POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.binaries.images : Journey to an Unknown Region - revisited : Re: Journey to an Unknown Region - revisited Server Time
29 Mar 2024 07:23:59 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Journey to an Unknown Region - revisited  
From: Bald Eagle
Date: 8 Feb 2023 07:00:00
Message: <web.63e38dcc1f12570d1f9dae3025979125@news.povray.org>
Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:

I am really thinking about a "Robert McGregor" kind of
> explanation. I am sure it can indeed be of benefit to others, if not for
> remembering myself on how to do certain things! I often have to reinvent
> my own wheels... ;-/

Yeah, well, there have been a couple of times when I looked online for some
POV-Ray code, found a pretty nice piece of code that seemed to be tailor-made
for exactly what I wanted it for, and then when I dug further to see who the
author was, in case they had written any more such code ....
....

it was my own code, which I had written for exactly what I wanted to use it for
- again.  I'm not entirely sure how to describe how I feel when that happens.
:|

> Otherwise, I do much if not most by intuition and trial-and-error.

Well, this is exactly what some people need to hear in those exact words.
Otherwise they may speculate that you have a magic wand or crystal ball, or
secret knowledge handed down to you from the Dev Team or your colleagues at that
Ivy League computer science department PhD meeting....
Some people really do need to know that we just try new and different things
until we find out what works, and we reject "error terror" and come up with
reasons (that sound good at the time) to explore and try out new ideas.
This is a skill that has somehow gotten - lost.

But also, there are surely many 3rd-party tools and resources that you use in
the creation of your "scene assets".  Why you picked them, what they're good
for, what they don't really do well, how you might combine 2 or 3 tools to make
a single object {}, ....  Especially things like plants, which someone making
their first landscape scene would likely be most puzzled and daunted by.
Past scenes that inspired you, or that you recall some method that someone used
for a function, a texture, an effect...
Macros, include files, - all of that is likely a lot of unconscious stuff that
you draw upon to make landscape after landscape, each with very different themes
and styles.

> Especially the second half of the scene building process when the
> essential elements are in place one way or another, are time-consuming.
> It is this fine-tuning which consumes most of the time nowadays (in the
> past I felt a kind of "urgency" which drove me on towards the end; not
> always with best results I am afraid).

I hear that.  I have to accept that sometimes I just have to work within the
available timetable, and get a scene file / render "published", else it will
just be another unknown POV-Ray file in a directory on a HDD somewhere, rather
than an accessible record/reminder to serve as a future starting point for
myself or someone else.

I know other people who won't release anything until it's "perfect", and indeed,
many of us here have worked on several projects either individually, or in
collaboration on a greater whole - that have taken several months, or more.

Still again, there are other projects that people have taken up and put down -
only getting posted after a great many years.   Or 7 or 8 revisions get posted,
with each demonstrating some improvement in knowledge, inspiration, learning,
skill, access to tools, or new POV-Ray features.

It's certainly about the techniques and methods, but it's also a story.
I, for one, am glad you're planning on telling it.  :)


"TdG: Architect of Landscapes and a Vast POV-Ray Archive, the Epic Saga"


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