Finally I got my little ray-tracer to a stage where I think that releasing 
it to the public could make sense. Its web home is at
 
 http://www.povworld.org/raytracer/

You find there the (more or less well commented) source and a more detailed 
description of its features with some example pictures. You can also have a 
look at the API there. The ray-tracer is written in C++. It comes with some 
features that I would like to see in a future version of POV-Ray. 

Note that this is a realease for programmers only. The ray tracer does not 
come with a parser so the only way to create new scenes is by programming 
them. That is also why providing pre-compiled binaries does not make much 
sense.

If there is enough interest in discussing about the source code or further 
developping of it I can set up an appropriate communicating media. Maybe 
this project is interesting for you if you are not familiar with the POV 
3.5 code, you prefer object-oriented programming and you do not want to 
wait for POV-Ray 4 to come out of the planing stage.

Feature List:

# Object
    * Box
    * Sphere
    * Plane
    * ''fast'' Isosurface using polynom-extrapolation

# Bounding Boxes
    * Hierarchy

# CSG
    * Union
    * ''fast'' Merge and Intersection, speed in the same order as union
    * CSG copy by reference

# Pigment
    * Patterns
    * Pigment Maps
    * Camera-is-a-Pigment principle

# Texture
    * Phong
    * Transparency

# Media
    * absorbing, emitting, scattering
    * Density Mapping
    * ''fast'' Media using advanced integration technique and light cache   
      (experimental!)

# Light Source
    * Point Light

# Output
    * Write to PPM format file

As said you find some more info on 
http://www.povworld.org/raytracer/features/.

Happy programming!

- Micha Riser

-- 
objects.povworld.org - The POV-Ray Objects Collection
book.povworld.org    - The POV-Ray Book Project

Post a reply to this message

How about some example images and their render times?

-- 
#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

Warp wrote:

>   How about some example images and their render times?
> 
There are example images on:
http://www.povworld.org/raytracer/node6.html
http://www.povworld.org/raytracer/node12.html
http://www.povworld.org/raytracer/node16.html
http://www.povworld.org/raytracer/node21.html

For the render times: If you compile the source you get a binary which can 
make the scenes showed on the pages above.. so you can see yourself.

-- 
objects.povworld.org - The POV-Ray Objects Collection
book.povworld.org    - The POV-Ray Book Project

Post a reply to this message

None of the links work.

Cheers!

Chip Shults
My robotics, space and CGI web page - http://home.cfl.rr.com/aichip

Post a reply to this message

Sorry, I got the links wrong, should be:
 http://www.povworld.org/raytracer/features/node6.html
 http://www.povworld.org/raytracer/features/node12.html
 http://www.povworld.org/raytracer/features/node16.html
 http://www.povworld.org/raytracer/features/node21.html

-- 
objects.povworld.org - The POV-Ray Objects Collection
book.povworld.org    - The POV-Ray Book Project

Post a reply to this message

Cool... Someone else has done this...

I have also made a raytracer - in Java of all things! (Well, the original
was made with Smalltalk - but who else actually has that?) Again, the only
way to make it render things is to write [miles of] Java code to generate
the appropreate datastructures. I suspect my little effort isn't nearly as
full-featured as yours - but then, I had to reinvent raytracing from first
principles! Considering I've never had a propper algebra lesson in my entire
life, I'm pretty dam impressed I got the ray/shape intersection tests to
work at all!!! (Actually, waaaaay back I tried emailling one of the POV-Team
members about the math, but never got an answer. Hardly suprising - they
probably get daft emails like this every second wednesday...)

It's currently on my webpage. I won't go into features, URL, etc unless
someone else is actually interested. (Unlike yours, mine doesn't do anything
new that POV-Ray doesn't do.)

Andrew.

PS. Isn't building a raytracer with OOP so confusing? Which kind of "object"
are you talking about... ;-)

PPS. If I were God, POV_Ray's SDL would be object-oriented (in the
programming sense).

Post a reply to this message

In article <3db919e9@news.povray.org>,
 "Andrew Coppin" <orp### [at] btinternetcom> wrote:

> I have also made a raytracer - in Java of all things! (Well, the original
> was made with Smalltalk - but who else actually has that?)

