You probably want to use a sphere filled with emitting media,
> with a spherical density. I could give example code if needed, but since
> this is not platform-specific, it should probably go to one of the other
> groups like povray.newusers.

or you could email it to me.  That would be much appreciated by this novice

to POV-Ray!

> >My animations will mostly concern planetary terrains, starfields,
> luminous spheres,
> planetary rings, and animated technical plots.
> Is there any software you use along with POV-ray that you find
> essential?
> I already have Blob Sculptor demo, ColorIt!, and MS Office 98.<
>
> I am a coder, I write everything directly into the scene file. There
> really aren't any programs like this that I feel are absolutely
> necessary(For me, that is. Other people can't do anything without
> modellers, I can't do anything with them.).

I found the modeller demos good for learning the basics (objects, cgs,
color and light, etc), but I think POV-ray is more efficient (as a coder
myself) for trig-based motions, geometrical positioning, etc.  But, I'm
thinking that programs like Bryce4/Poser4/Canoma could speed up the
production process for characters, organic shapes, and landscapes *IF* they

can output to POV-Ray scripts. (I did the height-map tutorial successfully,

but feel that Bryce4 would be more efficient and flexible for creating
landscapes.)

> However, something like Blob Sculptor and maybe some other modeller
> utilities could be useful. Have you looked at the official POV-Ray Mac
> web page? There is a list of utilities there which might be useful.

Yes, I have, but I'm running out of steam after trying numerous demos
over the past two months.  I'm ready to commit to POV-Ray but want
the advice of experienced users as to what else is productive to use
alongside it.

Thanks for the info.

-Vic Pary

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>> You can't export from POV-Ray to anything.

I take this to mean you can't export POV-ray models to another
modeling program.<

Yes.


>I'm guessing you could output a quicktime movie and touch it up with
Premiere or AfterEffect.  Do many POV-ray users do this?  or is it easy
to get lens flares, animated smoke, flames, or explosions using just
POV-ray?<

You could do this, most people here aviod post processing and you would
almost always get better results doing it through POV-Ray. There are a
couple includes for lens flares and explosions, smoke and flames are
usually done with media.

>I have experimented with GraphicConverter.  It seems to work.<

GraphicConverter is an exellent program, one which I plan on registering
as soon as I get my job. :-)

>I know Blob-Sculptor exports to POV-Ray scripts -- what about Poser 4?.
And one of the posts here implies that Bryce4 exports results to
POV-ray. These are programs I am considering buying.<

They probably don't export directly to POV-Ray, but to a format like DXF
which has converters to POV format. I don't know what converters have
Mac versions available.


>or you could email it to me.  That would be much appreciated by this
novice to POV-Ray!<

A lot of the other novices would appreciate it too, which is why this
stuff is usually posted on the newsgroups for everyone to see. I will
make a posting in povray.newusers, with an example of "luminous
spheres".

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I have posted an example scene to povray.newusers.

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Thanks, Chris!  Very useful information.
I look forward to trying out your example.
I find that just looking at existing scripts
is very informative in addition to plugging
away at the tutorials each weekend.

 - Vic Pary

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In article <38308548.67E5A6B1@pacbell.net>, Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet>
wrote:

> Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> 
> > Except that I am a kind of slow in keeping up with your amazing rate of
> > finding new sites :-)
> > 
> >     Thorsten
> 
> In that case...
> 
>   I have been trying to be consciences about identifying any mac related
> links with "mac" in the description field. This way if you use the online
> search engine at the povray.org links page in my sig you should have a
> list presented of all of the mac related links in the collection.
> 
> Speaking of finding links does anyone know of a good Mac online warehouse
> of share/free ware ? Something of the order of winsite.com but the Mac
> equivelant.

Ken,

Whenever one uses www.download.com you get the platform that your
browser is currently running on... So use a Mac with a browser and
you'll end up in the Macintosh shareware/freeware areas...

Hope this helps,
  Anton

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Anton Raves wrote:

> Ken,
> 
> Whenever one uses www.download.com you get the platform that your
> browser is currently running on... So use a Mac with a browser and
> you'll end up in the Macintosh shareware/freeware areas...
> 
> Hope this helps,
>   Anton

  Well I actually am a Windows user but I am trying to find additional
programs for the Mac platform that POV-Ray users might be able to use.
I figured I would search through some of the MAc shareware sites and
see what I could find.

Thanks for the tip though,

-- 
Ken Tyler -  1200+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/

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In article <383AADC3.599E6251@pacbell.net>, Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet>
wrote:

> Anton Raves wrote:
> 
> > Ken,
> > 
> > Whenever one uses www.download.com you get the platform that your
> > browser is currently running on... So use a Mac with a browser and
> > you'll end up in the Macintosh shareware/freeware areas...
> > 
> > Hope this helps,
> >   Anton
> 
>   Well I actually am a Windows user but I am trying to find additional
> programs for the Mac platform that POV-Ray users might be able to use.
> I figured I would search through some of the MAc shareware sites and
> see what I could find.
> 
> Thanks for the tip though,

You're welcome! Should you like for any of the Mac users to try some of
the programs you find, let me know!

Anton

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