"jr" <cre### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> re p.text.scene-files.

I have played with this stuff many many times over the years.
And for new users, this stuff is really nice.
I'm glad you brought this out and updated a classic FL POV-Ray tool.

Just from memory, I would say that you may want to introduce some switches to
adjust things, and maybe have your ruled surfaces and axes adjustable.
Add no_shadow to the axes.

Maybe have a proper scene that uses this as an include file - commenting out the
#include statement then shuts the whole thing off.

Sometimes I want axes, sometimes I just want a reference sphere for the origin.
For most modeling in POV-Ray, people tend to model AT the origin.  So, you may
want to incorporate transparency for the "paper" of the "graph" so that you can
see below y=0 but still have the grid at y=0.  An emissive texture would help
seeing the lines - and might look really sharp.  :)

It's nicely done, and something that I thought I would have surely used more -
but for some reason I don't?


Not sure how much you want to play around with this, but here are just some
thoughts:

I find that too many parameters just makes it too hard to use. (Me)
Maybe if you just have a single "extent" variable for the x and z dimensions,
you could copy those into the offsets of the two vertical planes.
Parameterize the radius of the arrows (before the merge) and make your cones a
formula based on that.
Make it so the plane doesn't clip off the z-arrowhead.

As a new user, dealing with POV-Ray's left-handed coordinate system could be a
real mind-bender.  Not to mention translation / rotation relative to the origin.

Perhaps:
label the axes
provide rotational indicators to show what a rotation around +x looks like
(use a partial torus as an arrow)

A whole 'nother way of graphing based on radius and degrees or radians would be
helpful for those doing that sort of work as well.

I can recall struggling with all of this ...somewhere around 2013, so I'm sure I
have a lot of stoopid noob posts on things I just didn't understand, and I'm
sure I posted a whole laundry list of scene development tools that I may or may
not have written and have lying around somewhere - including this exact scene
layout space.

I can see if I can dig them up if you'd like.

Provide a (switchable) quick reference debug stream output so that users just
starting to use any additional tools or options can see it right in the output
from the render and not have to switch windows or tabs...

I'll stop now, or I could go on forever.   "Mission creep" is a killer.


Excellent work, Number 14!


Be seeing you.   ;)

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