"nemesis" <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Sometimes, i wonder why there is this feeling in the povray community that
> everything should be built from scratch.  What i mean is:  while povray is
> an excellent and very versatile software it comes with a very limited
> "standard library" of objects and textures and this sure hampers "code
> reuse".  Specially because this is the 2000's, but the small povray stdlib
> still comes with include files from the 1990's!
>
> I've seen such amazing models, textures and techiniques from many povray
> enthusiasts from over the years.  There are at least two nice lens flare
> include files from well-known POV-Team members, but that aren't featured in
> the stdlib!  What about the many tree and grass macro packages?  Why isn't
> there at least one of them in the standard library?
>
> I wish povray was a lot more used, but i'm thinking it suffers a bit from
> not being "integrated":  if i was a newbie and wanted to quickly create
> stunning scenes, i'd have to crawl the web gathering bits here and there.
> Just imagine:  the other way, the guy wants a kitchen scene and he goes
> like:
>
> #include "kitchen/tiles.inc"
> #include "kitchen/dish.inc"
> #include "kitchen/bottles.inc"
> #include "kitchen/food/fruits.inc"
>
> Or stuff like that.
>
> This is just a rant/wish, but if i could in some way of another to make this
> software more acknowledged, i would.  Heck, i would gladly donate my sample
> scenes and code i post here, without hesitation, crappy as they may be! :P
>
> What do you guys think?  Any chances of something like that happenning just
> in time for Pov-ray 3.7?  If you're fearing the trouble of searching for
> and categorizing all the gathered textures, objects etc, i'd gladly
> contribute to it.
>
> What would it need to get foreign work into povray standard include files?

Yeah, I've thought the same thing. Would the people who provide all the code
examples mind if some were put into the standard include files? I know that
there's a tradition of doing one's own work, and I myself have reinvented
the wheel several times (mostly poorly :)), but it would be nice if some of
those textures and objects came with POV-Ray.

Are there good reasons for not doing this? Perhaps the licensing would be
difficult...

I would of course be happy to contribute my own objects and textures, such
as they are.

Maybe the revival of the POV-Ray objects collection would do the trick.

-Stefan Sittler

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