I have been trying out Moray for a couple of days now and I can't seem to be
able to import existing textures into the material editor.  Is there some
kind of conversion package that will allow me to take .inc texture files and
put them into Moray's binary format?  I've been pulling my hair out trying
to enter them manually and found that some stuff couldn't be done.

Thanks in advance,

Bob Ratliff
FireWeb Consulting
elm### [at] mrtccom

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Hi Bob, you recently wrote in moray.win:

> Is there some kind of conversion package that 
> will allow me to take .inc texture files and
> put them into Moray's binary format?  
Nope, that is not available.

> I've been pulling my hair out trying to enter 
> them manually and found that some stuff couldn't be done.
It should be fairly straightforward for most textures, though. 
The only place you may experience difficulties is with 
out of range values.

Maybe you can give an example of one that's caused a lot of 
hair loss<g>.

- Lutz
  email : lut### [at] stmuccom
  Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

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Lutz Kretzschmar wrote:

> > I've been pulling my hair out trying to enter
> > them manually and found that some stuff couldn't be done.
> It should be fairly straightforward for most textures, though.
> The only place you may experience difficulties is with
> out of range values.
>
> Maybe you can give an example of one that's caused a lot of
> hair loss<g>.

Lutz,

I have, on several occassions, needed to use out of range values for
textures.  Will we be able to do this sometime in Moray's future?

Also, on a simi-related topic...

Out of range RGB values for lights (& textures) aren't currently
supported either.  I'm not sure why I would ever need negative RGB
values for textures, but I do use lights with negative values quite
often.  It would be nice to be able to do this in Moray.

Currently, I have to add lights that represent my negative-RGB-value
lights, export my scene, open the file in POV & make my changes there.
Is there a way to make parts of my POV export file not get changed each
time that I send it for test renders - sort of like we can do with
textures?

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Lutz Kretzschmar <lut### [at] stmuccom> wrote in message
news:37ac80eb.12898837@194.174.214.110...
> Hi Bob, you recently wrote in moray.win:
>
> > Is there some kind of conversion package that
> > will allow me to take .inc texture files and
> > put them into Moray's binary format?
> Nope, that is not available.
>
> > I've been pulling my hair out trying to enter
> > them manually and found that some stuff couldn't be done.
> It should be fairly straightforward for most textures, though.
> The only place you may experience difficulties is with
> out of range values.
One feature that I find lacking in Moray, is the ability to layer pigmenst
and normals, for some reason you are only allowed one of each.

--

T'vakah

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------

A small project I am working on know:
http://backdoor.to/edertav/

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Tony Vigil wrote:

> I have, on several occassions, needed to use out of range values for
> textures.  Will we be able to do this sometime in Moray's future?
> ...
> Out of range RGB values for lights (& textures) aren't currently
> supported either.  I'm not sure why I would ever need negative RGB
> values for textures, but I do use lights with negative values quite
> often.  It would be nice to be able to do this in Moray.

Generally speaking, in Povray, the ability to overdrive values 
(many kind of values : colors, lights, finishes...) is *absolutely
essential* to obtain a good color amplitude in images.

Fabien.

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Lutz Kretzschmar <lut### [at] stmuccom> wrote in message
news:37ac80eb.12898837@194.174.214.110...
> Hi Bob, you recently wrote in moray.win:
>
> > Is there some kind of conversion package that
> > will allow me to take .inc texture files and
> > put them into Moray's binary format?
> Nope, that is not available.
>
> > I've been pulling my hair out trying to enter
> > them manually and found that some stuff couldn't be done.
> It should be fairly straightforward for most textures, though.
> The only place you may experience difficulties is with
> out of range values.
>
> Maybe you can give an example of one that's caused a lot of
> hair loss<g>.
>
> - Lutz
>   email : lut### [at] stmuccom
>   Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

Lutz,

   I know now that some of the textures I want have already been converted.
Here is one the one that was driveing me to going bald ;)

//
//   CJFAlabaster is similar to PinkAlabaster, the colours and the scale
//   have been changed
//

#declare CJFAlabaster =
        texture {
                pigment {
                        bozo
                        turbulence 0.25
                        color_map {
                                [0,  1 color red 0.9 green 0.75 blue 0.75
                                       color red 0.6 green 0.6  blue 0.6 ]
                                }
                        scale 1
                        }
                finish { ambient 0.25 }
                }
        texture

                pigment

                        granite
                        color_map {
                        [0, 0.9 color DarkOrchid filter 1 color DarkOrchid
filter 0.5]
                        [0.9, 1 color DarkSlateBlue color DarkSlateBlue]
                                }
                        scale 5       // Twice as large as unit shape
                        }
        finish

                specular 1
                roughness 0.0001
                phong 0.25
                phong_size 75
                brilliance 4
                }
        }

I found it in a MTX that someone posted on the net.

Thanks,

Bob Ratliff
FireWeb Consulting
elm### [at] mrtccom

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Hi Tony Vigil, you recently wrote in moray.win:

> I have, on several occassions, needed to use out of range values for
> textures.  Will we be able to do this sometime in Moray's future?
Maybe. It's quite difficult to make it intuitive and easy to configure
the sliders. It wouldn't be much of a problem if I simply offered an
editbox.....

> Out of range RGB values for lights (& textures) aren't currently
> supported either.  
Yes, they are. The 'M' slider for lights lets you use values outside
the 0 to 1.0 range (up to 10 fold per default, but you can use your
own ranges by tweaking values in the Registry),

For colors you can use Range button to set the ranges for the colors.

