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aaglo wrote:
> My civ3-units - modelled and animated with pov-ray:
> http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2036938&postcount=4
>
Great models! Thought they seem incomplete without a scene or game to
contain them.
(And this, in a way, colors your question, which might also encompass
the larger issue of scene building.)
POV-Ray levels the playing field, in a manner of speaking, because it
offers only the scene langauge interface.
Mesh models must either be generated with the scene language directly (a
practice that may be quite unique to POV artists) or modelled in an
external product then translated into scene language.
Models composed of "primitives" and employing CSG also may be
articulated in the scene language directly or composed in an external
product where either a model, or a complete scene, can be built and
translated.
This stands in some contrast to renderers that have scene modelling GUI
interfaces built into them. These products, which may also support
scene language, arguably, may induce a tendency away from experimenting
with program generated effects, and away from the use of primitives, and
toward the apparent homogeneity and flexibility that mesh can offer
within that integrated context.
It is sometimes argued here that the modelling potential of POV's scene
language is the unique and powerful aspect that differentiates it from
the crowd. Maybe so. I tend to see it as uniquely neutral and
encompassing. It keeps techniques distinct by remaining neutral to them
all.
So with POV you may find artists who model entire buildings, brick by
primitive brick (Ib), or by hand with program generated mesh (Shay), or
from large primitives with image and bumpmaps applied (Gilles), or from
mesh-based height-fields tilted to form walls (Jaime), or from
isosurfaces formed with math functions alone (Mike and others), or brick
by preformed brick, preformed from generated mesh (Bill), or from a
collection of primitives to suggest pillars and walls (Everybody), or
modelled in a mesh modeller first then imported (Gilles).
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Thank you all for the replies :)
I once tried Moray, but it just didn't feel right (after getting used to the
Pov-ray "interface").
Cheers
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"aaglo" <aag### [at] jippii fi> wrote:
> Thank you all for the replies :)
>
> I once tried Moray, but it just didn't feel right (after getting used to the
> Pov-ray "interface").
>
> Cheers
You could try Bishop3D which is new and undergoing Beta testing.
http://www.bishop3d.com/
Stephen
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Personally I tend to use whatever's "best" for the job, though with a very
heavy bias towards povray since I have far superior skills with that
compared to conventional modellers. Generally I use isosurfaces for complex
organic shapes that have largely random shapes, and Daz studio for more
specific organic forms like people, CSG for simple man-made objects, and
modelling programs for anything complex & man-made.
Generally if I can see a way to get it looking good enough in povray I'll do
it that way. But pov-people are beyond my abilities (though I have seen it
done).
--
Tek
http://evilsuperbrain.com
"aaglo" <aag### [at] jippii fi> wrote in message
news:web.452ccd72e12f347a2ae40bf50@news.povray.org...
> Hi!
> I'm not sure if this is the correct location, but I'll ask anyway.
>
> I've seen a lot of beautiful pictures rendered with pov-ray, and some
> extremely terrific ones in the hall of fame-galleries. My question
> considers the complex and beautiful models out there: do people model them
> "from scratch" with pov-ray text editor, or do people use some other
> modelling programs or models imported from exteral sources?
>
> I've done myself quite a lot of modelling, rendering & animating with
> pov-ray, but I've never used any modelling programs or pre-made models
> (you
> can see my work via the link in my signature).
>
> Cheers,
> aaglo
>
> My civ3-units - modelled and animated with pov-ray:
> http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2036938&postcount=4
>
>
>
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I love the povray SDL! It is the most succint and natural "shading"
language out there, allows an incredible amount of flexibility and, best of
all, allows one to describe some stunning scenes in words. The best from
those povray short code contests are pure visual/mathematical poetry... :)
couple the SDL with a great text editor such as vim and you've got a pretty
powerful environment to let the imagination flow...
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"nemesis" <nam### [at] gmail com> wrote in message
news:web.4542165a843eb1b63976a8750@news.povray.org...
>I love the povray SDL! It is the most succint and natural "shading"
> language out there,
Actually as far as "shading" goes pov's pretty lame. e.g. conserve_energy
only works on transparent things, which means if you want realistic
gloss-paint you need a layered texture, and pov won't let you layer over
patterned textures... Seriously these kind of restrictions have no place in
a shader style language. In fact the whole syntax of the finish statement
means you have to bend over backwards to do anything clever (like
anisotropic shading, never mind BRDFs). Uh... oops looks like you touched a
nerve... :)
But the fact that you can describe objects using a language, so you have
loops and conditionals and stuff, is just awesome.
--
Tek
http://evilsuperbrain.com
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Jim Charter wrote:
> aaglo wrote:
>
>> My civ3-units - modelled and animated with pov-ray:
>> http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2036938&postcount=4
>>
>
>
> Great models! Thought they seem incomplete without a scene or game to
> contain them.
>
> (And this, in a way, colors your question, which might also encompass
> the larger issue of scene building.)
>
> POV-Ray levels the playing field, in a manner of speaking, because it
> offers only the scene langauge interface.
>
> Mesh models must either be generated with the scene language directly (a
> practice that may be quite unique to POV artists) or modelled in an
> external product then translated into scene language.
>
> Models composed of "primitives" and employing CSG also may be
> articulated in the scene language directly or composed in an external
> product where either a model, or a complete scene, can be built and
> translated.
>
> This stands in some contrast to renderers that have scene modelling GUI
> interfaces built into them. These products, which may also support
> scene language, arguably, may induce a tendency away from experimenting
> with program generated effects, and away from the use of primitives, and
> toward the apparent homogeneity and flexibility that mesh can offer
> within that integrated context.
