Jim Charter wrote:
> aaglo wrote:
> 
>> My civ3-units - modelled and animated with pov-ray:
>> http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2036938&postcount=4
>>
> 
> 
> Great models!  Thought they seem incomplete without a scene or game to 
> contain them.
> 
> (And this, in a way, colors your question, which might also encompass 
> the larger issue of scene building.)
> 
> POV-Ray levels the playing field, in a manner of speaking, because it 
> offers only the scene langauge interface.
> 
> Mesh models must either be generated with the scene language directly (a 
> practice that may be quite unique to POV artists) or modelled in an 
> external product then translated into scene language.
> 
> Models composed of "primitives" and employing CSG also may be 
> articulated in the scene language directly or composed in an external 
> product where either a model, or a complete scene, can be built and 
> translated.
> 
> This stands in some contrast to renderers that have scene modelling GUI 
> interfaces built into them.  These products, which may also support 
> scene language, arguably, may induce a tendency away from experimenting 
> with program generated effects, and away from the use of primitives, and 
> toward the apparent homogeneity and flexibility that mesh can offer 
> within that integrated context.
> 
> It is sometimes argued here that the modelling potential of POV's scene 
> language is the unique and powerful aspect that differentiates it from 
> the crowd.  Maybe so.  I tend to see it as uniquely neutral and 
> encompassing.  It keeps techniques distinct by remaining neutral to them 
> all.
> 
> So with POV you may find artists who model entire buildings, brick by 
> primitive brick (Ib), or by hand with program generated mesh (Shay), or 
> from large primitives with image and bumpmaps applied (Gilles), or from 
> mesh-based height-fields tilted to form walls (Jaime), or from 
> isosurfaces formed with math functions alone (Mike and others), or brick 
> by preformed brick, preformed from generated mesh (Bill), or from a 
> collection of primitives to suggest pillars and walls (Everybody), or 
> modelled in a mesh modeller first then imported (Gilles).
> 
Then there are people like myself who create, adopt, and/or modify POV-Ray macro 
and include files to model whole objects or parts thereof.  Gilles does some of 
this also.  I will consider isosurfaces if surface displacement in detail is 
required.  For landscapes I use POV-Ray/GIMP to generate images of arbitrary 
size for height fields.

To each his own.  Pick a style that works for you and refine it as you go.

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