"waggy" <hon### [at] handbasketorg> wrote in message 
news:web.519fe53e76c5c07f21be1230@news.povray.org...
> Shay wrote:
>> Many members of the POV community have a fascination and familiarity with
>> Beginnings. They understand and are able to discuss nascent ideas and 
>> basic
>> macros. Endings (completed images, Tor-level macros) aren't even fully
>> appreciated because the path from Beginning to End cannot be seen. To 
>> each his
>> own, but obviously this short-attention-span focus has a hard time 
>> maintaining a
>> community.
>
> This is a fascinating observation.
>
> I had some experience with something like this regarding the f_mandelbulb
> function I posted several years ago. There was some good discussion about
> implementation (Beginnings), but almost no feedback from users. For all I 
> know,
> no one but me has ever used either the SDL include file or the source code
> patches I posted. Although I have implemented some other weird variations
> (quaternion and bicomplex versions) for my own amusement, I haven't 
> bothered to
> post them for the apparent lack of interest. But back to the topic at 
> hand.

That's near what I was getting at, but not exactly.

Imagine if you painted a picture of a lion and showed it to an audience who 
not only have never seen a lion, but also have never tried painting a 
picture. You might get comments like "that oily, pigmented stuff is cool!" 
or "that's like when I painted my living room, except smaller and with more 
colors."

Not that these comments aren't valid, but the audience is not challenged by 
your accomplishment and you are not challenged by your audience.

Of course, when I came to POV-Ray as a beginner so many years ago, I judged 
images by the amount and quality of their photons and reflections. I admired 
most what came most easily. Now I'm weary of that comes easily. Now I spend 
weeks or months on every picture. Now I'm confined to the narrowest of cg 
niches (hand-coded mesh). And this is the expected progression of any 
artist.

It's long past time for me to stop completely or become a beginner again.

>
> Here's why I have never entered any of the ray tracing competitions,

I'll point out that the tc-rtc is not a competition; it's a Ray-Tracing 
CHALLENGE. Also, fractals seem like a good fit for the round.

 -Shay

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