Some people say that the POV Ray SDL is a turn off for new users, others say
that modeling programs are a turn off to scripters There seems to be a real
scism here. There are issues with Moray's right handed polor coordinates,
and some thing sPartch or Hamapatch are a better choce (tho I have not heard
why they are). When I was speaking of putting Moray text in a gray box I did
not mean that text would reproduce the user docs in Moray. I don't see my
book idea as competing with either Moray or POV Ray docs, that would be a
waste of trees. I want to improve the tutorials, not compete with them. I
think that the tutorials in the POV Ray and Moray docs are very uneven, some
are great, some are okay, and some are poor.

I know very little about this other products: blender, spatch, hamapatch,
anim8tor, amapi, rhino. I have tried blender but it would not run properly
on my Win2K machine with dual LCD monitors. Are these all freeware programs,
because the one disconnect with Moray is that its retail product and that
does not work very well with the free nature of POV. What about including
some of these products in the gray text, would that be a turn off?

I wonder about the statment "it's impossible to really unleash povray's
power without learning the scene description language"? How is that true?
"And some of the coolest povray stuff is not implemented in these modelers
yet." Well there is SO MUCH stuff in POV Ray that is implemented in these
modelers that I am not sure a book needs to cover everything in POV Ray,
that seems like a daunting and almost impossible requirement.

"Furthermore the structure of a book about Moray would should be quite
different from one about Povray." I don't see how this follows. Why would
they have to have different structures? Seems like "here is how to do
something in POV" could easily be parallel with "here is how its done in
Moray", or whatever modeler you are using.

I very much appreciate the feelback, its helping me calibrate my ideas for
the team that is forming. Nothing has been decided so this is a great time
for people to jump in and help shape this project.

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 19 Jan 2002 22:48:31 -0800, "Mitchell Waite"
<mit### [at] dnaicom> wrote:

>I know very little about this other products: blender, spatch, hamapatch,
>anim8tor, amapi, rhino. I have tried blender but it would not run properly
>on my Win2K machine with dual LCD monitors. Are these all freeware programs,
>because the one disconnect with Moray is that its retail product and that
>does not work very well with the free nature of POV. What about including
>some of these products in the gray text, would that be a turn off?

Blender is free but it's virtually unusable without the docs, and that
has to be paid for. Rhino is certainly not free, the student's license
was $199 last time I checked. I think anim8or is not free either but I
may be wrong here.

>I wonder about the statment "it's impossible to really unleash povray's
>power without learning the scene description language"? How is that true?

The POV-Ray scene description language is a Turing-complete language.
You can write anything with it, from a virus to a raytracer (both of
these have been done.) Of course these are extremes, but things like
particle systems for modelling smoke and fire, l-systems and other
recursive systems for modelling plants, and other similar tasks are
definitely not and are *really* useful. Many such tasks rely on close
integration with the scene and can not be currently accomplished in
any other means.

>"And some of the coolest povray stuff is not implemented in these modelers
>yet." Well there is SO MUCH stuff in POV Ray that is implemented in these
>modelers that I am not sure a book needs to cover everything in POV Ray,
>that seems like a daunting and almost impossible requirement.

I think the book should concentrate on the pros and cons of a modeller
and not on specific feature sets. Pros: this and that done easily.
Cons: this and that can't be done.

>"Furthermore the structure of a book about Moray would should be quite
>different from one about Povray." I don't see how this follows. Why would
>they have to have different structures? Seems like "here is how to do
>something in POV" could easily be parallel with "here is how its done in
>Moray", or whatever modeler you are using.

The approach is different. Most hand-coders start with a *very* clear
idea of what they want to achieve, because once you've nested a
million CSGs and you don't like something, going back is somewhat
hard. With a visual scene creation tool such as Moray, you can touch
up and tune things one the fly. There's much more to it, of course,
such that with POV you have to at least STTFM (Skim Through The Fine
Manual) and a Moray 'hello world' lesson can start right away... but
I'll leave that to real Moray users (I've only tried it once, in the
POV 2.2 times).

>I very much appreciate the feelback, its helping me calibrate my ideas for
>the team that is forming. Nothing has been decided so this is a great time
>for people to jump in and help shape this project.

Hope my ramblings were of some help. Good luck!


Peter Popov ICQ : 15002700
Personal e-mail : pet### [at] vipbg
TAG      e-mail : pet### [at] tagpovrayorg

Post a reply to this message

Mitchell Waite wrote:
> 
> [...]
> I want to improve the tutorials, not compete with them. I
> think that the tutorials in the POV Ray and Moray docs are very uneven, some
> are great, some are okay, and some are poor.

Could you give an example?  Of course the tutorials in the POV-Ray docs
have their limitations.  There is not room for a lot of illustartions and
they have to be quite technical, but i would not call any of them 'poor'.

> I wonder about the statment "it's impossible to really unleash povray's
> power without learning the scene description language"? How is that true?
> "And some of the coolest povray stuff is not implemented in these modelers
> yet." Well there is SO MUCH stuff in POV Ray that is implemented in these
> modelers that I am not sure a book needs to cover everything in POV Ray,
> that seems like a daunting and almost impossible requirement.

I think Gilles' suggestion to get some more experience in the practical
use of POV-Ray is very good.  Tell me if i'm wrong, but your above
statement seems to indicate that you are missing some of the most powerful
features of POV-Ray.  A book about current POV-Ray without while loops,
macros, 'trace' etc. would be really incomplete i think.

