I have been humoring the possibility of creating a texture editor for
Pov and am wondering if it would be worthwhile and what features people
would like.  I have been using TextureMagic 0.95 and find it to be sadly
out of date.

Is there a demand for this type of utility, and if so what would people
like it to have?

Tim Burton
TBu### [at] ThrtCom

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Good Texture Editors are always needed.

Tim Burton wrote in message <35A4DB20.909E57C2@Thrt.Com>...
>I have been humoring the possibility of creating a texture editor for
>Pov and am wondering if it would be worthwhile and what features people
>would like.  I have been using TextureMagic 0.95 and find it to be sadly
>out of date.
>
>Is there a demand for this type of utility, and if so what would people
>like it to have?
>
>Tim Burton
>TBu### [at] ThrtCom
>

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I use the one in Moray - seems to be do the job.


Tim Burton wrote in message <35A4DB20.909E57C2@Thrt.Com>...
>I have been humoring the possibility of creating a texture editor for
>Pov and am wondering if it would be worthwhile and what features people
>would like.  I have been using TextureMagic 0.95 and find it to be sadly
>out of date.
>
>Is there a demand for this type of utility, and if so what would people
>like it to have?
>
>Tim Burton
>TBu### [at] ThrtCom
>

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Tim Burton wrote:

> I have been humoring the possibility of creating a texture editor for
> Pov and am wondering if it would be worthwhile and what features people
> would like.  I have been using TextureMagic 0.95 and find it to be sadly
> out of date.

I can only agree with you, only it would take quite some time to produce
something better than that, if you have that time, go for it.

> Is there a demand for this type of utility, and if so what would people
> like it to have?


There sure is demand.

Probably very different types of demand whether you want it freeware or
shareware. I am interested in freeware as far as POV is concerned, or at
least same as I'm trying to do for myself : free for non commercial users
licensed only for commercial users (there are many categories that people
don't think are commercial users but really are commercial users,
advertisement is commercial use even if the person advertising did not pay
for the advertisement media).

First it is nice to have a library of textures to pick from (POV standard
texture files).
Then it is nice to have one's own libraries (possibly in a different
selectable directory).

What I would really like is some graphical means to tweak the parameters
(like octave and the likes as well as transformations). When I say graphical
I mean that a transformation is something you can visualize with a box that
is rotated, elongated and sheared at will. The some of the octave or other
turbulence parameters can be visualized as 3d vectors. Such a graphical
interface would really help understanding the textures much more easily.

It would be marvellous to be able to combine textures in texture maps via
your tool.

An important issue is a quick preview, if you have some time and the
approval of the POV team, you could copy the code for textures out of the
box and preview this directly, thus avoiding intersection tests, that would
speed up your preview in a big way. The only thing you need to add in the
end is an extra rendering function to render normal modifications (lighting)
for which you still do not want any intersection test - you don't care about
reflections, you are only doing a preview of what the texture looks like by
itself. The real view will be done with POV, so don't bother with recreating
POV.

A good colour selection facility that includes finding a colour form RGB,
CMY, HLS or other colour model as well as from named colours (don't forget
the ability to sort colours by name or by colour with some linear criteria,
could be Hue, Saturation, Luminance, Intensity, Red, or whatever colour
attribute).

I hope I don't put too much on your plate, I would love to see something
definitely comprehensive.

Cheers,
Al.


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Tim Burton <TBu### [at] ThrtCom> wrote:
: Is there a demand for this type of utility, and if so what would people
: like it to have?

  As long as it isn't win95-only.

-- 
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It would definitely be Freeware.  The fast texture render is appealing, perhaps
I will check with PovTeam and see if that is possible.  Thanks for your input.

I have enough spare time to invest in the project for windows, however I am not
willing to spend the time to write the software for any other platforms.  I am
willing to work with people interested in making a compatable software on other
platforms, but do not wish to dual develop a single piece of software.

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What language and compiler will you be using for this program?

    Thomas Charron

Tim Burton wrote:

> It would definitely be Freeware.  The fast texture render is appealing, perhaps
> I will check with PovTeam and see if that is possible.  Thanks for your input.
>
> I have enough spare time to invest in the project for windows, however I am not
> willing to spend the time to write the software for any other platforms.  I am
> willing to work with people interested in making a compatable software on other
> platforms, but do not wish to dual develop a single piece of software.

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Tim Burton wrote:

> It would definitely be Freeware.  The fast texture render is appealing, perhaps
> I will check with PovTeam and see if that is possible.  Thanks for your input.

You are more than welcome.

> I have enough spare time to invest in the project for windows, however I am not
> willing to spend the time to write the software for any other platforms.  I am
> willing to work with people interested in making a compatable software on other
> platforms, but do not wish to dual develop a single piece of software.

 I will not lend a hand in the development, but here is a couple of suggestions
(freeware) :
1- use GCC if you can (there is a Mingw32 compiler out on the net, that is one of
the GCC 2.8.1 ports to Win32).
2- use a portable GUI toolkit e.g. V 1.20 or wxWindows 1.68 (stable) or 2.00
(alpha). The former is simple, the latter complex but comprehensive. Both are
available for Windows and Unix at least.

I am personally starting (very slowly) to develop some app, that I hope will be out
there sometime (years) and I use Mingw32 and V1.18 (cause I was lazy to upgrade to
the latest version). Both take some learning but you get to do more portable code.

Although I will not lend a hand in development, I will be glad to discuss
specifications if you so wish, then test, comment the docs and use.

here are a few URLs :
 http://agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de/~janjaap/mingw32/
 http://objectcentral.com/
 http://web.ukonline.co.uk/julian.smart/wxwin/wxwin2.htm

Cheers,
Al.

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This message is really intended for Thomas Charron :

Could you please set up your computer date to be near reality (1998, not 1997) as
my automatic newsgroup reader will not download 'old' messages (20 days) and I do
not really want to be searching for each such message manually or set the date span
to more than 20 days.

Regards,
Al.

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The only thing i'd like to add to this new texture program...
is...
PLEASE don't make it with VB5!!!!!

I refuse to use ANY program that is made in VB5....Have you SEEN thwe
shit just the runtime dll puts into registry?.....My reg went up by
150k, JUST from msvb5 dll.

Ok, so who cares about 1 person not using a program....but I won't be
changing my mind about this....I've tried heaps of free/share progs that
use VB5...nothing yet has been worth having the crap in my reg...

-- 
The only good politician is a dead politician !!
Politics or religion = corruption and true evil.
Believe 1% of what you see or hear.
The laws that politicians make are mostly bad laws,
  we'd do far better without them - the politicians AND their laws.

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