> Is there a way to make parts of my POV export file not get changed each
> time that I send it for test renders - sort of like we can do with
> textures?
Nope, only textures support this. What you can do is put those things
in an include file and add this include file to the
Scene|Settings|Include list.

- Lutz
  email : lut### [at] stmuccom
  Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

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Hi T'vakah, you recently wrote in moray.win:

> One feature that I find lacking in Moray, is the ability to layer pigmenst
> and normals, for some reason you are only allowed one of each.
Since you can't do that in POV-Ray either, what would be the point?
Unless you are talking about layering textures, then you are mistaken,
since Moray has supported this since V2.5 for DOS. In the Material
Editor, use Create and selecte 'Layered Texture'. Then add as many
texture layrers as you need.

- Lutz
  email : lut### [at] stmuccom
  Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

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Hi Elminster, you recently wrote in moray.win:

> Here is one the one that was driveing me to going bald ;)
OK, here is the MTX that contains it. It seemed pretty simple, but
then I wrote the program<g>. It would help me if you could describe
what presented you with the biggest problem.

Note that the second layer is a bit strange in that it defines both
phong and specular in the finish.

- Lutz
  email : lut### [at] stmuccom
  Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

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Attachments:
Download 'Alabaster.mtx.dat' (2 KB)

lut### [at] stmuccom (Lutz Kretzschmar) wrote in <37a### [at] newsstmuccom>:

>Hi Elminster, you recently wrote in moray.win:
>
>> Here is one the one that was driveing me to going bald ;)
>OK, here is the MTX that contains it. It seemed pretty simple, but
>then I wrote the program<g>. It would help me if you could describe
>what presented you with the biggest problem.
>
>Note that the second layer is a bit strange in that it defines both
>phong and specular in the finish.
>
>- Lutz
>  email : lut### [at] stmuccom
>  Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

Lutz,

   I couldn't get it to take both pigments.  I just may not understand the 
order in which to enter the data in the Material editor, but I couldn't get 
the source window to look like the .inc code.  I guess it's time to RTFM ;)

Bob Ratliff
elm### [at] mrtccom

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Hi Elminster, you recently wrote in moray.win:

>    I couldn't get it to take both pigments.  
You need to add two textures to a layered texture (check the Material
Editor with that sample.


> but I couldn't get the source window to look like the .inc code.  
Oh, you often won't since there are numerous ways of writing the same
code in POV-Ray.

> I guess it's time to RTFM ;)
I guess that might help<g>.

- Lutz
  email : lut### [at] stmuccom
  Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

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> > One feature that I find lacking in Moray, is the ability to layer
pigmenst
> > and normals, for some reason you are only allowed one of each.
> Since you can't do that in POV-Ray either, what would be the point?
> Unless you are talking about layering textures, then you are mistaken,
> since Moray has supported this since V2.5 for DOS. In the Material
> Editor, use Create and selecte 'Layered Texture'. Then add as many
> texture layrers as you need.
POV-Ray does support this, I am talking about multiple pigment statments in
the same texture and the same with normals like the following:

texture{
    pigment{some pigment}
    pigment{another pigment that is slightly transparent}
    normal{some normal}
    normal{another normal that is added to the first}
}

the advantage of this is that it cuts down on the parsing and rendering time
as compared to a layerd texture.

-- T'vakah

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------

A small project I am working on know:
http://backdoor.to/edertav/

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T'vakah wrote:
> 
> texture{
>     pigment{some pigment}
>     pigment{another pigment that is slightly transparent}
>     normal{some normal}
>     normal{another normal that is added to the first}
> }
> 

If I understand correctly, POV simply overwrites the first pigment
with the second pigment.  Same goes for normals.

-Nathan

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I recently experimented with this idea, and proved myself wrong.  While you
can layer pigments like textures, this then takes longer to render, and
gives very different results than a layerd texture.  But with normals, the
last one listed is the one that is used, like Nathan said.
--
T'vakah

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------

A small project I am working on now:
http://backdoor.to/edertav/

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On Tue, 10 Aug 1999 07:45:12 GMT, lut### [at] stmuccom (Lutz Kretzschmar) wrote:

>Note that the second layer is a bit strange in that it defines both
>phong and specular in the finish.

  I've seen this in other textures before, Lutz. It's how some people choose
to show a pronounced highlight within a highlight.

-- 
Alan
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news.povray.org - where POV-Ray enthusiasts around the world can get
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--------------------------------------------------------------------

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Alan Kong wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 10 Aug 1999 07:45:12 GMT, lut### [at] stmuccom (Lutz Kretzschmar) wrote:
> 
> >Note that the second layer is a bit strange in that it defines both
> >phong and specular in the finish.
> 
>   I've seen this in other textures before, Lutz. It's how some people choose
> to show a pronounced highlight within a highlight.

If you want a veeery nice varnished wood, using both specular and phong
is the way to go; the result is much more realistic, you get the
softness
of the specular, and the crisp of the phong.

Fabien.

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On Fri, 13 Aug 1999 11:43:45 +0200, Fabien Mosen <fab### [at] skynetbe>
wrote:

>If you want a veeery nice varnished wood, using both specular and phong
>is the way to go; the result is much more realistic, you get the
>softness of the specular, and the crisp of the phong.

  Thanks, Fabien! Another tip from a pro...

-- 
Alan
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news.povray.org - where POV-Ray enthusiasts around the world can get
together to exchange ideas, information, and experiences with others
--------------------------------------------------------------------

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