You mean your original raytracer? Because "the original" raytracer was a 
piece of twine. ;-)

If you mean your original, it sounds interesting...I've always been 
interested in Smalltalk. I know of another raytracer written in 
Objective C, which is basically a halfway point between Smalltalk and C.


> Again, the only
> way to make it render things is to write [miles of] Java code to generate
> the appropreate datastructures. I suspect my little effort isn't nearly as
> full-featured as yours - but then, I had to reinvent raytracing from first
> principles! Considering I've never had a propper algebra lesson in my entire
> life, I'm pretty dam impressed I got the ray/shape intersection tests to
> work at all!!! (Actually, waaaaay back I tried emailling one of the POV-Team
> members about the math, but never got an answer. Hardly suprising - they
> probably get daft emails like this every second wednesday...)

Try a post on one of these newsgroups, maybe advanced-users.


> PS. Isn't building a raytracer with OOP so confusing? Which kind of "object"
> are you talking about... ;-)

Do what I did for my tracer: physical things are "shapes", objects are 
bundles of information/behavior. Gets rid of the ambiguity nice and 
neatly.


> PPS. If I were God, POV_Ray's SDL would be object-oriented (in the
> programming sense).

It already comes close in some ways. I think it could be made into a 
prototype-based OO language with little modification.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

Andrew Coppin wrote:

> I have also made a raytracer - in Java of all things! (Well, the original

Actually I have written it in Java first as well - I needed to learn java 
for my study. But it was a factor 3-10 slower than the c++ version.

> was made with Smalltalk - but who else actually has that?) Again, the only
> way to make it render things is to write [miles of] Java code to generate
> the appropreate datastructures. I suspect my little effort isn't nearly as
> full-featured as yours - but then, I had to reinvent raytracing from first
> principles! Considering I've never had a propper algebra lesson in my
> entire life, I'm pretty dam impressed I got the ray/shape intersection

While I already had algreba courses I pretty figgured out all the 
neccessary transformations for ray tracing myself... The nice thing was 
that when I came to think about how isosurfaces and volumetric media works 
I could perfectly make usage of the root finding and numerical integration 
techniques that I had been taught just before.

Actually I just today started having a graphic course which will bring me a 
bit deeper into the things and algorithms behind rendering.

> PS. Isn't building a raytracer with OOP so confusing? Which kind of
> "object" are you talking about... ;-)

Well, I called the objects' base class 'Object3D'. When you are talking of 
'classes' and 'instances' about OOP there is no name conflict.

- Micha

-- 
objects.povworld.org - The POV-Ray Objects Collection
book.povworld.org    - The POV-Ray Book Project

Post a reply to this message

> > I have also made a raytracer - in Java of all things! (Well, the
original
> > was made with Smalltalk - but who else actually has that?)
>
> You mean your original raytracer? Because "the original" raytracer was a
> piece of twine. ;-)

<groans>

Yes, I ment *my* original. And actually, it's just occurred to me - the
*very* _first_ prototype of it was actually done with Borland's Turbo Pascal
5.5 for DOS. (Anyone remember that ol' thing?)

> If you mean your original, it sounds interesting...I've always been
> interested in Smalltalk. I know of another raytracer written in
> Objective C, which is basically a halfway point between Smalltalk and C.

C hurts my head. I tried to make an interpreter for my own OOP language that
I designed... But pointers to arrays of pointers to pointers to functions is
just _not_ fun.

> (Actually, waaaaay back I tried emailling one of the POV-Team
> > members about the math, but never got an answer. Hardly suprising - they
> > probably get daft emails like this every second wednesday...)
>
> Try a post on one of these newsgroups, maybe advanced-users.

Mmm... will maybe do that sometime... although it's not strictly
POV-related...

> > PS. Isn't building a raytracer with OOP so confusing? Which kind of
"object"
> > are you talking about... ;-)
>
> Do what I did for my tracer: physical things are "shapes", objects are
> bundles of information/behavior. Gets rid of the ambiguity nice and
> neatly.

