the main problem as i understand it is that pov doesn't tesselate its
objects which i think is a fancy word for 'convert to triangles'.  many
would like to see this become a feature in the total rewrite that will
be version 4.0 of povray.  those of us not on the pov team can only
plead, and hope our cries are heard.  another approach would be to see
if lutz has the ability to add the feature to moray itself.  i don't
know.  a feature that is being added to the upcoming v3.3 of moray makes
me wonder if he's already halfway there.  sorry that was cryptic, but
i'm not allowed to mention specifics.

as for pov-to-rib (and his generic pov file parser), i recently ran
across it and emailed the author to ask if i or someone else could
update it.  he hasn't responded yet.  i'd like to make a pov-to-moray
plugin and i already have everything but the parser done.  i've
programmed a little in the past, but this is a big task that will take
me a long time.  i tried to do a parser on my own, but without any
reference to that kind of task, i'm not sure how to do it from scratch. 
i can't borrow code from pov itself per the license agreement (i.e. only
full and complete patches are allowed; free of course).  but if the
pov-to-rib guy let's me use his parser as a starting point my task would
be much easier.  his parser is object oriented in c++ with great
documentation.  it will still take some time to learn his stuff, but
much easier to do that and then update it than make my own.  i don't
know how hard it would be to then make pov-to-your-fovorite-model-format
converters.  many modellers use primitives in the modelling process, but
i don't know if they are stored as primitives or converted to
triangles.  anyway i've started rambling so bye now.

Thomas Lake wrote:
> 
> Hi
> 
> I have been using Moray to create all of my Pov-Ray images, almost all,
> I have to say it's a great modeller! However I also use other programs a
> lot, like Rhino. It would be great if I could export objects from Moray
> to other formats. I know that the older version of 3DWin had a plugin
> that enabled this, and a plugin is supposed to come out for the new
> version at some point. I have also searched and searched for a program
> that cam read or convert Pov-Ray 3.1 code, to no avail, the closest
> thing there is, is Pov-to-RIB (I think this is it) but that is for unix
> systems and I don't know programming so the parsing code doesn't help
> either. Does anyone know if there is ANY other way to export from Moray
> or convert from Pov-Ray 3.1??
> 
> --
> Come visit my web site:-) : http://www.geocities.com/~thomaslake/

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