Ryan Constantine wrote:
> 
> so i use matlab a little at school.  i actually only use it for a
> limited amount of work, but recently i was looking at the general list
> of functions and other nifty things it supports.  one of the things
> people like about matlab is its speed in multiple calculations at a time
> (in matrices).  so i was wondering two things: 1) how is pov's speed in
> math computations compared to matlab, and 2) would matlab be a good
> platform to do serious calculations for export to pov (if that's
> possible)?

I have been using matlab extensively during my PhD in Chemistry. As I
also have been a fan of povray I use both programs in conjunction.
Matlab's language is more suitable for real programming (but maybe this
will change with newer versions of povray?).

At the moment I'm visualizing a physics experiment at our institute: A
cloud of protons flying through a particle accelerator. I use matlab to
build a pov include file which contains the particle accelerator (simple
tubing which is built from the trajectory data of the proton clouds).
The Clouds are rendered as two isosurfaces (the outer one transparent).

I calculate the Isosurfaces with matlab (the input data is a discrete
matrix which has to be interpolated by matlab). I have scripts, which
then automatically convert the matlab internal graphics objects into
povray files. The whole run (usually ~1000 frames) is then rendered on
our linux farm with 32 processors and I get a nice animation (kind of a
rollercoaster ride).

Matlab has a lot of functionality but yes, it's not free. But it's very
nice to get things done fast. Hopefully povray will improve over time,
so that it has better mathematics support.

Derek
 
-- 
Dr. Derek Feichtinger                   Tel:   +41 56 310 47 33
Scientific Computing                    Fax:   +41 56 310 36 49 
Paul Scherrer Institut                  email: der### [at] psich
CH-5232, Villigen-PSI

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