On 11/4/2011 8:45 AM, gregjohn wrote:
> Povray: what's it good for?

I can think of a few things that are behind why I use it:

1) You don't need to use meshes.  This is particularly useful with 
things like isosurfaces which give you a lot of power if you know how to 
use them well.

2) It has an easy human-readable input formation and doesn't require a 
UI.  This means that it's pretty simple to write a script in whatever 
language you like that outputs to POV and invokes the renderer 
automatically to generate a picture.  The ability to defined high-level 
objects directly (as opposed to just meshes) helps a lot here too.

3) It's a fantastic tool for getting a feel for the math behind 3D 
geometry.  The fact that you can easily use povray without a modeller 
give an incentive to learn how to design scenes well by hand, and in 
doing so you'll have to learn to think in 3D coordinates.  Obviously for 
professionals this doesn't really matter, but for people just starting 
out of graphics I think it can be a great thing.

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