> "Furthermore the structure of a book about Moray would should be quite
> different from one about Povray." I don't see how this follows. Why would
> they have to have different structures? Seems like "here is how to do
> something in POV" could easily be parallel with "here is how its done in
> Moray", or whatever modeler you are using.

Things like the mentioned functions have no equivalent in a modeler like
moray, apart from that the introducing part would have to be totally
different.  With moray you would give an introduction to the user
interface, the basic functions and how to use the wireframe editor in
general.  With POV-Ray you would probably start with some explanation of
the language, the basic syntax elements etc.

My own favorite concept for such a book would be a collection of
independent chapters.  I always liked such books because they give a good
impression of the diversity of possible ways to work and do not force a
certain learning path.  Also it would simplify coordinating multiple
authors.  I personally would also like writing something for such a book
while i would not have that much interest in doing a chapter of a book
like you proposed - with moray i would even not be competent for doing so.

Christoph

-- 
Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde>
IsoWood include, radiosity tutorial, TransSkin and other 
things on: http://www.schunter.etc.tu-bs.de/~chris/

Post a reply to this message

"Peter Popov" <pet### [at] vipbg> wrote in message
news:a07l4u4rsbi0cf4m8q8df8hgi2td22jlne@4ax.com...
> On Sat, 19 Jan 2002 22:48:31 -0800, "Mitchell Waite"
> <mit### [at] dnaicom> wrote:
>
> Blender is free but it's virtually unusable without the docs, and that
> has to be paid for. Rhino is certainly not free, the student's license
> was $199 last time I checked. I think anim8or is not free either but I
> may be wrong here.

Rhino: Educational - $195 Commercial - $895 but there's a full feature
save limited demo available (25 saves iirc) (www.rhino3d.com/download.htm)
As far as I can tell from the anim8or web site it it free, at least at the
moment.

Gail
--
#macro G(H,S)disc{0z.4pigment{onion color_map{[0rgb<sin(H/pi)cos(S/pi)*(H<6)
cos(S/pi)*(H>6)>*18][.4rgb 0]}}translate<H-5S-3,9>}#end G(3,5)G(2,5.5)G(1,5)
G(.6,4)G(.5,3)G(.6,2)G(1,1)G(2,.5)G(3,.7)G(3.2,1.6)G(3.1,2.5)G(2.2,2.5)G(9,5
)G(8,5.5)G(7,5)G(7,4)G(7.7,3.3)G(8.3,2.7)G(9,2)G(9,1)G(8,.5)G(7,1)//GS

Post a reply to this message

Peter Popov wrote:
> 
> The POV-Ray scene description language is a Turing-complete language.
> You can write anything with it, from a virus to a raytracer (both of
> these have been done.)

Oh, PLEASE tell me that one or both of these are available on the web
somewhere or in someone's personal archive.  I am a huge fan of Just Plain
Wrong coding (I wrote a CGI script or two in make(1), and actually used,
albeit not for long, ddcalc), and these sound brilliant.

Please, someone, give me a pointer to these projects.

Deaken

Post a reply to this message

In article <3C4AD7F1.47D921B5@sw-tech.com>, Deaken <dwy### [at] sw-techcom> 
wrote:

> Oh, PLEASE tell me that one or both of these are available on the web
> somewhere or in someone's personal archive.  I am a huge fan of Just Plain
> Wrong coding (I wrote a CGI script or two in make(1), and actually used,
> albeit not for long, ddcalc), and these sound brilliant.

The raytracer is part of the POV 3.5 documentation:
http://www.povray.org/working-docs/

I don't think the "virus" is available, and it wouldn't work with the 
security features in POV 3.5 anyway.

-- 
 -- 
Christopher James Huff <chr### [at] maccom>

Post a reply to this message

Christopher James Huff wrote:

> I don't think the "virus" is available, and it wouldn't work with the
> security features in POV 3.5 anyway.

It would work if the security features were disabled.

-- 
Ken Tyler

Post a reply to this message

Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet> wrote:
:> I don't think the "virus" is available, and it wouldn't work with the
:> security features in POV 3.5 anyway.

: It would work if the security features were disabled.

  The problem with that "virus" is that it has no way to get a file listing,
ie. no way to know how files are named in the current directory.
  You can imagine how slow it is to go through all possible file names in
povray sdl... (it's extremely slow even with a highly-optimized C code).

-- 
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -

Post a reply to this message

Christopher James Huff wrote:
> 
> The raytracer is part of the POV 3.5 documentation:
> http://www.povray.org/working-docs/

Oh.  I thought you meant a raytracer actually written IN SDL, or perhaps
something that would parse what you had written and rewrite it before
sending it to the rendering engine.

> I don't think the "virus" is available, and it wouldn't work with the
> security features in POV 3.5 anyway.

It seems to be simple enough, in theory.  I just didn't want to reinvent yet
another wheel.

No, I'm not going to write it.  There are better things to do with the
interpreter.

Deaken

Post a reply to this message

Deaken <dwy### [at] sw-techcom> wrote:
: Oh.  I thought you meant a raytracer actually written IN SDL

  It is.

-- 
#macro N(D)#if(D>99)cylinder{M()#local D=div(D,104);M().5,2pigment{rgb M()}}
N(D)#end#end#macro M()<mod(D,13)-6mod(div(D,13)8)-3,10>#end blob{
N(11117333955)N(4254934330)N(3900569407)N(7382340)N(3358)N(970)}//  - Warp -

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> 
> Deaken <dwy### [at] sw-techcom> wrote:
> : Oh.  I thought you meant a raytracer actually written IN SDL
> 
>   It is.

Sorry.  Insomnia.  I see it now.  Section 4.2.

