Ken wrote:

> ryan constantine wrote:
> >
> > is there a way to convert pov and inc files into moray?  or is there a
> > utility that allows one to search through pov and inc files for an
> > object and import it into moray?  it seems to me that if moray can go
> > from moray to pov, it should be able to go the other way as well.  does
> > it?  how?
>
>
> To parse a .pov or .inc file would require a scene file parser as powerful
> as the one that POV-Ray itself uses.

Not to volunteer or anything(or that I'd be qualified to do such a thing
anyway), but shouldn't a POV-Ray converter just be based off of POV-Ray's
code, which, since it is open source, could be used for such a purpose(or is
there something against that in the license?). So wouldn't the work just be in
writing the export module with the data already loaded by POV's parser?

> To write such a parser just for
> the benefit of importing .pov files would require an enourmous amount
> of work that no one, so far, is interested in doing.

But it would mean being able to convert .pov files to damn near anything
else(or as many things as you care to write it for), which seems to be a
frequently requested ability. For example, pov2rib, or
pov2anotherfileformatthateasilysupportsmathmaticalprimitiveswithouttesselation?

>
>
> --
> Ken Tyler -  1300+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
> http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/

--
You Know You've Been Raytracing Too Long When:
  Rather than hang a picture on a nail you just yell at it :
object {
 union {
 object{
 Painting
 }
 object {
 Wall
 }
 }
 And can't figure out why it keeps sliding off.
Produced by Alex Magidow's Sig File Randomizer(YKYBRTTL jokes courtesy of
c.g.r.raytracing)

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Alex Magidow wrote:
> 
> Ken wrote:

> > To parse a .pov or .inc file would require a scene file parser as powerful
> > as the one that POV-Ray itself uses.
> 
> Not to volunteer or anything(or that I'd be qualified to do such a thing
> anyway), but shouldn't a POV-Ray converter just be based off of POV-Ray's
> code, which, since it is open source, could be used for such a purpose(or is
> there something against that in the license?). So wouldn't the work just be in
> writing the export module with the data already loaded by POV's parser?
 
> > To write such a parser just for
> > the benefit of importing .pov files would require an enourmous amount
> > of work that no one, so far, is interested in doing.
> 
> But it would mean being able to convert .pov files to damn near anything
> else(or as many things as you care to write it for), which seems to be a
> frequently requested ability. For example, pov2rib, or
> pov2anotherfileformatthateasilysupportsmathmaticalprimitiveswithouttesselation?

There has been a lot of talk lately about adding tessellation support to
POV-Ray ( for displacement mapping and related features) which would help
facilitate adding export capabilities to the program. Once the majority
of POV-Ray's primitives can be represented internaly then converting it
to an exportable 3D file format would be much easier.

There has been no official comment about this from the POV-Team and should
be considered idle chatter for now.

-- 
Ken Tyler -  1300+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/

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On Thu, 16 Mar 2000 20:34:56 -0600 Alex Magidow <axi### [at] mninternet>
wrote:

>...shouldn't a POV-Ray converter just be based off of POV-Ray's
>code, which, since it is open source, could be used for such a purpose(or is
>there something against that in the license?).

  Hi, Alex. POV-Ray is not open source, nor is it public domain. It is
copyrighted freeware. Anyone is free to write their own parser (good
luck!) but the POV-Ray parser code may not be re-used in a third-party
program.

POV-Ray documentation (POVLEGAL.DOC) section 5.1.8:

<snip..>
"The POV-Team does not license source code for any use outside POV-Ray.
No portion of the POV-Ray source code may be incorporated into
another program unless it is clearly a custom version of POV-Ray that
includes all of the basic functions of POV-Ray."
<snip..>

-- 
Alan - ako### [at] povrayorg - a k o n g <at> p o v r a y <dot> o r g
http://www.povray.org - Home of the Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer

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I was told by Dave Dunn, the AOL POV-Ray Chat host, that you could append parts
of scenes (*.inc) into the Moray scene but that you couldn't work on any of it
further.  Kind of a inert addition then I guess.
On the menu, Scene/Settings then Includes tab.

