Am 15.07.2021 um 02:12 schrieb Bald Eagle:


> OpenGL and Shadertoy seem to have all/most of the things that we want, and
> OpenGL is well established, and presumably geared specifically towards graphics.
> ;)

I have to ask what exactly you are referring to when you say "OpenGL". 
At its core, OpenGL is a library (or, more specifically, a library API): 
A collection of functions that can be called from various entirely 
different programming languages. The most "native" of those would be C/C++.

Are you perhaps referring to the shader language of OpenGL (GLSL)?

If you love GLSL, then I'm surprised you "kinda hate" C++.

Also, I'm not quite sure how a POV-Ray scene could map to GLSL. It seems 
to me like it would have to be described in as clunky a way as it would 
in C++.


In essence, most program languages have an imperative approach at the 
lowest level; to describe data, you have to instruct the computer to 
assemble it step by step, like so (pseudocode):

     Create a sphere S.
     Set the radius of S to 5.
     Set the center of S to <0,1,0>.

     Create a texture T.

     Create a pigment P.
     Set the pigment's pattern to 'checker'.
     ...
     Attach P to T.

     ...
     Attach T to S.
     Attach S to the scene.

Rather than using a descriptive approach, like so:

     The scene has the following objects:
     - A sphere, with the following properties:
       - a radius of 5.
       - a center of <0,1,0>.
       - a texture with the following properties:
         - a pigment with the following properties:
           - pattern 'checker'

While the difference may not seem obvious at first glance, it tends to 
make a huge difference in terms of how much repetitive stuff the syntax 
requires. For example, in C++ it might be written like so:

     Object S = new Sphere();
     S.radius = 5;
     S.center = Vector3(0,1,0);
     Texture T = new Texture();
     Pigment P = new Pigment();
     P.pattern.set('checker');
     ...
     T.addPigment(P);
     ...
     S.addTexture(T);
     Scene.addObject(S);

whereas in a descriptive language it might be as simple as:

     sphere {
       radius 5
       center <0,1,0>
       texture {
         pigment {
           pattern 'checker'
           ...
         }
         ...
       }
     }

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