Wow.  This is sick.  I love it.

Deaken

Post a reply to this message

Mitchell Waite wrote:
> 
<snip>

> 
> I know very little about this other products: blender, spatch, hamapatch,
> anim8tor, amapi, rhino. I have tried blender but it would not run properly
> on my Win2K machine with dual LCD monitors. Are these all freeware programs,
> because the one disconnect with Moray is that its retail product and that
> does not work very well with the free nature of POV. What about including
> some of these products in the gray text, would that be a turn off?

No, that would not be a turn-off to me.  Rhino ain't free- that
thing is a costly beast.  sPatch and Hamapatch are (for now). 
Moray isn't too expensive and seems to have the perfect price
point to features balance to be successful.  Anyway, POVlab is
free and open source, isn't it?
http://pdelagrange.free.fr/povlab/  The difficulty of programming
a modeler seems to be a real problem with developing them, and as
a result no freeware modeler for POV compares to Moray's
completeness.

> 
> I wonder about the statment "it's impossible to really unleash povray's
> power without learning the scene description language"? How is that true?

Animation.  As yet no interface helps with all that you can do. 
There are other reasons, but that's my biggy.  Particles (which
sorta go hand in hand with animation), etc...

> "And some of the coolest povray stuff is not implemented in these modelers
> yet." Well there is SO MUCH stuff in POV Ray that is implemented in these
> modelers that I am not sure a book needs to cover everything in POV Ray,
> that seems like a daunting and almost impossible requirement.

Not if you forgo the basic: "this is a right-handed coordinate
system, this is a left-handed system, this is a cube see how it
works, this is a sphere, see how it works," part of the book
which always seems so obligatory whenever new books come out. 
Just skip that 30% of the book, use it for something else- at
most point out other free resources that a newbie can fetch to
get up to speed.

<snip>

> something in POV" could easily be parallel with "here is how its done in
> Moray", or whatever modeler you are using.

This about doubles the text on each subject, no?  IMO that should
be the responsibility of *Moray's* docs, not anyone's 3rd party
docs.  Maybe just review (briefly) the resources out there- have
you even checked ut POVlab?  IMO, getting people acquainted with
the scripting and power of POV seems like enough of a task, and
an interesting enough task.  Moray is a for-profit enterprise,
they can handle this responsibility on its own.  Your pointing
out where it can be found, and briefly describing it is enough, I
think.  As you'll probably include a CD, having the current
version on there would be a lot too- but also consider adding
alternative modelers to the CD.

> 
> I very much appreciate the feelback, its helping me calibrate my ideas for
> the team that is forming. Nothing has been decided so this is a great time
> for people to jump in and help shape this project.

Glad you're having this discussion! :o)

-peter

-- 
Current obsession: "Ballet pour ma fille."
http://www.applesnake.net

Post a reply to this message

I think that the docs for the matrix keyword are poor. And all of the
tutorial links I could find on the web were dead. I figured it out with
trial and error, but I think a better explanation in the docs would be nice.
For the most part, however, the 3.5 docs are VERY thorough.


"Christoph Hormann" <chr### [at] gmxde> wrote in message
news:3C4AA1A9.D9AC5E08@gmx.de...
> Could you give an example?  Of course the tutorials in the POV-Ray docs
> have their limitations.  There is not room for a lot of illustartions and
> they have to be quite technical, but i would not call any of them 'poor'.

Post a reply to this message

In article <3c4b6349@news.povray.org>, "Shay" <shi### [at] houstonrrcom> 
wrote:

> I think that the docs for the matrix keyword are poor. And all of the
> tutorial links I could find on the web were dead. I figured it out with
> trial and error, but I think a better explanation in the docs would be nice.
> For the most part, however, the 3.5 docs are VERY thorough.

http://enphilistor.users4.50megs.com/matrix.htm
http://www.shipbrook.com/jeff/raytrace/matrix.html

-- 
 -- 
Christopher James Huff <chr### [at] maccom>

Post a reply to this message

In article <chr### [at] netplexaussieorg>,
Christopher James Huff <chr### [at] maccom> writes
>In article <3C4AD7F1.47D921B5@sw-tech.com>, Deaken <dwy### [at] sw-techcom> 
>wrote:
>
>> Oh, PLEASE tell me that one or both of these are available on the web
>> somewhere or in someone's personal archive.  I am a huge fan of Just Plain
>> Wrong coding (I wrote a CGI script or two in make(1), and actually used,
>> albeit not for long, ddcalc), and these sound brilliant.
>
>The raytracer is part of the POV 3.5 documentation:
>http://www.povray.org/working-docs/
>
I have read through the sections of the docs about it, but the link to
download the complete source 404s.
-- 
David Parrott

Post a reply to this message

Thank you very much, Christopher.

 -Shay
"Christopher James Huff" <chr### [at] maccom> wrote in message
news:chr### [at] netplexaussieorg...

Post a reply to this message

Deaken wrote in message <3C4A9CF0.7FFE3BA7@sw-tech.com>...
>Warp wrote:
>>
>> Deaken <dwy### [at] sw-techcom> wrote:
>> : Oh.  I thought you meant a raytracer actually written IN SDL
>>
>>   It is.
>
>Sorry.  Insomnia.  I see it now.  Section 4.2.
>
>Wow.  This is sick.  I love it.


Even worse: I'm working on an SDL and parser for the SDL raytracer. (Do I
have too much time on my hands or what?)

--
Mark

Post a reply to this message

Mitchell,

I am usually just a lurker on this group, but with the reception you have been
getting on here lately, I just had to speak up.

