+    Today was "modeller day" for me... I dont use one
usually... povray is enough for most things... however,
it does occur to me the modellers might be useful for
something, and I wanted to ask about this...
  ...can we take a finished *.pov scene file, and open
it in any of the modellers, making adjustments, live,
to the position of objects, lights, or other scene
elements ?

     Again, I'll mention that today and yesterday I
think I tried every modeller on the resources page...
I like Breeze designer... and Moray... but of these
and any other Ive ever played with, it seems to import
a file, it has to be native modeller file, and not
 *.pov format.  There may be a go-between, and thus
my question today... can this be done ?

thanks  I love pov

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stu <stu### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>   ...can we take a finished *.pov scene file, and open
> it in any of the modellers, making adjustments, live,
> to the position of objects, lights, or other scene
> elements ?

  No.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> stu <stu### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> >   ...can we take a finished *.pov scene file, and open
> > it in any of the modellers, making adjustments, live,
> > to the position of objects, lights, or other scene
> > elements ?
>
>   No.
>
> --
>                                                           - Warp

Actually the answer is Yes, for a limited subset of Pov-Ray objects.
Bishop3D has the facility to import Pov files and convert them to its own
internal scene. Where you can modify the scene and re-export it and render
it.
It is in Beta test and you can download it here
http://www.bishop3d.com/download.htm
the site is at
http://www.bishop3d.com/

More testers give a better quality product.


Stephen

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Stephen <mcavoys_AT_aolDOT.com> wrote:
> Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> > stu <stu### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> > >   ...can we take a finished *.pov scene file, and open
> > > it in any of the modellers, making adjustments, live,
> > > to the position of objects, lights, or other scene
> > > elements ?
> >
> >   No.

> Actually the answer is Yes, for a limited subset of Pov-Ray objects.

  Well, technically speaking the answer is still no, because he asked
if any pov file can be opened in any modeller. While some modellers
support a very small subset of the pov file syntax, they don't support
it all.

  I doubt there will be any import support for pov files in the near
future. At least not until povray changes its license to allow code
from it taken and included in other programs.

  This is because supporting all possible pov files requires replicating
over half of the povray raytracer.
  For example, objects can be placed using the trace() function, which
obviously requires support for raytracing any object or csg. Likewise
the inside() function can be used to affect object creation, requiring
raytracing properties for all objects. Objects can also be placed using a
pigment function, which requires being able to evaluate correctly all
possible povray pigments. Objects can be placed using user-defined
functions (which in themselves can use things like image maps, objects,
patterns and pigments), which would also require support for a whole lot
of things. Pov source files can create and write additional source files,
which it can include (even making loops this way is possible), which
further complicates matters. And naturally objects can be created using
identifiers, loops, macros, arrays and other complicated means.

  Of course even if you could read correctly the type and placement of
all objects, there's still the problem of tesselation, at least if the
modeller uses triangle meshes and doesn't support all the primitives
which povray does. Tesselation of povray objects is a rather big problem
in itself.
  Some objects, such as spheres, cylinders and boxes, are easy to tesselate.
Some, like for example CSG, are more complicated, but possible. Some objects
are quite a lot more complicated, such as the julia object and the poly
object. One interesting twist with the poly object is that it can define
an infinitely large non-planar surface. Even if you limited the tesselation
of such an object to finite limits, you would still require a humongous
amount of triangles. A 100-byte pov file could well result in a 100-gigabyte
tesselated file.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Stephen <mcavoys_AT_aolDOT.com> wrote:
> > Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> > > stu <stu### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> > > >   ...can we take a finished *.pov scene file, and open
> > > > it in any of the modellers, making adjustments, live,
> > > > to the position of objects, lights, or other scene
> > > > elements ?
> > >
> > >   No.
>
> > Actually the answer is Yes, for a limited subset of Pov-Ray objects.
>
[Snip]

>> --
>                                                           - Warp




successful importing some of the demo files from the Pov-Ray installation.
After commenting out objects in the include files that Bishop3D does not
support.
Another shortcoming of importing a Pov file is how the program reads the
scene hierarchy. I generally have to manually clean up/reorganise the file
to make it readable to a person.
You purists :-) have it easy when it comes to recourses, as a modeller uses

abandoned due to a slow response time updating the screen.
I think that like most things in life, you have to compromise.

If you ever have the time I would be interested in what you thought of
Bishop3D. If you have the interest, that is.



Stephen

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+    many thanks for all the great replies.  while I
now understand the fundamental impracticality
of loading a [full POV scene file] into a full-blown
modeller, I still consider it a generally useful idea.
Perhaps POV-Ray would consider implementing a [retrograde]
viewer/modeller with the pov distribution itself ?
     For the purpose I've tried to explain, even a
wireframe view would work... anything which would allow
real-time adjustment of objects/lights... it need not
be a full render view.

     Does this sound any more practical / do-able ?

thanks

Post a reply to this message

stu nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2007/08/14 19:10:
> +    many thanks for all the great replies.  while I
> now understand the fundamental impracticality
> of loading a [full POV scene file] into a full-blown
> modeller, I still consider it a generally useful idea.
> Perhaps POV-Ray would consider implementing a [retrograde]
> viewer/modeller with the pov distribution itself ?
>      For the purpose I've tried to explain, even a
> wireframe view would work... anything which would allow
> real-time adjustment of objects/lights... it need not
> be a full render view.
> 
>      Does this sound any more practical / do-able ?
> 
> thanks
> 
> 
> 
> 
Considering how objects are deffined, a wireframe preview is often impractible, 
if not downright impossible.
How would you represent an arbitrary isosurface using several user deffined 
functions? or even just one? How about a Julia fractal, with the almost infinite 
variations it offers? Now, think about a scene containing 1000's of CSG objects 
proceduraly generated and placed? And, if the placement of the objects in that 
scene depended on the location, and possibly the shape, of the previous ones?

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
You know you've been raytracing too long when you look at a matrix transform and 
know instantly what it does.
John VanSickle

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> How would you represent an arbitrary isosurface using several user 
> deffined functions? or even just one? How about a Julia fractal, with the 
> almost infinite variations it offers? Now, think about a scene containing 
> 1000's of CSG objects proceduraly generated and placed? And, if the 
> placement of the objects in that scene depended on the location, and 
> possibly the shape, of the previous ones?

Finite complex objects could be represented as their bounding-boxes, that
seems to be the way most GUI modelers deal with memory limitations anyways.

It would be handy to have a command line option to output a "parsed objects"
list. That might help make it easier to import from POV SDL.
*add to wish list*

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