>
> It is sometimes argued here that the modelling potential of POV's scene
> language is the unique and powerful aspect that differentiates it from
> the crowd. Maybe so. I tend to see it as uniquely neutral and
> encompassing. It keeps techniques distinct by remaining neutral to them
> all.
>
> So with POV you may find artists who model entire buildings, brick by
> primitive brick (Ib), or by hand with program generated mesh (Shay), or
> from large primitives with image and bumpmaps applied (Gilles), or from
> mesh-based height-fields tilted to form walls (Jaime), or from
> isosurfaces formed with math functions alone (Mike and others), or brick
> by preformed brick, preformed from generated mesh (Bill), or from a
> collection of primitives to suggest pillars and walls (Everybody), or
> modelled in a mesh modeller first then imported (Gilles).
>
Then there are people like myself who create, adopt, and/or modify POV-Ray macro
and include files to model whole objects or parts thereof. Gilles does some of
this also. I will consider isosurfaces if surface displacement in detail is
required. For landscapes I use POV-Ray/GIMP to generate images of arbitrary
size for height fields.
To each his own. Pick a style that works for you and refine it as you go.
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"Tek" <tek### [at] evilsuperbrain com> wrote:
> Seriously these kind of restrictions have no place in
> a shader style language.
hmm, i'm still to hit any povray limitations. Can't comment. But then,
you're seeing it from much higher than i am! :)
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Tek wrote:
> Actually as far as "shading" goes pov's pretty lame. e.g. conserve_energy
> only works on transparent things, which means if you want realistic
> gloss-paint you need a layered texture, and pov won't let you layer over
> patterned textures... Seriously these kind of restrictions have no place in
> a shader style language. In fact the whole syntax of the finish statement
> means you have to bend over backwards to do anything clever (like
> anisotropic shading, never mind BRDFs). Uh... oops looks like you touched a
> nerve... :)
Hehe, yeah, after a couple of courses at my university I was thinking
the same thing. BRDFs, better layering etc would really be handy and to
current standards. Then again, there are always some that implement new
stuff, and in the recent years advances were rather fast-paced. People
like to use the new stuff, but there aren't that many able to understand
how they really work, let alone properly implement them into a versatile
and powerful environment such as POV-Ray (and no, I don't want half-a**
implementations like in Maya, where stuff crashes all the time). In some
regard, there's also the overhead to be considered: we all know how
radiosity and photons can start crawling with enough samples, simply
because a raytracer has to raytrace and there aren't as many quick,
GPU-accelerated approaches on that sector...
Personally, I think that once POV-Ray would allow for multi-pass
rendering (e.g. with switches for lights on certain passes, object
on/off etc), people would be able to work around a lot of issues simply
by rendering a couple dozen passes, e.g. to simulate various
light-samples and later on, composite them. That's how I actually
achieve quite a few effects anyways: rendering the scene once or twice
and using the results to enhance the image (e.g. bloom or glares). I
don't like how it's a a crude approach and people using different
software might get different results.
> But the fact that you can describe objects using a language, so you have
> loops and conditionals and stuff, is just awesome.
Total agreement on that.
--
aka "Tim Nikias"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>
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Well I believe POVMan can do "proper" shading within pov, though I've never
had a play with it. Basically a ray-tracer is very well suited to shading,
even when using radiosity, because all you're ever doing is calling a shader
with an array of light colours coming from different directions (either from
radiosity or light sources) and asking it to tell you the colour emitted in
a specific view direction (for either a view ray, reflection, refraciton, or
radiosity sample). Of course I've oversimplified a little but it should be
pretty straightforward, just needs the syntax.
BTW, megapov's angle-of-incidence (aoi) pattern lets you fake lots of BRDF
style shading, so you can overlay 2 of those patterns with one based on the
angle to the camera and one based on the angle to the light.
--
Tek
http://evilsuperbrain.com
"Tim Nikias" <JUS### [at] gmx netWARE> wrote in message
news:45450fb6@news.povray.org...
> Tek wrote:
>> Actually as far as "shading" goes pov's pretty lame. e.g. conserve_energy
>> only works on transparent things, which means if you want realistic
>> gloss-paint you need a layered texture, and pov won't let you layer over
>> patterned textures... Seriously these kind of restrictions have no place
>> in a shader style language. In fact the whole syntax of the finish
>> statement means you have to bend over backwards to do anything clever
>> (like anisotropic shading, never mind BRDFs). Uh... oops looks like you
>> touched a nerve... :)
>
> Hehe, yeah, after a couple of courses at my university I was thinking the
> same thing. BRDFs, better layering etc would really be handy and to
> current standards. Then again, there are always some that implement new
> stuff, and in the recent years advances were rather fast-paced. People
> like to use the new stuff, but there aren't that many able to understand
> how they really work, let alone properly implement them into a versatile
> and powerful environment such as POV-Ray (and no, I don't want half-a**
> implementations like in Maya, where stuff crashes all the time). In some
> regard, there's also the overhead to be considered: we all know how
> radiosity and photons can start crawling with enough samples, simply
> because a raytracer has to raytrace and there aren't as many quick,
> GPU-accelerated approaches on that sector...
>
> Personally, I think that once POV-Ray would allow for multi-pass rendering
> (e.g. with switches for lights on certain passes, object on/off etc),
> people would be able to work around a lot of issues simply by rendering a
> couple dozen passes, e.g. to simulate various light-samples and later on,
> composite them. That's how I actually achieve quite a few effects anyways:
> rendering the scene once or twice and using the results to enhance the
> image (e.g. bloom or glares). I don't like how it's a a crude approach and
> people using different software might get different results.
>
>> But the fact that you can describe objects using a language, so you have
>> loops and conditionals and stuff, is just awesome.
>
> Total agreement on that.
>
> --
> aka "Tim Nikias"
> Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>
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