Hello,

I was wondering (hoping) that I could pay someone to add Glows to UberPov,
and include enough implementation info via comments or whatever that
whoever in the future could easily forward this to the next version when 4
comes out. If you are interested Clipka, even better. ;-)

I have looked at the old code and the new code, and they are so different
that I simply will never have the time to dig in and do this myself.

I only care about this one single feature. I would pay on successful
completion, if someone with sufficient knowledge of the code base would
actually be willing to knock this thing out...if the implementer is a well
known poster I would be fine with half in advance through paypal or
whatever.

Is anyone even remotely interested?

There isn't much code involved, but like I said I don't have the time or
sufficient knowledge of the codebase to make it happen. I looked at a few
years ago, but it didn't make much sense to me after looking at it a couple
of hours with respect to what must be done in order to port it from one
version to the other.

What would be a fair price?

I will check up on this thread every few days for a few weeks.

Thanks,
Ian

direct: g d s hyphen e n t r o p y at h o t m a i l dot c o m

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Am 31.10.2016 um 00:16 schrieb [GDS|Entropy]:

> I was wondering (hoping) that I could pay someone to add Glows to UberPov,
> and include enough implementation info via comments or whatever that
> whoever in the future could easily forward this to the next version when 4
> comes out. If you are interested Clipka, even better. ;-)

If I can make a few bucks out of my hobby, I certainly won't say no ;)

I'll contact you via e-mail.

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Am 31.10.2016 um 00:16 schrieb [GDS|Entropy] in povray.advanced-users:

> I was wondering (hoping) that I could pay someone to add Glows to UberPov,
> and include enough implementation info via comments or whatever that
> whoever in the future could easily forward this to the next version when 4
> comes out. If you are interested Clipka, even better. ;-)

I've just noticed to my surprise that you're apparently not the guy who
had requested the very same MegaPOV feature just a few weeks ago on the
povray.macintosh newsgroup, so I've decided to use this occasion for a
shameless plug or two:


While I love working on POV-Ray and UberPOV as a hobby, and will quite
certainly continue to do so no matter what I get out of it, I'm not
above taking donations that allow me to spend more time on this hobby --
nor am I above taking bribes to prioritize my ToDo list.

So to anyone wishing to back up Ian's (aka GDS|Entropy) motion to get
the MegaPOV "glow" feature implemented in UberPOV ASAP, feel free to
place a bounty on the corresponding GitHub issue via Bountysource:

https://www.bountysource.com/issues/38809617-port-megapov-s-glow-feature-to-uberpov


In related news, anyone inclined to send some round tuits my way for
general POV-Ray and UberPOV development is happily invited to take a
look at https://salt.bountysource.com/teams/uberpov.

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For everyones general information, I think bounties like this are a great
way not only to get new features, but most especially to say "thanks" to
the folks who put in work making PovRay what it is.

I am very excited for the opportunities this opens up for everyone.

Once this feature is in I want to look at true displacement, which will be
a ton of work and I won't be able to fund it alone. I think TD would buy a
lot for both the package and the community as a whole.

There was at least one PovRay modification that supported  true
displacement, but the way it was accomplished was to make Pov conform to
some degree with the Renderman SL standard, and if I recall correctly it
broke entirely with the way pov handles materials (not the pov term, but
general).

It is dead but the source lives on courtesy of Archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090103185310/http://www.aetec.ee/fv/vkhomep.nsf/pages/povman2

Povman is based on MP 1.1, and Vahur Krouverk was the author.

Obviously we would want to keep the way pov handles materials in SDL, but
also allow true displacement as seen in Renderman. I don't know what this
would entail specifically but I would feel safe betting it would be
nontrivial work.

I am not advocating full RM spec compliance, only hijacking the
displacement code from PovMan in some form, preferably without having to
use a shader compiler.

I would like to know how many folks would like to see true displacement
ported over because like I said I can't fund that one alone (at least not
in a single shot).

If there isn't much interest (which frankly would shock me) then it
wouldn't even be worth trying to size the work...but conversely if the
interest is great, then there may be some merit at least in investigation
of the idea.

Other things which might be useful:

- OpenCL/GPU. This has been talked to death but because of the complexity
perhaps a large enough bounty would be sufficiently motivating and provide
a good ROI for the team.

- A reasonable alternative to GPU raytracing is "progressive raytracing", a
quick google search even gets you articles stating that this is far less
complex to do than GPU but is much faster than normal RT and is advocated
as either an alternative to GPU RT or an intermediate point between normal
RT and a GPU implementation.

- Ability to "scan" objects into a distance based resolution adaptive mesh
instead of rendering the object as normal, which might speed up render. (I
know marching triangles macros exist, would an internal implementation be
faster?)

- Navier-Stokes flow, compressible and incompressible implemented as a
primitive. So if you place the primitive in a hollow hemisphere it would
naturally fill it, or if you put it in a HF valley with rocks and such it
would fill it to the Y position of the primitive and "flow" around the
rocks, making eddies and ripples and such. Flow direction would be a
vector, fluid would naturally fill whatever was around it as well.

- Enhancements to volumetric rendering, so media behaves
consistently/predictably regardless of container volume and/or scale. Right
now making a good looking variable density fog or cloud can get a bit weird
and it is difficult to predict the outcome of any given input. Having some
kind of distance based resolution may enhance speed as well. Perhaps the
volumetric rendering task can be sent to the GPU alone. 

- Implement a plugin based architecture for pov, so new features could be
added without having to rework the whole application each time. I have
solved many problems using plugin based architecture, and am quite a fan of
it. If done correctly this might allow Pov to get more features faster, but
would take a lot of work to do initially.

Ian

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Wow no comments huh? Lol... I thought someone would have something to say
at least.

This just motivates me more to personally take out strategic bounties for
stuff that might make Pov more attractive as a 3rd party rendering plugin
at the least...whatever it takes to keep it alive...it looks like our
community is in trouble...not nearly as active as the early 90s...not much
new blood, not much new in the way of IDE/Modelers...

Im going to need to think about what to offer payment for.
I am not rich but I am willing to do my part in thanks to those whose
efforts have given us all, freely, what I feel is one of the most
interesting, useful and beautiful rendering packages out there.

Maybe a gofundme or patreon page for pov would stimulate dev work and
attract new devs, and with certain features maybe attract new users.

I have seen a huge drop off in activity over the decades and want to affect
change. Bounties is the best answer I have come up with so far. For me
Glows are just the start. I am going to invest in this, by damn.

Pov **cannot** be allowed to slowly wither; it is responsible for my entire
23yr career in software engineering (I'm now a VP), my meeting my wife (in
art appreciation class due to death-metal, a presentation on Gilles Tran
Pov work, and a scene I made in Pov) and supporting my family (because Pov
taught me to code)...I *owe* Pov and team...

Who else feels this way?
How has Pov changed your life?
Has it introduced you to programming, helped you visualize your thesis, got
you into a career in 3d art, or what?

I cannot be the only one for whom Pov has opened professional, artistic and
intellectual doors.

Ian

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