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 :-)

-mike

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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?

  I cannot even begin to fathom why a raytracer would benefit from
the A* or other algorithms.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   I cannot even begin to fathom why a raytracer would benefit from
> the A* or other algorithms.

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

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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
> 
>

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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

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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

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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

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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

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