Glen Berry wrote:

> On Wed, 30 Jun 1999 01:59:46 -0400, "Mark Wagner"
> <mar### [at] gtenet> wrote:
>
> >I just had an idea for an improvement to the POV-Ray scene language:
> >
> >Get rid of all the object keywords except blob, julia_fractal, and poly.
> >
> >This would not prevent the use of the other types of shapes, as all of the
> >other shapes can be created from these basic types using only the
> >'intersection', 'union', and 'inverse' keywords.
>
> What about planes, triangles, and meshes? (Not to be confused with a
> comedy staring Steve Martin and John Candy.) Can these really be
> created with only the object types you mention?
>
> Incidently, for a "modest" proposal, this sounds pretty radical to me.

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

Simon
http://home.istar.ca/~sdevet

PS. For all you non Kibologists out there, this stands for "You have been
trolled. You have lost. Have a nice day."

PPS. Everyone is a Kibologist.

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Mark Wagner wrote:
> I just had an idea for an improvement to the POV-Ray scene language:
>
> Get rid of all the object keywords except blob, julia_fractal, and poly.
>
> This would not prevent the use of the other types of shapes, as all of the
> other shapes can be created from these basic types using only the
> 'intersection', 'union', and 'inverse' keywords.

What ever you are smoking you should quit using it...

/Anders

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7no### [at] ezwvcom (Glen Berry) wrote:
> <mar### [at] gtenet> wrote:
>
>>I just had an idea for an improvement to the POV-Ray scene language:
>
> Incidently, for a "modest" proposal, this sounds pretty radical to me.

It's an allusion to Jonathan Swift's 1729 treatise, the full title of
which was "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People
from Being a Burden to their Parents or the Country".

Swift's proposal was also satire.


-- 
Jeff Lee         shi### [at] gatenet         http://www.gate.net/~shipbrk/

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On Wed, 30 Jun 1999 01:59:46 -0400, "Mark Wagner"
<mar### [at] gtenet> wrote:

Pretty Swift-styled, no? :)


Peter Popov
ICQ: 15002700

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Ron Parker wrote:
> 
> 
> And while we're at it, let's get rid of area_light, since you can fake it with
> a grid of point light sources.  
No, you can't. Using area_light affects only the way, how shadows are
calculated, object's illumination is same as with one light source. I
didn't knew it before and I wanted to use area_light for rendering
lightning from computer screen. No matter how many lights I specified
for grid, object's illumination was still same. Only RTFM helped me out
and I created grid of point lights instead.

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On Thu, 01 Jul 1999 14:39:54 +0300, Vahur Krouverk wrote:
>Ron Parker wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> And while we're at it, let's get rid of area_light, since you can fake it with
>> a grid of point light sources.  
>No, you can't. Using area_light affects only the way, how shadows are
>calculated, object's illumination is same as with one light source.

I actually knew that when I wrote it, but since I consider that "feature"
of area lights to be broken, I ignored it. :)

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Mark Wagner wrote:

> Doing this has many advantages:
> 
> First, it will make learning the language much easier.  By reducing the
> number of object type keywords from 23 to 4, plus the CSG keywords
> intersection and union.  All the other objects can be constructed from these
> basic objects.

Do you really think so? I think using the box keyword is much easier,
and
much easier to learn than using a poly with all its parameters.
 
> Second, it will reduce the time spent by the computer parsing the scene
> files.  With the reduced number of keywords, the POV-Ray parser will have a
> smaller list of words to check against, resulting in faster parsing and
> quicker detection of syntax errors.

Well, parsing time is not very often the longer time, when tracing an
image.
 
> Third, this would make writing utilities to convert to or, primarily, from
> the POV-Ray format significantly easier, as the programmer would have fewer
> object types to contend with.

If you have problems with that, why dont you have tools like yacc or
bison
doing this job for you? They come free with every Linux distribution and
make
creating a parser an much easyer job.

Perhaps the language would be easier to be read by computers, but IMHO
it
would never be human readable.

> With all the benefits that implementing this proposal would provide, I
> strongly urge the POV-Team to pursue this course of action.
> 
> Mark

Jojo

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You are a very sad man.  I suggest you find help.

H.E. Day

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Ken wrote:

> Why complicate things with such slow primitives. Each of your chosen objects
> are difficult to compute and are slow to render. I propose instead reverting
> to a simple phong shaded triangle rendering system. This would make realtime
> raytracing possible and the are no shapes that cannot be represented with
> triangles.
>
> --
> Ken Tyler

Please, don't let POV be a triangle-based renderer!!! That's a big reason I
choose pov over over such raytracers as RayDream!!!

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"SamuelT." wrote:

> Please, don't let POV be a triangle-based renderer!!! That's a big reason I
> choose pov over over such raytracers as RayDream!!!

  I was jesting. Making a joke. I was not serious. I was lying. I don't
want Pov to revert to a phong shaded triangle rendering system. I was
pulling your leg. Do not believe my sincerity. Ain't gonna happen. Never
had it never will. Hades will freeze over first. Don't worry be happy :)
I withdraw my suggestion. Long live all primitve types and may even more
be added in the future. A rolling stone gathers no moss.

-- 
Ken Tyler

mailto://tylereng@pacbell.net

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