25ct <25c### [at] lineonenet> wrote:
:   So please excuse my questions.

  You don't have to excuse yourself for asking questions. That's what this
newsgroup is for in the first place.

:      What is the purpose of POV-ray?

  To create raytraced images.

: Is it to get the best 3d image that you
: can?

  Well, everyone tries to, but it may not be always very easy :)

: Can you animate with POV-ray?

  Yes.

  Note that povray is only the rendering core. It doesn't have any modeller
program in itself, so building a scene and an animation may seem pretty
tough for a beginner when you only have a scripting language.
  You can either learn the scripting language (which is easier to use than
it seems at first glance) or you can use a 3rd party modeller program like
moray (http://www.stmuc.com/moray/).

: How long would a typical picture take to
: produce?

  If you are talking about starting from scratch and modelling a scene, it
may take from some minutes to several months. It depends on the complexity
of the scene and how perfect you want it to be.
  If you are talking about the rendering time, it varies from a few seconds
to several weeks. I'd say that the average rendering time for most simple
scenes is a couple of minutes.

: Does it take long to learn the coding?

  If you know some programming language (like C, C++, Pascal, Basic...) it's
definitely easier, but you can learn even without knowing any programming
language. It shouldn't take too long to learn the basics.

:      I run win 98, so can I do it on my machine?

  Definitely.

:   Where do I start?

  Download and install povray. Learn the documentation that comes with it.
There's an excellent beginner tutorial at the beginning of the documentation.
  You can also try moray to see if you like it more (usually beginners do).

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):_;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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