Hi,

> > I was looking through the 3dwin menu, and I noticed it could
> > convert "Pov-Ray Binaries" (Pobs).  Just what *is* a Pob?

> POB -- Pov Binary file format

This is a file format invented by Thomas Baier, the programmer of 3DWin.
But I've never seen anyone using it, except him. Is there 
really another program using POBs? Interesting.

> It is a method of defining Pov scene files in a binary format. There
> are a handfull of utilities around that can use this format. The
> benefits are two fold. First the file sizes are small generaly 

I doubt. I converted a less-than-100k POV file into a 1.3meg POB file!!!

> and secondly the data format is easier and faster to parse than the
> text file version.

That's certainly true.

> The only working utility that I have seen that would use this format
> was/is a Pov animation system, I believe written by Johannes Hubert,
> and requires a patched version of pov to work with the resulting data
> output.

If you really want to use POBs, you can get this patched version from
Thomas Baier's homepage (available via the moray homepage). He offers
the POB-SDK, including the patched POV-Ray version (unfortunately, 
it's just 3.02) and a detailed description of the POB file. If you're 
a programmer, this might be interesting.

Florian Fischer

Post a reply to this message