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OK, so I'm new to this news server. I've been using POV-Ray since
about version 2, and in that time I've created some fairly cool
images.

But then I loggon on here, and OH DEAR! My stupid little creations
majorly SUCK compared to the amazing stuff on here... Was all this
*really* done with just POV-Ray?!? OK, I'm rubbish...

For what it's worth, one of my best ever images is attached. It's a
"signiture" image - i.e., I use it to sign emails and so forth, hence
the tiny size. (If anyone cares, I can post a much bigger version.)
It consists of a background sphere, 500 spherical "bubbles" (with IOR
< 1 to give [hopefully] the impression of air-filled bubbles in
water), and obviously the text objects. The bubbles are lit from
below by a red light source. (The text is in a seperate light group.)
The background sphere actually has a black & white "bozo" pattern
with ambient=1; I wasn't really expecting the beautiful shapes of
pink - presumably because I forget to put diffuse=0 like I usually
do. A happy accident!

By the way, ~ 1 hour 5 mins with POV-Ray 3.5 under WinXP on a laptop,
1.4GHz AMD CPU, 256MB RAM. (It actually takes about 4 mins if you
turn off antialiasing; I got it set with method #2, depth = 4,
threshold = 0.1! Well, it is a very small image with lots of very
high-frequency details... At larger image sizes you don't need it set
quite so high.) Not sure if I'm allowed to post it in PNG format, but
it IS pretty tiny...

But it doesn't really compare to almost any of the very cool images
round here. >Feeling very infirior here!< Maybe I should just go back
to drawing little ellipses with MS Paint...

Andrew.

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Attachments:
Download 'LoveNBubbles1-Red.png' (40 KB)

Preview of image 'LoveNBubbles1-Red.png'

"Andrew Coppin" <orp### [at] btinternetcom> wrote :
>
> But then I loggon on here, and OH DEAR! My stupid little creations
> majorly SUCK compared to the amazing stuff on here... Was all this
> *really* done with just POV-Ray?!? OK, I'm rubbish...


    Yeah... I've stopped posting images too. Not that it's a competition,
but really, who wants to be embarrassed daily.

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"Andrew Coppin" <orp### [at] btinternetcom> wrote in
news:3d904524@news.povray.org: 

> But it doesn't really compare to almost any of the very cool images
> round here. >Feeling very infirior here!< Maybe I should just go back
> to drawing little ellipses with MS Paint...

Relativity..... Your image has got to be much "cooler" then the person
who does not do any at all.

I too have been using POV for whats seems an entire generation and have
generated tons of useless images, spent countless hours staring at the
render screen waiting for them to finish, name it...It is just very
gratifying. 

At least you have created unique images that have entirely come from
the neural activity that your brain had generated at the time, using a
"Great" "free" tool that has been put together by many, for many. 

Don't stop, look arround all these news groups, pick up hints, how-to's,
scan prior messages to locate answers to silly questions others have
asked in the past or simply ask if all else fails. 

There are tons of people here with varing degrees of experience.

Happy rendering.

P.S. Don't even think of MS Paint, it shouldn't even be installed !!!

-- 
(MIKA) Marc Champagne
marcch.AT.videotron.DOT.ca
Montreal, CANADA

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Well it is fun seeing the variety of work being done across different 
technical levels.  I just try to remember that the work doesn't stay up 
forever anyway.  It's all quite ephemeral.  Your image shows a nice 
color sense.  Keep 'em coming.

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On Tue, 24 Sep 2002 11:50:57 +0100 "Andrew Coppin" wrote:

> But it doesn't really compare to almost any of the very cool
> images round here. >Feeling very infirior here!< 

Don't worry about that.  I am one of the newbies too, and it
feels rather good when people here appreciate whatever little
work I do.

More important is that by posting here you will get quick
suggestions that will help you to improve your work.  It is quite
difficult to find such good criticism elsewhere.

> Maybe I should just go back to drawing little ellipses with MS
> Paint...

Hmm.  You should start using something like Gimp or Photoshop
instead of MS paint :-)

And before I forget -- I will be interested to see a bigger
version of your pic.  Those bubbles look nice to me.  And boy, is
that light orange color my favorite!

-Kedar

P.S. 40 KB for such a tiny image is too much.  Please consider
posting jpeg instead of png.  Most of the times, with about 100KB
you can get a good 800x600 pixel jpeg image.

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OK, so I'm posting a bigger version.

