Maybe I'm missing something, but I feel POVRay would strongly need some
kind of "render" statement. Let me explain: with version 3.1, POV has
achieved the status of a nearly complete programming language. It has
its own cyles, conditional tests, macros etc. BUT we still have to make
animations by the quite primitive mathod of calling the program
repeatedly with different arguments: this means re-parsing every time
and no chance of doing a complex animation. I know, now POV can read and
write files, but using them to store temporary variable values seems to
me a bit dumb. What we really need is a siple "render" statement. e.g


#declare a_cross = union {
			cylinder { <-1.5,0,0>, <1.5,0,0>, 0.3}
			cylinder { <0,1.5,0>, <0,-1.5,0>, 0.3}		
		   }	


#macro DrawCross (rot,trans, colr)
	object {a_cross
		texture {pigment {color rgb colr}}
		rotate rot translate trans 
	}
#end

#declare cycles=0;
#while (cycles<36)
	DrawCross(<0,cycles*10,0>,<0,0,0>,<0,.8,.2>)
	#declare cycles=cycles+1;

	render <sort of a numbered-filename>//<- THIS IS THE NEW DIRECTIVE!

#end

The above code would render to a different file 36 times, thus
outputting an animation. This way, we could avoid working outside the
POV program to achieve any kind of animation, at any level of
complexity: particle systems, mesh distortion/morphing ecc. POV would
become the most flexible 3D system in the world.
Am I wrong?
Could this be implemented via a patch (I don't think I have the skill to
do that)?
Please tell me your opinion!

Luca Rivelli <luk### [at] usanet>

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