In article <web.3f079a18d64ef62c7dc35b250@news.povray.org>, 
leo### [at] hotmailcom says...
> hi all,
> 
> I'm doing a little project designing a house I'd eventually like to
> build.... I'm trying to do it all with freeware...
> 
> I've pretty much decided to use designworkshop lite for the basic plans, it
> seems to do the job nicely.
> 
> I've played around with Moray (3.3), and POVRay, and very happy with it:
> gives the sort of rendering quality I'm looking for (I wanted radiance and
> raytraced reflections etc).
> 
> I can get a model in DXF format from design workshop lite to Moray using an
> old program called "Crossroads" to generate a raw file from the DXF, then
> importing to Moray using the standard RAW import.
> 
> I tried 3ds win, but can't get the plugin to import DXF directly (it just
> shows RAW in the list of files and even that doesn't work - Moray
> crashes!).
> 
> But the problem now is material assignment: I can't assign different
> materials to different surfaces - only 1 material for the whole model which
> is not very useful!!!
> 
> Any thoughts on how I could do this?
> 
> Any suggestions helpful, even alternative software (freeware modelling /
> rendering) which might do the same job.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Leon
> 

In terms of alternative software, try Amabilis 3D Canvas. Its DXF import 
will correctly differentiate each sub object. This is one thing that 
irritated my too about a lot of programs. "I don't bloody care if it is 
all on the same layer morons, it clearly has hand, finger 1-4, thumb, 
wrist, etc. in the file, why the hell are you converting it to a single 
overlapping mesh with degenerate triangles.", was a very common thought I 
had trying out various programs, ever since I figured out I could get 
free models. lol 3D Canvas is the only one I have found that not only 
correctly separates them, but generally shows them in wire frame as 
different and visually unique objects.

Note however that I have not actually tried the export to .pov yet, so I 
can't say for sure if it correctly outputs the result as more than one 
mesh. Also, unless there is a plugin around for some format that Moray 
uses (I haven't looked around to see), then as far as I know you can only 
just get a .pov file from it. However, the mere fact that you can 
manipulate each piece independently is a definite bonus over all the 
other bone headed programs that assume that every other program you plan 
to use it with will render degenerate triangles instead of throwing them 
out. I blame the prevalence of OpenGL an DirectX modellers/renderers for 
this kind of stupidity. ;) lol

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

Post a reply to this message