Hello, I'm a high school student taking a three-week course on POVray
programming this summer at City College in NYC. my first project was to create
an image of an office with four tables and various objects on the tables using
commands such as prism, lathe, sor and sphere_sweep. It is attached to this
post. I was just wondering If i could get some feedback on my first POVray
creation. It's a messy office with books strewn all over the table (I wanted to
practice my translating and rotating skills) and a cool blue glass vase.

also, how would I make the chair's seat more rounded and comfortable-looking.
i.e. how to make boxes more rounded at the edges, not pointy.

also, how would one go about making more realistic books? perhaps I could import
images for use as textures to put covers on the books. how do you do this?

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"apophis13" <apo### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> Hello, I'm a high school student taking a three-week course on POVray
> programming this summer at City College in NYC. my first project was to create
> an image of an office with four tables and various objects on the tables using
> commands such as prism, lathe, sor and sphere_sweep.

Ah, a student assigned to model an office with POV-Ray... how come this sounds
familiar? :P

> I was just wondering If i could get some feedback on my first POVray
> creation. It's a messy office with books strewn all over the table (I wanted to
> practice my translating and rotating skills) and a cool blue glass vase.

Good job.

Take care with the wall we're looking at straight-on: The texture doesn't look
too good; it seems to me that you carved the whole room out of a single piece,
and we're seeing the wood grain "head on" which we're seeing from the side in
the side walls. Maybe line up the wood vertically to avoid this, or use
separate objects for the walls.

The glass vase looks cool indeed.
Maybe add some petals to the flowers.


> also, how would I make the chair's seat more rounded and comfortable-looking.
> i.e. how to make boxes more rounded at the edges, not pointy.
>
> also, how would one go about making more realistic books? perhaps I could import
> images for use as textures to put covers on the books. how do you do this?

Images for book cover textures are a good thing to add realism. To be honest,
when it comes to realistic-looking books I personally go for meshes with
UV-mapped textures, but I guess your teacher would object for didactical
reasons (which is to say, he/she probably wants you to focus on CSG, at least
for now) :)

The parts that make up your books seem a bit misaligned; the paper should recede
a bit (in your shot it instead seems to stick out); the front and rear cover
boxes seem to stick out a bit to the front and back, respectively, instead of
aligning with the cylinder used for the back. (Real books often do have a ridge
between back and cover, but it's somewhat different in placement and shape. Take
a close look at a specimen.) Furthermore, you seem to be using a solid cylinder
for the back; for better effect, you might cut it into half, and cut away
another cylinder, for better effect; non-uniform scaling to "squish" the
cylinder might add to the look, too.

As for the chair's seat: Unfortunately, POV-Ray's internals are unsuited for
automatic rounding of edges and crevices, so you need to resort to manual
rounding. The standard procedure is a clever combination of cutting away part
of the object, and replacing it with a complementarily trimmed cylinder (or
torus, if the edge follows a circular curve), adding sphere sections at corners
where multiple rounded edges meed.

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apophis13 wrote:
> an image of an office with four tables and various objects on the tables using

Very nice.  You're missing a checkerboard with a reflective sphere. ;-)

> also, how would I make the chair's seat more rounded and comfortable-looking.
> i.e. how to make boxes more rounded at the edges, not pointy.

Check out the "superelipsoid". With some playing around, it makes decent 
cushions, at least.

> also, how would one go about making more realistic books? perhaps I could import
> images for use as textures to put covers on the books. how do you do this?

You can also use text to label the books at least.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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apophis13 wrote:
> Hello, I'm a high school student taking a three-week course on POVray
> programming this summer at City College in NYC. my first project was to create
> an image of an office with four tables and various objects on the tables using
> commands such as prism, lathe, sor and sphere_sweep. It is attached to this
> post. I was just wondering If i could get some feedback on my first POVray
> creation. It's a messy office with books strewn all over the table (I wanted to
> practice my translating and rotating skills) and a cool blue glass vase.

I think it looks pretty good for a first povray project.  I notice you 
you got a book propped up against another, which is good practice for 
getting things rotates properly in tricky situations.  The vase looks 
good too, although flower petals (maybe with a bunch of prisms) and a 
bit of water in it might look good as well.

> also, how would I make the chair's seat more rounded and comfortable-looking.
> i.e. how to make boxes more rounded at the edges, not pointy.