The way my tracer works, a "shape" described the 3-dimensional form of an
object; a "texture" basically maps points to surfaces, and a "surface"
described the object's surface characteristics. (I.e., by the wonder of
polymorphism, subclasses of Surface implements light-sourcing, reflection,
refraction one day, etc.) And "object" itself is the combination of a shape
and a texture. So anyway, I just renamed it to "item"... (Java doesn't like
you declaring classes called "Object"; could have done "Object3D" or
something, but "Item" is less typing ;-)

> > PPS. If I were God, POV_Ray's SDL would be object-oriented (in the
> > programming sense).
>
> It already comes close in some ways. I think it could be made into a
> prototype-based OO language with little modification.

I thought about writing some sorta thingy that would parse an input file in
my own custom-designed language, and spit out a result in ordinary POV-Ray
SDL. But I don't understand POV-Ray's SDL well enought to do it. (Ahhhh...
tell the trueth: you can't write a parser to save your life! :-(

Andrew.

Post a reply to this message

> Actually I have written it in Java first as well - I needed to learn java
> for my study. But it was a factor 3-10 slower than the c++ version.

I'll bet! (The speed part, that is.) Don't like Java much, but it's the only
way to reach a larger audience...

> While I already had algreba courses I pretty figgured out all the
> neccessary transformations for ray tracing myself... The nice thing was
> that when I came to think about how isosurfaces and volumetric media works
> I could perfectly make usage of the root finding and numerical integration
> techniques that I had been taught just before.
>
> Actually I just today started having a graphic course which will bring me
a
> bit deeper into the things and algorithms behind rendering.

Ah, now we did do a term studying computer graphics... Everyone thought the
guy was joking when we said our assignment was to write a program to draw an
antialiased STRAIGHT LINE using Bresenham's Algorithm... Ahh, memories...
(What am I on? It was only 5 months ago!)

> > PS. Isn't building a raytracer with OOP so confusing? Which kind of
> > "object" are you talking about... ;-)
>
> Well, I called the objects' base class 'Object3D'. When you are talking of
> 'classes' and 'instances' about OOP there is no name conflict.

Yeah, but Java has a class called "Object". Like you say, "Object3D" would
work fine; I chose "Item" instead - it works better in English as well as in
code...

Andrew.

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 25 Oct 2002 17:08:09 +0100, "Andrew Coppin" <orp### [at] btinternetcom>
wrote:
> Yes, I ment *my* original. And actually, it's just occurred to me - the
> *very* _first_ prototype of it was actually done with Borland's Turbo Pascal
> 5.5 for DOS. (Anyone remember that ol' thing?)

I don't remember version but that was my first tool for renderings too. 

ABX

Post a reply to this message

In article <3db96c70@news.povray.org>,
 "Andrew Coppin" <orp### [at] btinternetcom> wrote:

> C hurts my head. I tried to make an interpreter for my own OOP language that
> I designed... But pointers to arrays of pointers to pointers to functions is
> just _not_ fun.

I know what you mean...I just finished redoing the memory management for 
G. It now uses some pretty low level pointer magic to use the same 
memory block as both stack and data space, function calls have very 
little overhead now, but my brain is pretty well fried. The STL helps 
sometimes, but in this case a more specialized structure was needed.


> > Try a post on one of these newsgroups, maybe advanced-users.
> Mmm... will maybe do that sometime... although it's not strictly
> POV-related...

Not POV specific, but raytracing related...post in the programming or 
advanced users groups.


> The way my tracer works, a "shape" described the 3-dimensional form of an
> object; a "texture" basically maps points to surfaces, and a "surface"
> described the object's surface characteristics. (I.e., by the wonder of
> polymorphism, subclasses of Surface implements light-sourcing, reflection,
> refraction one day, etc.) And "object" itself is the combination of a shape
> and a texture. So anyway, I just renamed it to "item"... (Java doesn't like
> you declaring classes called "Object"; could have done "Object3D" or
> something, but "Item" is less typing ;-)

My raytracer has a Tracer object instead to manage things, shapes are 
mainly concerned with geometry, and it uses a tree of objects to 
evaluate the texture.


