Greetings, all.

I am relatively new to ray tracing and to POV, and I am trying to sort out
the complex flood of information. Perhaps someone can answer a few
questions for me:

# 1 - Do I need anything besides POV to do ray tracings? It seems that I do
not, but I have heard much talk of the various utilities available, such as
Moray, Texture Magic, and others. Are these utilities necessary, or merely
helpful?

# 2 - Which among the various utilities available are Shareware? Or better
yet, Freeware?

# 3 - Which ones are compatible with Windows95? DOS is evil, and I want
nothing to do with it.

# 4 - I am particularly interested in creating animation; what utilities
(if any) will I need?

Any assistance, advice, or information will be greatly appreciated. Please
feel free to send E-mail to me at Wyk### [at] usanet.

Wykan

Post a reply to this message

Wykan wrote in message <01bd35a1$c21e14c0$29fbca98@default>...
>Greetings, all.
>
>I am relatively new to ray tracing and to POV, and I am trying to sort out
>the complex flood of information. Perhaps someone can answer a few
>questions for me:
>
># 1 - Do I need anything besides POV to do ray tracings? It seems that I do
>not, but I have heard much talk of the various utilities available, such as
>Moray, Texture Magic, and others. Are these utilities necessary, or merely
>helpful?

You don't NEED anything, but I find that sPatch is a great program and will
allow you to make things that are just too complicated to do "by hand" in
the POV editor.  I have downloaded other modelers (Scene Builder, Breeze
Designer, etc.), but I find that the more I learn about POV the less I use
them.  Terrain Maker is also a good program for making height fields (but it
is a DOS program).

># 2 - Which among the various utilities available are Shareware? Or better
>yet, Freeware?

The above-mentioned are free.

># 4 - I am particularly interested in creating animation; what utilities
>(if any) will I need?

tga2avi is a good program for making animations out of Targa files (can't
find the link to it... keep checking the newsgroups and somebody will post
it sooner or later).

There are lots of other POV utilities out there.. most are free.  Use your
favorite search engine to find 'em, download 'em, and use the ones that you
like.  Seems like everybody has a different opinion on what's good and
what's not (except for sPatch, which everybody likes), so experiment.

sPatch:
http://www.aimnet.com/~clifton/spatch.html

Breeze Designer:
http://www.imagos.fl.net.au/

Scene Builder:
http://povsb.simplenet.com/povsb.html

Terrain Maker:
http://www.itsnet.com/~varmint/html/tm.htm

POV utility warehouse:
http://quark.vpplus.com/~redbeard/raytrace/POVRay-Util.html

Hope this helps.

Eric

--
"Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped."
- Groucho Marx

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/2354/
http://www.datasync.com/~reba/

>
>Any assistance, advice, or information will be greatly appreciated. Please
>feel free to send E-mail to me at Wyk### [at] usanet.
>
>Wykan

Post a reply to this message

If you are talking about the tga2avi program that I wrote, I superceded it with
a Win95 only version that wrote. Much easier to use. I am going to add sound
also, just have been really tied up with the stuff that pays the bills lately.
You can get it at:

207.224.162.253 and take the links link. Might be down tomorrow due to network
evaluation at work. Having a real DNS problem or it would be www.wallysoft.com.

Hope this helps,

        Timothy A. Grubb

Eric Freeman wrote:

> Wykan wrote in message <01bd35a1$c21e14c0$29fbca98@default>...
> >Greetings, all.
> >
> >I am relatively new to ray tracing and to POV, and I am trying to sort out
> >the complex flood of information. Perhaps someone can answer a few
> >questions for me:
> >
> ># 1 - Do I need anything besides POV to do ray tracings? It seems that I do
> >not, but I have heard much talk of the various utilities available, such as
> >Moray, Texture Magic, and others. Are these utilities necessary, or merely
> >helpful?
>
> You don't NEED anything, but I find that sPatch is a great program and will
> allow you to make things that are just too complicated to do "by hand" in
> the POV editor.  I have downloaded other modelers (Scene Builder, Breeze
> Designer, etc.), but I find that the more I learn about POV the less I use
> them.  Terrain Maker is also a good program for making height fields (but it
> is a DOS program).
>
> ># 2 - Which among the various utilities available are Shareware? Or better
> >yet, Freeware?
>
> The above-mentioned are free.
>
> ># 4 - I am particularly interested in creating animation; what utilities
> >(if any) will I need?
>
> tga2avi is a good program for making animations out of Targa files (can't
> find the link to it... keep checking the newsgroups and somebody will post
> it sooner or later).
>
> There are lots of other POV utilities out there.. most are free.  Use your
> favorite search engine to find 'em, download 'em, and use the ones that you
> like.  Seems like everybody has a different opinion on what's good and
> what's not (except for sPatch, which everybody likes), so experiment.
>
> sPatch:
> http://www.aimnet.com/~clifton/spatch.html
>
> Breeze Designer:
> http://www.imagos.fl.net.au/
>
> Scene Builder:
> http://povsb.simplenet.com/povsb.html
>
> Terrain Maker:
> http://www.itsnet.com/~varmint/html/tm.htm
>
> POV utility warehouse:
> http://quark.vpplus.com/~redbeard/raytrace/POVRay-Util.html
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Eric
>
> --
> "Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped."
> - Groucho Marx
>
> http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/2354/
> http://www.datasync.com/~reba/
>
> >
> >Any assistance, advice, or information will be greatly appreciated. Please
> >feel free to send E-mail to me at Wyk### [at] usanet.
> >
> >Wykan