As Darren has suggested, take a look at the superquadratic ellipsoid object:

http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.1/285/
http://dynamicdreams.com/cg/img/scene_super3.jpg

They can be pretty good for cushions, in which case I'd make the seat of 
the chair thinner and simply put a cushion on top of it.  The back of 
the chair still looks a bit painful to sit on, and to fix that I'd 
suggest changing the back of the chair to be a different style, like one 
of these:

http://www.anaturalhome.com/images/products/cherry-chair.jpg
http://images.oneofakindantiques.com/5901_ladder_back_chair_1.jpg

Which I think should only be a little bit tricky to model.

> also, how would one go about making more realistic books? perhaps I could import
> images for use as textures to put covers on the books. how do you do this?

I think that using an image as a texture for the covers could help a 
lot.  You'll need to use an image map for this:

http://ftp.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.1/337/

Probably you'll want to use several image maps, one for each part of the 
book (i.e. front, back, spine, and pages).  You can look for the images 
either online or by using a digital camera to take pictures of actual books.

It's also useful to have an actual book (or at least a picture of one 
that's the same style you want) to work from when doing the modeling. 
This one I found online seems to be about like what you want:

http://www.joes3dfantasyworlds.com/down/misc01/pileofbooks01-t.jpg

You'll notice that the pages are inset from the cover somewhat, and the 
spine is shaped more like a thin cylindrical shell.  These things might 
help you a bit too.

Do post the final image when you're done, I'm curious to see it!

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"apophis13" <apo### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> also, how would I make the chair's seat more rounded and comfortable-looking.
> i.e. how to make boxes more rounded at the edges, not pointy.

The easiest way is to use a superquadric ellipsoid (superellipsoid{}).  There
are also rounded shapes in shapes.inc.

> also, how would one go about making more realistic books? perhaps I could import
> images for use as textures to put covers on the books. how do you do this?

Look up "image_map" in the documentation.  Another option is to use an object
pigment with a text{} object.  Either way, the pigment should be rotated to
align with the book cover.

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> Hello, I'm a high school student taking a three-week course on POVray
> programming this summer at City College in NYC. my first project was to create
> an image of an office with four tables and various objects on the tables using
> commands such as prism, lathe, sor and sphere_sweep. It is attached to this
> post. I was just wondering If i could get some feedback on my first POVray
> creation. It's a messy office with books strewn all over the table (I wanted to
> practice my translating and rotating skills) and a cool blue glass vase.
> 
> also, how would I make the chair's seat more rounded and comfortable-looking.
> i.e. how to make boxes more rounded at the edges, not pointy.
> 
> also, how would one go about making more realistic books? perhaps I could import
> images for use as textures to put covers on the books. how do you do this?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
Over all, an impressive model for a begginner.

Some changes that I'd make and suggest to you:

Make your room out of several box, one for the floor, une for the 
ceiling and one for each walls. Add the texture to each one separately.

Your book will look more convincing if made of 2 thin boxes for the 
covers and another for the pages. A gradient pattern scaled small could 
effectively simulate the pages edges.
Adding some text to the books will be an improvement. Look at the text 
object and object pattern.

I'd tend to scale the wood textures down. The provided woot textures and 
pigments normaly need some scaling that depends on the scene.

You got meny usefull propositions from other posters and I agree with 
them. I propose you some alternate options.

A small critic: the table with the monitor looks to low, been at about 
the same hight at the chair.


Alain

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> Hello, I'm a high school student taking a three-week course on POVray
> programming this summer at City College in NYC. my first project was to 
> create
> an image of an office with four tables and various objects on the tables 
> using
> commands such as prism, lathe, sor and sphere_sweep. It is attached to 
> this
> post. I was just wondering If i could get some feedback on my first POVray
> creation.

It's very good for a first project!

Whilst others have commented about the geometry and textures, I'd just 
comment about the lighting.

The default POV light does not fade with distance (ie it lights everything 
the same amount no matter how far away from the light it is) - this is not 
very realistic.

Try adding the "fade_distance" and "fade_power" keywords to your lights 
(look them up in the docs), you will need to adjust the light brightness to 
get a good balance of light and dark areas in your scene, but it should make 
it look a lot more realistic.

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