> I thought about writing some sorta thingy that would parse an input file in
> my own custom-designed language, and spit out a result in ordinary POV-Ray
> SDL. But I don't understand POV-Ray's SDL well enought to do it. (Ahhhh...
> tell the trueth: you can't write a parser to save your life! :-(

Thats what CSDL (now Sapphire) was originally supposed to be, just a 
translator. The first name was CSDL, for C-like Scene Description 
Language, then C-like Simulation Description Language, and then Sapphire 
because it isn't limited to either of those and I didn't like the 
acronym.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

Christopher James Huff wrote:

> Thats what CSDL (now Sapphire) was originally supposed to be, just a
> translator. The first name was CSDL, for C-like Scene Description
> Language, then C-like Simulation Description Language, and then Sapphire
> because it isn't limited to either of those and I didn't like the
> acronym.

http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/09/sapphire.html

-- 
Ken Tyler

Post a reply to this message

In article <3DB9E7FB.ECE938C3@pacbell.net>, Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet> 
wrote:

> http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/09/sapphire.html

Uh-oh...and I was pretty sure the name wasn't taken. I did find out 
about some kind of audio editing/generating tool called Sapphire, but it 
seemed unrelated enough to not matter. This seems to be a specific 
implementation of the Perl API instead of a language...any opinions?

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

Kids these days...5.5?  That's kinda late.  I've still got a
copy of version 2 around here somewhere - probably on 5 1/4" floppy.
That's ONE floppy mind you.

And, yes, I had a raytracer I wrote in it too...
Still have it! Originally ran it on a 8Mhz 286.  One scene I gen'd
had 48 glass triangles and took over 80 hours to render at 320x200
on a 20Mhz 386. (Compaq 386 20E)

Guess I'm showing my age...;)

Emory

ABX wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 25 Oct 2002 17:08:09 +0100, "Andrew Coppin" <orp### [at] btinternetcom>
> wrote:
> > Yes, I ment *my* original. And actually, it's just occurred to me - the
> > *very* _first_ prototype of it was actually done with Borland's Turbo Pascal
> > 5.5 for DOS. (Anyone remember that ol' thing?)
> 
> I don't remember version but that was my first tool for renderings too.
> 
> ABX

Post a reply to this message

Keep the name. It's cool, and there must be hundreds of projects with the
same names.

--
Anthony

Post a reply to this message

>>http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/09/sapphire.html
>>
> 
> Uh-oh...and I was pretty sure the name wasn't taken. I did find out 
> about some kind of audio editing/generating tool called Sapphire, but it 
> seemed unrelated enough to not matter. This seems to be a specific 
> implementation of the Perl API instead of a language...any opinions?
> 


It seems like most common stones have already been used.
You can check http://www.astrogallery.com to see if you can find some 
stone name that hasn't been used for a language project yet.

How about "Schorl"? It doesn't sound like something that is likely to 
have been used :)

/Ib

Post a reply to this message

In article <3DB### [at] ibrasdk>, Ib Rasmussen <ib### [at] ibrasdk> 
wrote:

> It seems like most common stones have already been used.

By languages?


> How about "Schorl"? It doesn't sound like something that is likely to 
> have been used :)

Eh, no thanks.
If this other "Sapphire" is too close, maybe I'll rename it after a 
metal...Copper, Iron, Cobalt. Lithium might be a good choice for one of 
the "esoteric" languages. Carbon is already used for a common API, 
Mercury is probably taken. Or just a substance: Glass (maybe for my VR 
simulator). Or maybe a scientific/math constant:
C already exists of course...speed of light in a vacuum.
Pi is obvious.
E
Maybe "V" instead of "G" for my second language, it is going to have 
very good support for vector math. (it already fully supports 3D 
vectors, it will eventually support vectors of any size)

Maybe "mongoose". (they kill snakes)

Maybe I should make 4 languages named after the 4 elements: earth, air, 
fire, and water.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

Hmm. Come to think about it, there are pretty good candidates amongst star 
names. These are from the apparent brightness Top 20 list:

 Vega, Capella, Rigel, Procyon, Agena, Altair, Acrux, Spica, Antares,  
 Deneb, Mimosa...

Or constellations:

 Carina, Lyra, Aquila, Crux...

Or perhaps asteroids (most of these, as well as the names of other 
planetary bodies in the Sol system, come from Greek or Roman 
mytology):

 Ceres, Pallas, Vesta, Hygeia, Juno...

Or maybe a single Greek letter:

 Zeta, Eta, Lambda, Mu, Xi, Rho, Tau, Phi...

-Johannes

Post a reply to this message

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


> Maybe I should make 4 languages named after the 4 elements: earth, air,
> fire, and water.