Bob

"ryan constantine" <rco### [at] yahoocom> wrote in message
news:38D15FCC.81CF80F3@yahoo.com...
| is there a way to convert pov and inc files into moray?  or is there a
| utility that allows one to search through pov and inc files for an
| object and import it into moray?  it seems to me that if moray can go
| from moray to pov, it should be able to go the other way as well.  does
| it?  how?
|

Post a reply to this message

Alan Kong wrote:

> On Thu, 16 Mar 2000 20:34:56 -0600 Alex Magidow <axi### [at] mninternet>
> wrote:
>
> >...shouldn't a POV-Ray converter just be based off of POV-Ray's
> >code, which, since it is open source, could be used for such a purpose(or is
> >there something against that in the license?).
>
>   Hi, Alex. POV-Ray is not open source, nor is it public domain. It is
> copyrighted freeware. Anyone is free to write their own parser (good
> luck!) but the POV-Ray parser code may not be re-used in a third-party
> program.
>
> POV-Ray documentation (POVLEGAL.DOC) section 5.1.8:
>
> <snip..>
> "The POV-Team does not license source code for any use outside POV-Ray.
> No portion of the POV-Ray source code may be incorporated into
> another program unless it is clearly a custom version of POV-Ray that
> includes all of the basic functions of POV-Ray."
> <snip..>

Thanks for clearing that up...so, if teh converter has a renderer, then its
fine?<G>

>
>
> --
> Alan - ako### [at] povrayorg - a k o n g <at> p o v r a y <dot> o r g
> http://www.povray.org - Home of the Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer

--
You Know You've Been Raytracing Too Long When:
  Rather than hang a picture on a nail you just yell at it :
object {
 union {
 object{
 Painting
 }
 object {
 Wall
 }
 }
 And can't figure out why it keeps sliding off.
Produced by Alex Magidow's Sig File Randomizer(YKYBRTTL jokes courtesy of
c.g.r.raytracing)

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 17 Mar 2000 07:08:50 -0600 Alex Magidow <axi### [at] mninternet>
wrote:

>Thanks for clearing that up...so, if teh converter has a renderer, then its
>fine?<G>

  No, it's okay only if it is a modified version of POV-Ray and clearly
stated as such. IOW, someone couldn't incorporate the POV-Ray parser
code to read in a POV scene to be rendered with an unrelated scanline
renderer.

-- 
Alan - ako### [at] povrayorg - a k o n g <at> p o v r a y <dot> o r g
http://www.povray.org - Home of the Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer

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Couldn't you just disallow code theft in commercial products? That way, you'd
cultivate a greater amount of freeware programs that'd use POV-Ray's code, which
would speed along the development of such programs.

In any case, there's probably something I'm overlooking here. I'm neither a very
prolific coder nor a lawyer, so I really am not within my domain of knowlege
here.

Alan Kong wrote:

> On Fri, 17 Mar 2000 07:08:50 -0600 Alex Magidow <axi### [at] mninternet>
> wrote:
>
> >Thanks for clearing that up...so, if teh converter has a renderer, then its
> >fine?<G>
>
>   No, it's okay only if it is a modified version of POV-Ray and clearly
> stated as such. IOW, someone couldn't incorporate the POV-Ray parser
> code to read in a POV scene to be rendered with an unrelated scanline
> renderer.
>
> --
> Alan - ako### [at] povrayorg - a k o n g <at> p o v r a y <dot> o r g
> http://www.povray.org - Home of the Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer

--
You Know You've Been Raytracing Too Long When:
  Rather than hang a picture on a nail you just yell at it :
object {
 union {
 object{
 Painting
 }
 object {
 Wall
 }
 }
 And can't figure out why it keeps sliding off.
Produced by Alex Magidow's Sig File Randomizer(YKYBRTTL jokes courtesy of
c.g.r.raytracing)

Post a reply to this message

Alex Magidow wrote:
> 
> Couldn't you just disallow code theft in commercial products? That way, you'd
> cultivate a greater amount of freeware programs that'd use POV-Ray's code, which
> would speed along the development of such programs.
> 
> In any case, there's probably something I'm overlooking here. I'm neither a very
> prolific coder nor a lawyer, so I really am not within my domain of knowlege
> here.