The Waite group books I remember were all excellent. Period.

Obviously, there would be interest in a new book.  Not to discount the idea of
doing some market research, but why don't you follow your own instincts about
what to include in your book.  They are your ideas, it would be your book, and
if you continue in your tradition of excellence, it will be a good book.  I
think (I say with my asbestos underwear on) that everybody currently pitching
criticism your way should just hold their comments and wait for your new book
(if there will be one) to come out.  It will speak for itself.

Respectfully,

    Randy Hawley


Mitchell Waite wrote:

> Some people say that the POV Ray SDL is a turn off for new users, others say
> that modeling programs are a turn off to scripters There seems to be a real
> scism here. There are issues with Moray's right handed polor coordinates,
> and some thing sPartch or Hamapatch are a better choce (tho I have not heard
> why they are). When I was speaking of putting Moray text in a gray box I did
> not mean that text would reproduce the user docs in Moray. I don't see my
> book idea as competing with either Moray or POV Ray docs, that would be a
> waste of trees. I want to improve the tutorials, not compete with them. I
> think that the tutorials in the POV Ray and Moray docs are very uneven, some
> are great, some are okay, and some are poor.
>
> I know very little about this other products: blender, spatch, hamapatch,
> anim8tor, amapi, rhino. I have tried blender but it would not run properly
> on my Win2K machine with dual LCD monitors. Are these all freeware programs,
> because the one disconnect with Moray is that its retail product and that
> does not work very well with the free nature of POV. What about including
> some of these products in the gray text, would that be a turn off?
>
> I wonder about the statment "it's impossible to really unleash povray's
> power without learning the scene description language"? How is that true?
> "And some of the coolest povray stuff is not implemented in these modelers
> yet." Well there is SO MUCH stuff in POV Ray that is implemented in these
> modelers that I am not sure a book needs to cover everything in POV Ray,
> that seems like a daunting and almost impossible requirement.
>
> "Furthermore the structure of a book about Moray would should be quite
> different from one about Povray." I don't see how this follows. Why would
> they have to have different structures? Seems like "here is how to do
> something in POV" could easily be parallel with "here is how its done in
> Moray", or whatever modeler you are using.
>
> I very much appreciate the feelback, its helping me calibrate my ideas for
> the team that is forming. Nothing has been decided so this is a great time
> for people to jump in and help shape this project.

Post a reply to this message

Christopher James Huff wrote in message ...
>I don't think the "virus" is available, and it wouldn't work with the
>security features in POV 3.5 anyway.


The virus is sitting in povray.binaries.scene-files (Title: POV-Ray Scene
Virus).  It was designed in POV-Ray 3.1, but it works just fine in POV-Ray
3.5.  With the default security settings, it will spend the next 80 years
infecting every file in the current directory.

(BTW, it doesn't *quite* work in POV 3.1 because of a bug in how escape
sequences are handled.)

--
Mark

Post a reply to this message

Mark Wagner wrote:
> 
> The virus [...]

Cut-n-paste + a handful of Perl == insane giggling.

That's truly sick, Mark.  Thank you.  :)

Deaken

Post a reply to this message

"Mitchell Waite" <mit### [at] dnaicom> a écrit dans le message de news:
3c4a67cf$1@news.povray.org...
> Are these all freeware programs,
> because the one disconnect with Moray is that its retail product and that
> does not work very well with the free nature of POV. What about including
> some of these products in the gray text, would that be a turn off?

With Hamapatch going shareware, the number of freeware, actually popular,
presently supported modelers is close to 0 right now (blender is a special
case and blender-to-pov scripts are currently under development). New
modelers are popping up every week though.

> I wonder about the statment "it's impossible to really unleash povray's
> power without learning the scene description language"? How is that true?
> "And some of the coolest povray stuff is not implemented in these modelers
> yet." Well there is SO MUCH stuff in POV Ray that is implemented in these
> modelers that I am not sure a book needs to cover everything in POV Ray,
> that seems like a daunting and almost impossible requirement.

Currently, two features allow povray 3.5 to produce results as good as the
latest batch of costly professional renderers : radiosity and photon
mapping. AFAIK, the 3.5 version of these features is not implemented in any
modeler yet (OK, I suppose that there may be plans to do so for Moray).
Isosurfaces are also a very important feature, quite unique by what it
allows users to do (and again not supported elsewhere). And of course, the
programming features of the SDL (such as macros, loops etc.) have become
essential. Sure, you can get far without these features, but only 1997-far.

Again, I suggest that you get acquainted with how current users are actually
using povray these days. A good start would be reading some of the *.txt
files that go with the IRTC images, for instance (just look at the 6 top
entries of each round) : that will give you a good idea of the various tools
used. Browsing through past povray.binaries.images would help you to get an
idea of the features that people appreciate most. You could also look up
what the "competition" is in terms of rendering quality (see
http://www.splutterfish.com) , since this is what many people expect now.

G.

--

**********************
http://www.oyonale.com
**********************
- Graphic experiments
- POV-Ray and Poser computer images
- Posters

Post a reply to this message

"Gilles Tran" <tra### [at] inapginrafr> wrote in message
news:3c4c0c21$1@news.povray.org...
> "Mitchell Waite" <mit### [at] dnaicom> a écrit dans le message de news:
> 3c4a67cf$1@news.povray.org...
> Currently, two features allow povray 3.5 to produce results as good as the
> latest batch of costly professional renderers : radiosity and photon
> mapping. AFAIK, the 3.5 version of these features is not implemented in any
> modeler yet

BTW 3.5 Radiosity is used in 3dCanvas Pro.