Post a reply to this message

Wykan wrote:
> 
> Greetings, all.
> 
> I am relatively new to ray tracing and to POV, and I am trying to sort out
> the complex flood of information. Perhaps someone can answer a few
> questions for me:
> 
> # 1 - Do I need anything besides POV to do ray tracings? It seems that I do
> not, but I have heard much talk of the various utilities available, such as
> Moray, Texture Magic, and others. Are these utilities necessary, or merely
> helpful?

The extra utilities and .inc files are merely helpful. You do not need
them to start raytracing.
> 
> # 2 - Which among the various utilities available are Shareware? Or better
> yet, Freeware?

I'm not sure, as I do not use Moray or Texture Magic.
> 
> # 3 - Which ones are compatible with Windows95? DOS is evil, and I want
> nothing to do with it.

Ah, another user brainwashed by M$. <shaking my head>

> 
> # 4 - I am particularly interested in creating animation; what utilities
> (if any) will I need?

Your best bet is to get Dta. This utility will let you make your tga
frames into a fli animation file. I think it's available at the povray
homepage (www.povray.org) under utilities.
> 
> Any assistance, advice, or information will be greatly appreciated. Please
> feel free to send E-mail to me at Wyk### [at] usanet.
> 
> Wykan

-- 
Edward Wedig
Content Management
Kreber Graphics
Columbus, OH

Post a reply to this message

Wykan wrote:
> DOS is evil, and I want nothing to do with it.

You dishonour me sir! I challenge you to a duel; reflective spheres over
checkered planes at 50 paces!

-- 
From the Grey Knight
//@---signature---
//  Grey Knight's site of the week: 
url{ "http://mathworld.wolfram.com" }

Post a reply to this message

s1631001 wrote:
> You dishonour me sir! I challenge you to a duel; reflective
> spheres over checkered planes at 50 paces!

And to think all this time I thought 'reflective spheres over
checkered planes' was the POV equivalent of the Catholic
Hail Mary...
-- 
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.scifi-fantasy.com

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GFA dpu- s: a?-- C++(++++) U P? L E--- W++(+++)>$
N++ o? K- w(+) O? M-(--) V? PS+(+++) PE(--) Y(--)
PGP-(--) t* 5++>+++++ X+ R* tv+ b++(+++) DI
D++(---) G(++) e*>++ h+ !r--- !y--
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Post a reply to this message

Ahem.

My newsreader tends to jump around more or less randomly when opening a
newsgroup; as a result, I sometimes find myself trying to carry on
conversations which finished months or, as in this case, years ago. By
now this guy has probably won IRTC 3 times.
Ho hum. In future, I'm going to learn to check the date on posts before
replying to them. Still, it encouraged me to try a few new takes on
RSOCP, so it's not all bad...

-- 
signature{
  "Grey Knight"
  contact{
    email "gre### [at] yahoocom"
  }
  site_of_week{
    url "http://mathworld.wolfram.com"
  }
}

Post a reply to this message

it was a good image though.

G

s1631001 <s16### [at] namtarqubacuk> wrote in message
news:3C061DCC.EC8F8F2A@namtar.qub.ac.uk...
> Ahem.
>
> My newsreader tends to jump around more or less randomly when opening a
> newsgroup; as a result, I sometimes find myself trying to carry on
> conversations which finished months or, as in this case, years ago. By
> now this guy has probably won IRTC 3 times.
> Ho hum. In future, I'm going to learn to check the date on posts before
> replying to them. Still, it encouraged me to try a few new takes on
> RSOCP, so it's not all bad...
>
> --
> signature{
>   "Grey Knight"
>   contact{
>     email "gre### [at] yahoocom"
>   }
>   site_of_week{
>     url "http://mathworld.wolfram.com"
>   }
> }

Post a reply to this message

blessing wrote:
> 
> it was a good image though.

Thanks. I was experimenting with my latest macro, which generates a
sphere from a set of hyperbolic non-cartesian splines. The results still
leave a little to be desired, but I'm working on it. The plane uses a
macro I wrote a while back, which averages several 3-d trigonometric
waves to approximate an infinite, flat surface.
What looks like a sky_sphere is in fact an infinitely large polynomial
surface defined in Hilbert-space; one of my first experiments with
isosurfaces. I quite like it.

-- 
signature{
  "Grey Knight"
  contact{
    email "gre### [at] yahoocom"
  }
  site_of_week{
    url "http://mathworld.wolfram.com"
  }
}

Post a reply to this message

s1631001 schrieb in Nachricht <3C0696F4.97D5E755@namtar.qub.ac.uk>...
>blessing wrote:
>> 
>> it was a good image though.
>
>Thanks. I was experimenting with my latest macro, which generates a
[...]

Oh, that sounds very interesting. Can we see the source, please?

Marc-Hendrik

Post a reply to this message