   Just call it 'Element'

     ~Steve~


>
> --
> Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
> POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
> http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

In article <3dbb13cc@news.povray.org>,
 Johannes Dahlstrom <sad### [at] tkukoulufi> wrote:

>  Vega, Capella, Rigel, Procyon, Agena, Altair, Acrux, Spica, Antares,  
>  Deneb, Mimosa...
>  Carina, Lyra, Aquila, Crux...
>  Ceres, Pallas, Vesta, Hygeia, Juno...

I actually considered an astronomical body...you have a better list than 
mine.


> Or maybe a single Greek letter:
>  Zeta, Eta, Lambda, Mu, Xi, Rho, Tau, Phi...

Mu is also Chinese for "nothing", if I remember right...I'll use that 
for my mind-reading compiler.
Aleph would also be good, the only thing close is the open source game 
AlephOne.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

St. wrote:

>> Maybe I should make 4 languages named after the 4 elements: earth, air,
>> fire, and water.
> 
>    Just call it 'Element'

...or "LMN-t" (= "El-em-en-t") ;)

-- 
Ignacio Fernández Galván
Linux User #289967 (counter.li.org)
PGP Pub Key ID: 0x01A95F99 (pgp.escomplinux.org)

Post a reply to this message

> >> Maybe I should make 4 languages named after the 4 elements: earth, air,
> >> fire, and water.
> >
> >    Just call it 'Element'
>
> ...or "LMN-t" (= "El-em-en-t") ;)

Oooo, cleaver 8^D

Post a reply to this message

"Jellby" <jel### [at] M-yahoocom> wrote in message
news:3dbbb61e$1@news.povray.org...
> St. wrote:
>
> >> Maybe I should make 4 languages named after the 4 elements: earth, air,
> >> fire, and water.
> >
> >    Just call it 'Element'
>
> ...or "LMN-t" (= "El-em-en-t") ;)

        Nice! I like that better!  :)

      ~Steve~


>
> --
> Ignacio Fernández Galván
> Linux User #289967 (counter.li.org)
> PGP Pub Key ID: 0x01A95F99 (pgp.escomplinux.org)

Post a reply to this message

Christopher James Huff wrote:
> 
> In article <3DB9E7FB.ECE938C3@pacbell.net>, Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet>
> wrote:
> 
> > http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2000/09/sapphire.html
> 
> Uh-oh...and I was pretty sure the name wasn't taken.

I didn't mean to start a renaming contest. After a thorough read of that
page it looks like the guy did that programming over 2 years ago and it
was done mainly as an exersize rather than as practical end use product.
Were I you I would try to contact the guy who wrote the perl Sapphire routine
and ask if he minds you using the name. Personnaly I kinda like the name
Sapphire, and no offense to those who have offered alternatives, I still
like it the best.

-- 
Ken Tyler

Post a reply to this message

Andrew Coppin wrote:

>> >> Maybe I should make 4 languages named after the 4 elements: earth,
>> >> air, fire, and water.
>> >
>> >    Just call it 'Element'
>>
>> ...or "LMN-t" (= "El-em-en-t") ;)
> 
> Oooo, cleaver 8^D

Not really, it's one of the hypotheses for the origin of the word "element". 
From www.dictionary.com:

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin elementum, perhaps ultimately 
from lmn, first three letters of the second half of the Canaanite alphabet, 
recited by ancient scribes when learning it.]

;)

-- 
Ignacio Fernández Galván
Linux User #289967 (counter.li.org)
PGP Pub Key ID: 0x01A95F99 (pgp.escomplinux.org)

Post a reply to this message

In article <3DBC159E.A377DA7F@pacbell.net>, Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet> 
wrote:

> Were I you I would try to contact the guy who wrote the perl Sapphire routine
> and ask if he minds you using the name. Personnaly I kinda like the name
> Sapphire, and no offense to those who have offered alternatives, I still
> like it the best.

Took me a while to get around to it, but I contacted him and he has no 
problem with my using the name Sapphire.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message

Christopher James Huff wrote:

> Took me a while to get around to it, but I contacted him and he has no
> problem with my using the name Sapphire.

A happy ending.

-- 
Ken Tyler

Post a reply to this message