--
#local X=20*<-2,2,5>;sphere_sweep{catmull_rom_spline 6<-8,-8>1<-8,-8>1<-8,8>1<
8,-8>1<8,8>1<8,8>1translate 20*z pigment{gradient z scale 3color_map{[0rgb<0,9
,18>][1rgb 0]}}}#local K=2*z*X-X;#local R=seed(clock);blob{#while(K.x>X.x)
#local N=X+<rand(R)rand(R)1>/3;#local X=(vlength(N-K)<vlength(X-K)?N:2*X-N);
sphere{X,1,1rotate z*90}sphere{X,1,1}#end pigment{rgbt 1}interior{media{//Nekar
emission<2,4,5>*5}}hollow scale.05}//   http://nekar_xenos.tripod.com/metanoia/


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.314 / Virus Database: 175 - Release Date: 2002/01/11

Post a reply to this message

Randy and others:

Thanks for that vote of confidence. Ultimately I will follow my instincts,
but the reason I am asking the group for feedback is in fact to do my market
research. When first published Ray Tracing Creations there was only a very
tiny mailing list and Drew Wells and I had to send a lot of emails to
discover what the expectations of our users might be, still in the end we
did what we felt was best at that time.

Its clear that POV Ray has done a lot of growing up in the last 6 years
since I published that book, and what it can now do as a procedural language
far exceeds what I ever expected. There are many possible approaches one
could take to a book on POV Ray, and there are probably several volumes one
could publish. We could take the approach that the SDL is a general purpose
language and write a primer on its statements and functions, or we could
focus just the fundamentals of ray tracing and don't go so deep into the
SDL, or we could use Moray to bootstrap the reader so that they are
productive early in the text, then dive into the language statements in more
depth (hoping we have not lost those Moray users to the crutch it provides).
We could use Hamapatch or Povlab instead of Moray or in addition to Moray.

As I look and listen I am beginning to see a structure that will satisfy
everyone which involves more of a spiral approach that winds though the
learning space in a way that all the major topics are presented but
sometimes more than once. I used this approach in Basic Programming Primer
and in C Primer Plus and the with Lafore in Object Oriented Programming in
C++ and the last two of those are still in print after about 5 editions, so
I know that works. I also see that this would not be a small book, the
Materials Editor alone could be a huge chapter, maybe a book by itself. This
might end up being a POV Ray Bible rather than a Primer.

Those are my thoughts and feelings for today, however I am still
investigating. BTW I tried Hamapatch and did not find it anywhere as refined
and complete as Moray. Povlab is a DOS program and I just can't see time
traveling backwards on this book. The idea of writing procedures that do
other things than ray trace with the SDL is clever and cute and might be
worth a few pages to show its flexibility but I don't think diving into that
capability makes any sense right now.

I very much appreciate all the great feedback and ideas that have been
generated by the group. Thanks!

Mitch

"Randy Hawley" <rha### [at] iquestnet> wrote in message
news:3C4### [at] iquestnet...
> Mitchell,
>
> I am usually just a lurker on this group, but with the reception you have
been
> getting on here lately, I just had to speak up.
>
> The Waite group books I remember were all excellent. Period.
>
> Obviously, there would be interest in a new book.  Not to discount the
idea of
> doing some market research, but why don't you follow your own instincts
about
> what to include in your book.  They are your ideas, it would be your book,
and
> if you continue in your tradition of excellence, it will be a good book.
I
> think (I say with my asbestos underwear on) that everybody currently
pitching
> criticism your way should just hold their comments and wait for your new
book
> (if there will be one) to come out.  It will speak for itself.
>
> Respectfully,
>
>     Randy Hawley
>
>
> Mitchell Waite wrote:
>
> > Some people say that the POV Ray SDL is a turn off for new users, others
say
> > that modeling programs are a turn off to scripters There seems to be a
real
> > scism here. There are issues with Moray's right handed polor
coordinates,
> > and some thing sPartch or Hamapatch are a better choce (tho I have not
heard
> > why they are). When I was speaking of putting Moray text in a gray box I
did
> > not mean that text would reproduce the user docs in Moray. I don't see
my
> > book idea as competing with either Moray or POV Ray docs, that would be
a
> > waste of trees. I want to improve the tutorials, not compete with them.
I
> > think that the tutorials in the POV Ray and Moray docs are very uneven,
some
> > are great, some are okay, and some are poor.
> >
> > I know very little about this other products: blender, spatch,
hamapatch,
> > anim8tor, amapi, rhino. I have tried blender but it would not run
properly
> > on my Win2K machine with dual LCD monitors. Are these all freeware
programs,
> > because the one disconnect with Moray is that its retail product and
that
> > does not work very well with the free nature of POV. What about
including
> > some of these products in the gray text, would that be a turn off?
> >
> > I wonder about the statment "it's impossible to really unleash povray's
> > power without learning the scene description language"? How is that
true?
> > "And some of the coolest povray stuff is not implemented in these
modelers
> > yet." Well there is SO MUCH stuff in POV Ray that is implemented in
these
> > modelers that I am not sure a book needs to cover everything in POV Ray,
> > that seems like a daunting and almost impossible requirement.
> >
> > "Furthermore the structure of a book about Moray would should be quite
> > different from one about Povray." I don't see how this follows. Why
would
> > they have to have different structures? Seems like "here is how to do
> > something in POV" could easily be parallel with "here is how its done in
> > Moray", or whatever modeler you are using.
> >
> > I very much appreciate the feelback, its helping me calibrate my ideas
for
> > the team that is forming. Nothing has been decided so this is a great
time
> > for people to jump in and help shape this project.
>

Post a reply to this message

Very useful information, thanks. Radiosity and Photon mapping are awesome
features and I will spend more time learning about them. Keep in mind that
this book is not being written for existing POV Ray users specifically but
rather for people that have never heard of it as well as people that have.
Therefore its probably not going to satisfy all the needs of the advanced
and well rendered users. My only competition at this time is my own book
which is out of print. I would also not be surprised if Lutz adds those two
features to Moray at some point, but again I don't see that Moray is going
to consume huge numbers of pages in this book either.

