Angelo 'kENpEX' Pesce wrote:

> On Thu, 6 Dec 2001 18:45:27 -0500, Alessandro Coppo <a.c### [at] iolit>
> wrote:
>>The ONLY reason why I haven't just downloaded BMRT and stopped thinking 
>>about POV is that BMRT is even less open source than POVRay!!!
>>
> 
> Just use PovMan... BMRT is too slow...
Huh? So far I had intention to only read this biig thread due to lack of time, 

but this statement makes me really to ask:is BMRT really slower than 

POVMan in similar scenes?? I really doubt it, especially if one takes 
into account that latest versions of BMRT allow to use precompiled 
shaders, which give performance boost 40-250% (according to 
c.g.r.renderman NG???) and are written by L. Gritz, who has learned CG 
in university, worked in Pixar and should know much more about CG than 
me (who has hacked this latest version of POVMan without any education 
in CG or similar areas)? According to my small performance tests most of 
time goes into texture calculation, so if one uses shaders, which are 
calculated by current implementation of shader's VM, then performance 
hit, which is not small, should be taken into account...
One big problem with shaders in POV-Ray (if we are talking about 
RenderMan shaders ) is that quite number of them is intended for 
parametric surfaces (in RenderMan most (or all?) primitive surfaces 
could be described as u-v parametric surfaces) and using such shaders in 
POV-Ray limits their use into small number of primitives, which have u-v 
parametrization implemented. And as I understand, separate step of 
compiling shader for POV-Ray seems to be too hard (or complex) for 
users, it would be better, if shader is described in POV-Ray SL (scene 
lenguaje) or compiled transparently.

>>P.S.: why the POVTeam asked in fact for feedbacks in the past about POV4 
>>feature list when all of you already have granitic ideas about what is 
>>"good" and what is not? I do not ask questions when I have already made up 
>>my mind.
>>
> Yes, is seems that noone has doubs about povray, its future and what
> should be done


Sorry to be OT here, but it really seems to me, that 'older 

habitants' started immediately 'to circle wagons', as you hit this NG 

with all these proposals. On one hand I quite understand them (as my 

butter to bread

comes from software projects, where responsible people (myself 
included!) are quite wary about changes in existing software development 
process or source code due to business risks) and such topics were 
discussed many times ('beaten to death') in this server NG-s, but on the 
other hand I'd like to see more openness from people, as some responses 
are quite defensive, seems like people take proposals in this thread as 
personal attacks or flamewar attempts.

One note about POV-Ray: in many cases you said, that you like to see,

that POV-Ray had more 'features', which are in commercial renderers. Yes, 

it would be good to have faster (in terms of rendering and scene creation) 

and more powerful application, but there is number of renderers competing in this

area and doing it better and faster for professionals; I see POV-Ray 
mainly as cheap (in terms of price, not possibilities!) tool for 
hobbists and beginners in CG area, from POV-Ray they can move to more 
proffessional and effective tools (like H.E. Day did).

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