POV-Ray SDL isn't really a good scripting language for this sort of 
task.  It's quite a good Scene Description Language, but I've found it 
more effective to perform behavioral/physics simulations in Python using 
modules such as the Open Dynamics Engine, and have the Python script 
print out POV-Ray SDL to a file for rendering.

Ideally there would be some sort of standard API into POV-Ray (C, 
Python, anything) so that it could be accessed natively in other 
languages but I imagine that this isn't a trivial task in it's present 
state, or it would have already been done.

Peter

Matti Karnaattu wrote:
> If you like to animate a hamster, you can put your hamster object to scene
> and start shooting it with virtual camera without telling hamster object
> what to do on every frame.
> 
> Or how about putting some AI people to walking in city object?
> 
> I really hope that some day POV-Ray have object oriented SDL and collision
> detection with physics... This kind of stuff is very useful to make
> animations.
> 
> Matti
> 
>

Post a reply to this message

Matti Karnaattu <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> If you like to animate a hamster, you can put your hamster object to scene
> and start shooting it with virtual camera without telling hamster object
> what to do on every frame.

> Or how about putting some AI people to walking in city object?

  That's not a task for a raytracer.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   That's not a task for a raytracer.
>
> --
>                                                           - Warp

Animations are often rendered with raytracers.

Matti

Post a reply to this message

On Wed,  4 Jan 2006 21:09:17 EST, "Mike" <inf### [at] mydisorg> wrote:
> Does anyone know of a good website or resources/artists/individuals who have
> explored AI in conjunction w/povray? I'm wondering if its possible to
> create an animation using a traditional A* algorithm in povray?
>
> Any information is GREATLY appreciated :-)

AFAIK not strictly in POV-Ray but with lots of help of POV-Ray IIRC:
http://www.frams.alife.pl/

ABX

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Matti Karnaattu <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> >   That's not a task for a raytracer.

> Animations are often rendered with raytracers.

  Deciding what goes where is not the task for a raytracer.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   Deciding what goes where is not the task for a raytracer.

POV-Ray isn't only a raytracer. It also have script editor and language with
weak animation support. These are not features of raytracer. Are you trying
to say that POV-Ray should take XML source input and output only one frame?
Or how about making POV-Ray to compliant RenderMan standard?

However, rendering motion blur requires knowing how objects are moving and
efficient way to do this is using extra rays than blending raytraced frames
together. It is also efficient to parse scene only once in animation, so
rendering engine should understand animations and making decisions how
objects are moving.

POV-Ray's biggest problem is weak animation support. It is useful mainly for
still pictures.

Matti

Post a reply to this message

Matti Karnaattu <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> POV-Ray isn't only a raytracer. It also have script editor and language with
> weak animation support. These are not features of raytracer. Are you trying
> to say that POV-Ray should take XML source input and output only one frame?

  You lost me with the "XML" part. I couldn't follow your logic.

> POV-Ray's biggest problem is weak animation support. It is useful mainly for
> still pictures.

  And POV-Ray supporting a hamster AI helps this how?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   You lost me with the "XML" part. I couldn't follow your logic.

Is POV-Ray rendering engine or is it script based rendering software?
Rendering engine should input data from other tools and XML is easy to
parse and generate. There is no use for editor in rendering engine. That
should be different program.

>> POV-Ray's biggest problem is weak animation support. It is useful mainly
>> for still pictures.

>   And POV-Ray supporting a hamster AI helps this how?

If you like to model grass do you set every 100000 blade to scene or do you
make macro for that? If you want to animate hamsters you don't want to tell
every hamster movement on every frame on every scene where you like to use
hamster object now and later.

With collision detection and physics you can also throw hamster with bowling
ball and kill it. Or stupid hamster can walk over table and die if the drop
is enough high.

Of course this kind of stuff is also useful when modelling water particle
behavior and so on.

Matti

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In article <web.43c02225d1a8490fe4dd611c0@news.povray.org>, nomail@nomail 
says...
> Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> >   You lost me with the "XML" part. I couldn't follow your logic.
> 
> Is POV-Ray rendering engine or is it script based rendering software?
> Rendering engine should input data from other tools and XML is easy to
> parse and generate. There is no use for editor in rendering engine. That
> should be different program.
> 
We have been through this before. XML may be easy to generate or parse, 
but its a) inefficient compared to the existing SDL, which means parsing 
would take longer, and b) in many cases SDL uses macros and loops to 
generate multiple objects, trace surface and perform other complex tasks 
that are supported by "languages", not "documents". XML is a "document" 
format, not a script language. The only instance I know of where XML is 
even used for scripts involves using the XML to define secondary things, 
then placing the real language portion in a CDATA block. In other words, 
even the people that developed XML realized the difference between 
documents and imbedded script, which can't be converted to XML.

So, you have lost me with that too. I am not sure what everyone's 
fascination with XML is, but it smacks of the old hammer and nail 
fallacy, which says, "To someone that does nothing but use a hammer to 
pound nails, everything starts to look like a nail."

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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Thanks Peter, ABX, Matti et all.. I'm actually using Python to do the AI
work and output a pov scene file respectively. I'll probably make the
Python script available for download when I finish.

http://www.frams.alife.pl/ <-- very cool!

Peter Duthie <pd_### [at] warlordsofbeercom> wrote:
> POV-Ray SDL isn't really a good scripting language for this sort of
> task.  It's quite a good Scene Description Language, but I've found it
> more effective to perform behavioral/physics simulations in Python using
> modules such as the Open Dynamics Engine, and have the Python script
> print out POV-Ray SDL to a file for rendering.
>
> Ideally there would be some sort of standard API into POV-Ray (C,
> Python, anything) so that it could be accessed natively in other
> languages but I imagine that this isn't a trivial task in it's present
> state, or it would have already been done.
>
> Peter
>
> Matti Karnaattu wrote:
> > If you like to animate a hamster, you can put your hamster object to scene
> > and start shooting it with virtual camera without telling hamster object
> > what to do on every frame.
> >
> > Or how about putting some AI people to walking in city object?
> >
> > I really hope that some day POV-Ray have object oriented SDL and collision
> > detection with physics... This kind of stuff is very useful to make
> > animations.
> >
> > Matti
> >
> >

Post a reply to this message