"Gilles Tran" <tra### [at] inapginrafr> wrote in message
news:3c4c0c21$1@news.povray.org...
> "Mitchell Waite" <mit### [at] dnaicom> a écrit dans le message de news:
> 3c4a67cf$1@news.povray.org...
> > Are these all freeware programs,
> > because the one disconnect with Moray is that its retail product and
that
> > does not work very well with the free nature of POV. What about
including
> > some of these products in the gray text, would that be a turn off?
>
> With Hamapatch going shareware, the number of freeware, actually popular,
> presently supported modelers is close to 0 right now (blender is a special
> case and blender-to-pov scripts are currently under development). New
> modelers are popping up every week though.
>
> > I wonder about the statment "it's impossible to really unleash povray's
> > power without learning the scene description language"? How is that
true?
> > "And some of the coolest povray stuff is not implemented in these
modelers
> > yet." Well there is SO MUCH stuff in POV Ray that is implemented in
these
> > modelers that I am not sure a book needs to cover everything in POV Ray,
> > that seems like a daunting and almost impossible requirement.
>
> Currently, two features allow povray 3.5 to produce results as good as the
> latest batch of costly professional renderers : radiosity and photon
> mapping. AFAIK, the 3.5 version of these features is not implemented in
any
> modeler yet (OK, I suppose that there may be plans to do so for Moray).
> Isosurfaces are also a very important feature, quite unique by what it
> allows users to do (and again not supported elsewhere). And of course, the
> programming features of the SDL (such as macros, loops etc.) have become
> essential. Sure, you can get far without these features, but only
1997-far.
>
> Again, I suggest that you get acquainted with how current users are
actually
> using povray these days. A good start would be reading some of the *.txt
> files that go with the IRTC images, for instance (just look at the 6 top
> entries of each round) : that will give you a good idea of the various
tools
> used. Browsing through past povray.binaries.images would help you to get
an
> idea of the features that people appreciate most. You could also look up
> what the "competition" is in terms of rendering quality (see
> http://www.splutterfish.com) , since this is what many people expect now.
>
> G.
>
> --
>
> **********************
> http://www.oyonale.com
> **********************
> - Graphic experiments
> - POV-Ray and Poser computer images
> - Posters
>
>
>

Post a reply to this message

"Mitchell Waite" <mit### [at] dnaicom> wrote in message
news:3c4c397a@news.povray.org...
> Very useful information, thanks. Radiosity and Photon mapping are awesome
> features and I will spend more time learning about them. Keep in mind that
> this book is not being written for existing POV Ray users specifically but
> rather for people that have never heard of it as well as people that have.

    You may well get a large number of readers from the folk who use other
rendering programs. They will be looking for things like this even though
they may not have even heard of PovRay.

    I mean, it's not like Povray gets a lot of coverage in the 3D mags.

Post a reply to this message

"Mitchell Waite" wrote:
> I also see that this would not be a small book, the
> Materials Editor alone could be a huge chapter, maybe
> a book by itself. This might end up being a POV Ray
> Bible rather than a Primer.

AFAIK two regular books will sell better than one book that it twice as big.
IMO it'll be a much better idea to publish several books with different
approaches on the subject than publishing one big bible. A smaller book is
often more inviting to get started on for many people.

And with a big book there's a great chance that many users will not read it
all maybe because they're not interested in all the aspects. There are also
users who are not willing to pay the price for a large book. If you publish
more smaller books users can try out one and buy more if they liked the
first one.

Rune
--
3D images and anims, include files, tutorials and more:
Rune's World:    http://rsj.mobilixnet.dk (updated Jan 20)
POV-Ray Users:   http://rsj.mobilixnet.dk/povrayusers/
POV-Ray Webring: http://webring.povray.co.uk

Post a reply to this message

"Mitchell Waite" <mit### [at] dnaicom> wrote in message
news:3c4c397a@news.povray.org...
> Very useful information, thanks. Radiosity and Photon mapping are awesome
> features and I will spend more time learning about them. Keep in mind that
> this book is not being written for existing POV Ray users specifically but
> rather for people that have never heard of it as well as people that have.

A couple of suggestions,

A section on extending POV
 - writing GUI extensions
 - writing patches

A section on the community
- POV history http://www.simberon.com/pov_history.htm
- IRTC http://www.irtc.org
- IMP http://www.imp.org (a shameless plug)

Post a reply to this message

Nice ideas Tom. GUI extensions probably belongs in an appendix. By "patches"
do you program patches to the langauge?
I certainly would like to cover the history of POV Ray and the IRTC contest.
Not sure about the moive stuff but it deserves a link as does the
distributed ray tracing project.