As regards file format, AFAIK, PNG is the most effective lossless
compression currently availible. But I shall post this in JPEG
anyway. Oh, and to however said I shouldn't even have MS Paint
installed... well how else am I gonna change file formats? ;-) Paint
is the only image editor I have! <sob> And no, you can't adjust the
quality settings when saving JPEG, so this is gonna look pretty
horrible 8^S

Andrew.

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Attachments:
Download 'LoveNBubbles3-Large.JPG' (98 KB)

Preview of image 'LoveNBubbles3-Large.JPG'

Actually, that's a pretty nice image.  Nothing to be ashamed of at all.  Be
persistent and keep up the good work.

Cheers!

Chip Shults
My robotics, space and CGI web page - http://home.cfl.rr.com/aichip

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...wtf

Agh! The bubbles!  They're like little aomeba things with glowing
innards coming to get me!  AAGGGHH!!!!!

That aside, that's actually pretty cool.

-- 
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.scifi-fantasy.com
mirror: http://personal.lig.bellsouth.net/lig/z/9/z993126

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"Timothy R. Cook" <tim### [at] scifi-fantasycom> wrote in message
news:3d90c33c@news.povray.org...


> That aside, that's actually pretty cool.

     Was it Mr. Dearmad or you Tim that said you had 4 or 5 copies of PS
5LE?

       Someone send the man a copy...  :)

   And I agree that it's a cool image, nothing to worry about there.

      ~Steve~


>
> --
> Tim Cook
> http://empyrean.scifi-fantasy.com
> mirror: http://personal.lig.bellsouth.net/lig/z/9/z993126
>
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> D++(---) G(++) e*>++ h+ !r--- !y--
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St. wrote:
> Was it Mr. Dearmad or you Tim that said you had 4 or 5 copies of PS
> 5LE?
> Someone send the man a copy...  :)

Might be one of the other Tims on here...I don't use PhotoShop, I use
Paint Shop Pro.  I think I have a copy of PS5LE somewhere, but it's on
the CD with the rest of my Wacom tablet extras, which I want to keep.

-- 
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.scifi-fantasy.com
mirror: http://personal.lig.bellsouth.net/lig/z/9/z993126

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"Andrew Coppin" <orp### [at] btinternetcom> wrote in
news:3d904524@news.povray.org: 

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> 
> OK, so I'm new to this news server. I've been using POV-Ray since
> about version 2, and in that time I've created some fairly cool
> images.
> 
> But then I loggon on here, and OH DEAR! My stupid little creations
> majorly SUCK compared to the amazing stuff on here... Was all this
> *really* done with just POV-Ray?!? OK, I'm rubbish...

As sucky as you seem to believe your image is, I'm having trouble
replicating it! 

Maybe if you copy and paste a snipit of your code in
povray.text.scene-files it would do the trick! 

Thanks

-- 
(MIKA) Marc Champagne
marcch.AT.videotron.DOT.ca
Montreal, CANADA

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On Tue, 24 Sep 2002 19:46:55 +0100 "Andrew Coppin" wrote:

> OK, so I'm posting a bigger version.

It is cool!  What were you ashamed of?!!!

> As regards file format, AFAIK, PNG is the most effective
> lossless compression currently availible.

That is fine.  But we don't care much about losses here, right?
Bandwidth is precious, at least for me :)  And you can keep the
lossless image on some web server and post the URL, if needed.

> Oh, and to however said I shouldn't even have  MS Paint
> installed... well how else am I gonna change file formats? ;-)
> Paint is the only image editor I have! <sob> And no, you can't
> adjust the quality settings when saving JPEG, so this is gonna
> look pretty horrible 8^S

Use GIMP, it is good and it won't cost you anything (except
probably download time).  Have you heard about "Irfanview"?

About the image -- It is a nice work.  Keep it up and keep more
coming. I particularly liked the bubble intersecting with "B"
there. A little more light thrown on the front face of text would
be nice though.

-Kedar

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By the way, I also did a "gold" version of this image... The pink one
is very nice, and pink *is* the colour of love, eh? But I think the
gold has a little more contrast, which is visually good... Opinions?

Andrew.
 (Posting a small one since it's exactly the same except the colour!)

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Attachments:
Download 'LoveNBubbles1-Gold-Med.JPG' (23 KB)

Preview of image 'LoveNBubbles1-Gold-Med.JPG'

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> It is cool!  What were you ashamed of?!!!

In a word, THANX!