The real issue here is that while POV-Ray is open source it is still
the property of the POV-Team. You may modify the source to make a
different version of POV-Ray, you may study the source code for your
own edification, but you may not rip out parts of the source code
to make your own program work. The source code for POV-Ray is the
intellectual property of the POV-Team which grants them the liberty
of imposing any restrictions on it they so choose including copyright
protection under the law both national and international.

-- 
Ken Tyler -  1300+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/

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> > Couldn't you just disallow code theft in commercial products? That
> > way, you'd cultivate a greater amount of freeware programs that'd 
> > use POV-Ray's code, which would speed along the development of 
> > such programs.
> >
> The real issue here is that while POV-Ray is open source it is still
> the property of the POV-Team. You may modify the source to make a
> different version of POV-Ray, you may study the source code for your
> own edification, but you may not rip out parts of the source code
> to make your own program work. The source code for POV-Ray is the
> intellectual property of the POV-Team which grants them the liberty
> of imposing any restrictions on it they so choose including
> copyright protection under the law both national and international.

Of course, the POV-Team may do so... but WHY do they do so? Who
benefits from this? 
(Disclaimer: I do not want to annoy the POV-Team, in fact I love your
work very much and I can live very well with the current license. I'm
just thinking of what could be done using POV-Ray code, such as
converters, animators, etc.)
While GPL programs were unusual when POV-Ray was created (outside
Linux at least), and thus it's easy to understand that POV-Ray did not
have this license from the beginning, I think that this would be a
good license for POV-Ray today.
And I think that now is a good time to think about the license again
as the development of POV-Ray seems to have slowened down (the last
version (3.1e) dates from March '99 and the next planned one is a
compilation of some patches).

I hope that I've not made me some enemies now.

  Florian

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Florian Fischer wrote:

> Of course, the POV-Team may do so... but WHY do they do so? Who
> benefits from this?

I think part of this stems from the very nature of how POV-Ray started
and how it is currently developed. The POV-Team produces POV-Ray for
free and they do it for FUN. If they allow others to use their code
in other applications those people could easily charge for and make
a profit on the sales of those applications.

No one wants to see others make money on their work without sharing
in those profits.

 But here is where it really gets tricky. The POV-Team members are
scattered all over the world and distrubuting profits made on their
work creates all kinds of monetary distribution problems not to
mention the legal problems involved with any money making operation
of an international nature.
 They don't want to have to form a corporation to continue distibuting
POV-Ray as it has been in the past nor do they want others profiting
on the work they put into the program. Likewise you mentioned that
POV-Ray is comprised of some user submitted patches. This is great for
the purposes of adding features to the program but when money is
invloved how do you decide who gets a what cut of the money pie ?

I am not saying your opinions are wrong but you might consider that
the POV-Team has very valid concerns about their program and how it
is used which is reflected in their current licensing agreement.


Hope for the future -

 One thing you might find encouraging is that I am strongly lobbying
the POV-Team to add a method to internally tessellate POV-Ray primitives
in some future version of the program. If this feature were added it
would greatly simplify the process of adding export capabilities to
the program. So far I have not received any opposition to the principal
of the idea but likewise I have not heard that it is being seriously
considered either. We will have to wait and see.


Lutz, sorry for the off topic discussion.

-- 
Ken Tyler -  1300+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/

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