Mitch

"Tom Galvin" <tom### [at] nospamdataforgecom> wrote in message
news:3c4c7f00$1@news.povray.org...
>
> "Mitchell Waite" <mit### [at] dnaicom> wrote in message
> news:3c4c397a@news.povray.org...
> > Very useful information, thanks. Radiosity and Photon mapping are
awesome
> > features and I will spend more time learning about them. Keep in mind
that
> > this book is not being written for existing POV Ray users specifically
but
> > rather for people that have never heard of it as well as people that
have.
>
> A couple of suggestions,
>
> A section on extending POV
>  - writing GUI extensions
>  - writing patches
>
> A section on the community
> - POV history http://www.simberon.com/pov_history.htm
> - IRTC http://www.irtc.org
> - IMP http://www.imp.org (a shameless plug)
>
>

Post a reply to this message

"Mitchell Waite" <mit### [at] dnaicom> wrote in message
news:3c4cb098$1@news.povray.org...
> Nice ideas Tom. GUI extensions probably belongs in an appendix. By
"patches"
> do you program patches to the langauge?
> I certainly would like to cover the history of POV Ray and the IRTC
contest.
> Not sure about the moive stuff but it deserves a link as does the
> distributed ray tracing project.
>
> Mitch
>


One of the strengths of POV is that the source is available for people to
look at, play with,
and contribute improvements.  However it is a jump in the deep end for most
people.  A good
chapter on the code structure would become a bible for many people here.

Post a reply to this message

Mitchell Waite wrote:

> My only competition at this time is my own book which is out of print.

This is not all together true. As has been pointed out (more than once
I believe) the POV-Team is in the process of organizing and writing an
officially sponsored book on the same basic subject matter. The proceeds
of the sales of this book will help offset the costs of running this news
server, the povray.org website, and the IRTC competition, all of which
are bandwidth intensive and expensive to operate. In fact there is some
fear that your current project may actually hurt their efforts and your
timing is at best poor.

-- 
Ken Tyler

Post a reply to this message

Ken:

Rather then looking at a single book on a subject as a negative, most pros
in the publishing world feel that the appearance of more than one title is a
sign of a robust market and welcome them. More than one title can lead to
increased buyins by the chains. Also did you know there is another POV Ray
book project that has been underway for some time? See
http://www.povworld.org/. I think there is a lot of room out there for
multiple titles on a subject. If there is some concern about my particular
project I would be happy to discuss it with a real person on the team. and
see if we can keep the books complementary and not too overlapping. Please
have them contact me. Thanks.

Mitch

"Ken" <tyl### [at] pacbellnet> wrote in message
news:3C4CD9F6.D33003A6@pacbell.net...
>
>
> Mitchell Waite wrote:
>
> > My only competition at this time is my own book which is out of print.
>
> This is not all together true. As has been pointed out (more than once
> I believe) the POV-Team is in the process of organizing and writing an
> officially sponsored book on the same basic subject matter. The proceeds
> of the sales of this book will help offset the costs of running this news
> server, the povray.org website, and the IRTC competition, all of which
> are bandwidth intensive and expensive to operate. In fact there is some
> fear that your current project may actually hurt their efforts and your
> timing is at best poor.
>
> --
> Ken Tyler

Post a reply to this message

Ken wrote:

> 
> Mitchell Waite wrote:
> 
> 
>>My only competition at this time is my own book which is out of print.
>>
> 
<snip>


It also isn't true because the market has changed drastically in 
5 years... POV isn't the only thing out there anymore, and the 
public's recognition of names such as: 3ds max, lightwave, 
renderman, etc. is a lot greater than before.  The 
movie-interest, special effects, animation approach is really 
common out there now.

True your only competition *in the POV market* would be the POV 
team's book, but exactly what is the size of the market you are 
actually entering?  I think you're no longer in the general CG 
market anymore. If someone asked me 5 years ago what to do to get 
into CGI and animation- I would have said, "POV!" because if you 
knew POV you could adapt to anything out there rapidly.  but I 
wouldn't say that anymore.  If someone's serious about commercial 
CG why would they waste their time with POV?  And even hobbyists 
now seem to think "why not play with what the professionals use?" 
  Many off the shelf apps are making our television and films 
nowadays, POV is (for the most part) not one of those apps.  Even 
in schools it's pretty absent...

my <2 cents.


-peter
-- 
Current obsession: "Ballet pour ma fille."
http://www.applesnake.net

Post a reply to this message

I think that the competition that is here today was around years ago. The
fact that there is more competition just means the market is healthy, not
unhealthy. 3DStudio was the commercial program of choice when we first
published our POV Ray book and there where others like it. That did not stop
people from buying the book. The reason that POV Ray can't be compared to
these other products is that its free, it has a huge following of users that
are available to help in all kinds of ways, it has a huge number of macros,
utilities, materials, tutorials, and other items that make it a great place
to learn about the subject of CG. Sure people will graduate to commercial
products, but that does not take away from the idea that there is a market
for this product. Indeed if you think about it, the real competition to any
commercial POV Ray venture is the built in documentation that comes with POV
Ray.

