POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : L-Systems in Povray : Re: L-Systems in Povray Server Time
28 Mar 2024 07:32:20 EDT (-0400)
  Re: L-Systems in Povray  
From: Bald Eagle
Date: 27 May 2023 18:15:00
Message: <web.6472803e453cebfc1f9dae3025979125@news.povray.org>
"Droj" <803### [at] drojde> wrote:

> Thanks BE for enlightening me.
>
> Sometimes my stubborn brain is running wild.

Hey - we all get these bouts of frustration that are usually linked to some
inability to make some scene element or perform some necessary pre-rendering
thing that most all regular computer languages have - either inbuilt, or in a
library.

The thing is - all of that stuff is usually the product of some massive team of
paid professional computer developers who take orders from above.

So, there's money, all the time those people are working on that stuff 100% of
their work day ( ;) ), the education and expertise - and usually management and
a customer base that drives expectations and productivity.

At the present time, we have virtually none of that.

So some of us do the next best thing and try to implement features that we'd
like to see in macros/SDL, so that perhaps in the future some developer will
have the code ready to go, and just have to translate it into C, C++, or
whatever language POV-Ray 4.0 might end up being.

> I have a high esteem for all of you who are developing Povray further.
>
> So take my apologies if I stepped on someones toe. I did not mean to offend
> anybody.

We've all done a fair bit of shoving on our own.   No harm, no foul.
If there's any code or explanations you'd like for any of the myriad projects
that I've worked on, just let me know.

Some of the things I've worked on have taken me YEARS - because I've needed to
happen across some article or video that explains it in a way that I can grasp
the underlying concept - or more importantly, its implementation.

Bezier curves was a big one, but Voronoi (and Delaunay) is something that I've
wanted to have a user-controlled version of for a very, VERY long time.  I
finally watched a video where the code was minimal enough that I was able to
copy it, and then "see through" all of the extraneous crap and have the critical
"AHA!!!!!" moment where the dirt simple concept AND implementation were suddenly
clear.   And BOY did I feel stoopid.

Now, once I understood the basic practical implementation, the inevitable
exploration and expansion of the code to address certain issues and make it a
much more production-type code that was amenable to adding to the source-code as
an inbuilt-pattern is just something that I was doing to really solidify the
idea in my head, and find ways to circumvent the limitations of the initial
proof-of-concept.

We have all delved into projects where someone else's code just looks like some
big pile of WTF, or worse, sat in front of the Editor unable to make the scene
elements that we want, because we just don't have the necessary inbuilt tools,
programming experience, or mathematical foundations to even begin making the
things that we want.

Go back to 2102/2013 when I really started to heavily use POV-Ray for
everything, and you'll all the dumb mistakes, misunderstandings, ignorance,
frustration, complaining, whining, and hacktastic piles of abysmal code that I
tried my best to pump out on a tiny little laptop that resembled a cheap
Chromebook.

Gotta start somewhere.  Gotta pick something, and doggedly pursue it - finding
every link, book, article, video, live-coding session, posting on forums where
people are super math/computer snobs and condescending Ay Wholes, emailing
professors and graduate students about their work or postings, .... until one
day, 2+ years later, you finally figure it out and somehow get it to work.

I was never taught matrices, linear algebra, statistics, projective geometry, or
any of the topics that I've shoved my nose into.   I had 15 min of differential
equations when I took physical chemistry back in .... 1993??  So after 30 years,
I hit that wall of ignorance/forgetfulness, and that was a 1-year delay until I
got the motivation to relearn partial second derivatives.

So, there's a lot that goes into just 1 "feature" to get a basic code base, and
then it has to be translated into "production code" that has all sorts of sanity
checks, and plays well with the different math solvers and layers of textures
and finishes, and ... and.... and ....


..... and we have no one to do that right now.

So a coding we will go, until we find someone to write source code, or one of us
learns enough C or C++ to start writing the source code - probably in an
unofficial fork.   Like hgPOVRay38 or povr.  MegaPOV and UberPOV.  Etc.

- BE


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