> > As regards file format, AFAIK, PNG is the most effective
> > lossless compression currently availible.
>
> That is fine.  But we don't care much about losses here, right?
> Bandwidth is precious, at least for me :)  And you can keep the
> lossless image on some web server and post the URL, if needed.

Ah... now why didn't *I* think of that? <blank look>

> Use GIMP, it is good and it won't cost you anything (except
> probably download time).  Have you heard about "Irfanview"?

Doesn't the GIMP only work on Linux? As for the other one... no,
never heard of it.

> About the image -- It is a nice work.  Keep it up and keep more
> coming. I particularly liked the bubble intersecting with "B"
> there. A little more light thrown on the front face of text would
> be nice though.

Actually the intersecting bubble was an accident. (The bubble
placement is random.) I'm not sure if it looks cool or annoying...
Certainly in that large version it looks rather nice. But in the
original small version that I actually sign messeges with, I think
the detail doesn't show up too well and it just looks messy... As for
the text, yes, perhaps more light would be good...

Andrew.

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Have a look on povray.text.scene-files, it *should* be there now...

Enjoy.
Andrew.

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The play of light across the letters helps pull it together.  The 
contrast between the 'gold' of the background and the red of the letters 
gives it a visual 'punch' like in comic books, but I rather prefer the 
complexity of the first.  If anything, the lettering might be taken 
closer to the background color in the first.

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> Ah... now why didn't *I* think of that? <blank look>

<Aint-I-a-clever-guy look> ;)

> Doesn't the GIMP only work on Linux?

GIMP is available for Windows too.  I haven't tried it though.

> As for the other one... no, never heard of it.

Irfanview is a freeware image viewer for Windows.  It has been
around for quite some time now.  It supports lots of image
formats and allows some editing like adding text to images and
cropping etc.  It is available at http://irfanview.com/  And if
you care to know, it fits nicely in a single floppy disk :)

-Kedar

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"Andrew Coppin" <orp### [at] btinternetcom> wrote in
news:3d91c5a5@news.povray.org: 

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> 
> Have a look on povray.text.scene-files, it *should* be there now...


Andrew, replace your '// Bubbles' section with the following, it'l
render the same but much faster...

U don't really need a union here

/// BEGIN ///
// Bubbles
#declare lp = 0;
#while (lp<500)
  #declare X = rand(RND)*2*Spread - Spread;
  #declare Y = rand(RND)*2*Spread - Spread;
  #declare Z = rand(RND)*900 + 20;
  #declare R = rand(RND)*10 + 30;
  object {
    sphere {<X, Y, Z>, R}
    texture {
      pigment {colour rgbt <0, 0, 0, 1>}
      finish {ambient 0 specular 1 reflection {0, 1} conserve_energy}
    }
    interior {ior 1/1.33}
  }
  #declare lp = lp + 1;
#end
/// END ///


-- 
(MIKA) Marc Champagne
marcch.AT.videotron.DOT.ca
Montreal, CANADA

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"Marc Champagne" <nos### [at] pleasecom> wrote in message
news:Xns### [at] 204213191226...
> "Andrew Coppin" <orp### [at] btinternetcom> wrote in
> news:3d91c5a5@news.povray.org:
>
> Andrew, replace your '// Bubbles' section with the following, it'l
> render the same but much faster...
>
> U don't really need a union here

I haven't actually tried this yet. (I can see that it would render
exactly the same of course - just haven't tried it for speed yet.
POV-Ray is still rendering something else ITB...) But I'm very
suprised that using a union should have an effect on speed. If it
does, the question has to be asked... when exactly *would* you need a
union? I can't think of a single thing you can do with a union that
can't be done without one; it's just easier only having to write
stuff once, that's all. But surely if they bothered to implement this
there *must* be more to it...

...am I being dense here?
Andrew.

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On Tue, 24 Sep 2002 11:50:57 +0100, "Andrew Coppin" <orp### [at] btinternetcom>
wrote:
> 500 spherical "bubbles"

Here is zoomed real bubble for reference. The real scene with bubbles (and my
daughter) you can find at http://www.abx.art.pl/rodzina/25.jpg and
http://www.abx.art.pl/rodzina/26.jpg . More zooms ?

ABX

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Attachments:
Download 'Image0023zoom.png' (56 KB)

Preview of image 'Image0023zoom.png'

Mmm... *lost* of irridecence... pretty...

<enguage math mode>
I wonder... presumably bubbles like this have it due to the thinnes of the
double film of surface tension... Whereas underwater bubbles only have *1*
layer of surface tension, so no irridecence...
</disenguage math mode>

Andrew.

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