"Dearmad" <dea### [at] applesnakenet> wrote in message
news:3C4### [at] applesnakenet...
> Ken wrote:
>
> >
> > Mitchell Waite wrote:
> >
> >
> >>My only competition at this time is my own book which is out of print.
> >>
> >
> <snip>
>
>
> It also isn't true because the market has changed drastically in
> 5 years... POV isn't the only thing out there anymore, and the
> public's recognition of names such as: 3ds max, lightwave,
> renderman, etc. is a lot greater than before.  The
> movie-interest, special effects, animation approach is really
> common out there now.
>
> True your only competition *in the POV market* would be the POV
> team's book, but exactly what is the size of the market you are
> actually entering?  I think you're no longer in the general CG
> market anymore. If someone asked me 5 years ago what to do to get
> into CGI and animation- I would have said, "POV!" because if you
> knew POV you could adapt to anything out there rapidly.  but I
> wouldn't say that anymore.  If someone's serious about commercial
> CG why would they waste their time with POV?  And even hobbyists
> now seem to think "why not play with what the professionals use?"
>   Many off the shelf apps are making our television and films
> nowadays, POV is (for the most part) not one of those apps.  Even
> in schools it's pretty absent...
>
> my <2 cents.
>
>
> -peter
> --
> Current obsession: "Ballet pour ma fille."
> http://www.applesnake.net
>

Post a reply to this message

Ken wrote:
> 
> This is not all together true. As has been pointed out (more than once
> I believe) the POV-Team is in the process of organizing and writing an
> officially sponsored book on the same basic subject matter. The proceeds
> of the sales of this book will help offset the costs of running this news
> server, the povray.org website, and the IRTC competition, all of which
> are bandwidth intensive and expensive to operate. In fact there is some
> fear that your current project may actually hurt their efforts and your
> timing is at best poor.

There has been only very few information about this book project so far,
what's written on the survey page sounds interesting, but some more
information about the style of the book and when it's planned to be
published would be great.  

I think it is important that the content of an 'official' Povray book does
not overlap with the Povray documentation too much, maybe it would be a
good idea to offer a bundle of the book and a printed version of the
documentation.

Christoph

-- 
Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde>
IsoWood include, radiosity tutorial, TransSkin and other 
things on: http://www.schunter.etc.tu-bs.de/~chris/

Post a reply to this message

"Christoph Hormann" <chr### [at] gmxde> wrote in message
news:3C4D963B.5BFE3935@gmx.de...

> not overlap with the Povray documentation too much, maybe it would be a
> good idea to offer a bundle of the book and a printed version of the
> documentation.
>

Actually, just offering a nice printed version of the documentation is a good
idea in itself, and could raise some money.

Howzabout the documentation printed on the side of a mug or keyring? ;)

Post a reply to this message

"Mitchell Waite" <mit### [at] dnaicom> wrote in message
news:3c4c37c0@news.povray.org...
> As I look and listen I am beginning to see a structure that will satisfy
> everyone which involves more of a spiral approach that winds though the
> learning space in a way that all the major topics are presented but
> sometimes more than once. I used this approach in Basic Programming Primer
> and in C Primer Plus and the with Lafore in Object Oriented Programming in
> C++ and the last two of those are still in print after about 5 editions,
so
> I know that works. I also see that this would not be a small book, the
> Materials Editor alone could be a huge chapter, maybe a book by itself.
This
> might end up being a POV Ray Bible rather than a Primer.

Sounds good.  For what it's worth, here's my two cents:

Try organizing the book in separate sections on, for instance, modelling
via:
CSG
Patches
Functions
Animation
Materials

Of course, you would have an introductory section which covered the bare
necessities of each; after that, each section deals with ~only~ things
related to it (beginning with "CSG stands for..." and ending with a dragon
modelled entirely by spheres).  The animation section, of course, would have
to incorporate just about everything previous :)

BTW, one thing about examples I've noticed (not necessarily yours, just in
general): although commenting the code is very helpful in and of itself,
comments should also suggest things in the example that can be changed by
the user (generally describing the effects).  That is, not just saying "Then
we type <this>, and it does <this>", but saying "Type <this> to do <this>,
or change <this part> and it gets bigger!"  Just a thought :)

...Chambers

Post a reply to this message

"Tom Melly" <tom### [at] tomandlucouk> wrote in message
news:3c4d9942@news.povray.org...
>
> Actually, just offering a nice printed version of the documentation is a
good
> idea in itself, and could raise some money.
>
> Howzabout the documentation printed on the side of a mug or keyring? ;)
>

Now that would have to be a REALLY large mug.

Gail
--
#macro G(H,S)disc{0z.4pigment{onion color_map{[0rgb<sin(H/pi)cos(S/pi)*(H<6)
cos(S/pi)*(H>6)>*18][.4rgb 0]}}translate<H-5S-3,9>}#end G(3,5)G(2,5.5)G(1,5)
G(.6,4)G(.5,3)G(.6,2)G(1,1)G(2,.5)G(3,.7)G(3.2,1.6)G(3.1,2.5)G(2.2,2.5)G(9,5
)G(8,5.5)G(7,5)G(7,4)G(7.7,3.3)G(8.3,2.7)G(9,2)G(9,1)G(8,.5)G(7,1)//GS

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 23 Jan 2002 07:52:53 +0200, Gail Shaw wrote:
> 
> "Tom Melly" <tom### [at] tomandlucouk> wrote in message
> news:3c4d9942@news.povray.org...
>>
>> Actually, just offering a nice printed version of the documentation is a
> good
>> idea in itself, and could raise some money.
>>
>> Howzabout the documentation printed on the side of a mug or keyring? ;)
>>
> 
> Now that would have to be a REALLY large mug.

But sadly, still not large enough.  They never really are.

-- 
#macro R(P)z+_(P)_(P)_(P+1)_(P+1)+z#end#macro Q(C,T)bicubic_patch{type 1u_steps
6v_steps 6R(1)R(3)R(5)R(7)pigment{rgb z}}#end#macro _(Y)#local X=asc(substr(C,Y
,1))-65;<T+mod(X,4)div(X,4)9>-2#end#macro O(T)Q("ABEFUQWS",T)Q("WSXTLOJN",T)#
end O(0)O(3)Q("JNKLCGCD",0)light_source{x 1}// ron### [at] povrayorg

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