Gilles said in the other thread that povray was not suitable for the
production workflow of a movie studio.

I guess I don't understand.  Couldn't you simply code-up a situation that
would be suitable?  For example, in my animations right now, I have separate
include files for each character's motion, texturing, and physical
construction.   Couldn't I hire two character animators to work on the
movement of each character in a scene,  a 3D'er to do the texturing of
costumes, and a modeller to build each character,  another to work on the
set and its lighting.   At the end of every day, I collect the latest draft
of the *.INC files they've been assigned to work on, and do a 320x240 render
overnight.   On weekends, I might do a fullscreen render.    That's sort of
how I do it now, 'cept there's one employee working on non-cash contests.

Post a reply to this message

news:3fe3c4b0@news.povray.org...
>
> I guess I don't understand.  Couldn't you simply code-up a situation that
> would be suitable?

In short: POV-Ray doesn't "talk" natively to other products.
1) Your modelers, animators, texturers won't be able to have their fine work
correctly and fluently translated in POV-Ray. For instance:
- models will have to be exported as polygon meshes, losing for example
NURBS information. In fact, in my experience, even translation from external
geometry to POV-Ray mesh is far from streamlined.
- shaders will have to be translated into POV-Ray materials, something that
is presently possible only for a limited subset of them.
- more generally, no development platform (where everything is put together
for rendering) can "feed" directly its data to POV-Ray so you're going lose
a lot in the translation process, including time and money.
2) Your post-process and special effects people won't be able to work on the
rendered movie because POV-Ray's output is "flat" and doesn't have separate
layers that can be processed and tweaked independently, for instance in
Adobe After Effects.
These are just examples: there are many other issues to consider such as
rendering speed, availability of POV-savvy graphic artists, tech support
etc.
Surely, POV-Ray can be morphed, through heavy coding, into something
suitable for a particular project. Some people have done this for scientific
purpose IIRC. In fact, it is already suitable for a vast number of
non-hobbyist projects (see my other post) and POV-Ray has de facto its own
niche market. However, given the vast choice of production-ready renderers
out there, there's no much point in using POV-Ray for this particular job in
a commercial environment. POV-Ray-made animations and the IMP project are,
of course, extremely cool, but this is not what we're talking about here.

G.

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

Post a reply to this message

"Gilles Tran" <gitran_nospam_@wanadoo.fr> wrote in
news:3fe42e50$1@news.povray.org: 


> POV-Ray-made animations and the IMP project are, of course, extremely
> cool, but this is not what we're talking about here. 
> 

That's because they are for fun, and don't have deadlines.  Every 
professional that I talk to, is always talking about the ever shortening 
turnaround times for productions(IMHO, Art shouldn't give you ulcers).  If 
you need it quick, POV-Ray is not the answer.


-- 
Tom
_________________________________
The Internet Movie Project
http://www.imp.org/

Post a reply to this message

> If  you need it quick, POV-Ray is not the answer.

That's probably true. But I think, that I learn more by working with
POV-Ray. I learn things, that I probably wouldn't learn if I was hired by a
company to make something as fast as possible. Many such people are
excellent artists that can draw by hand. But they aren't technical geniuses.
There seems to be an endless amount of scientific information that I find
extremely interesting (except when it requires a high skill in math). It
isn't necessary information from an artistic point of view, but I do think
it helps. I always prefer to take control of every aspect of a scene,
instead of leaving it to an automated, predefined process that I don't
understand.

Regards,
Hugo

Post a reply to this message

"Hugo Asm" <hua### [at] post3teledk> wrote in
news:3fe47505$1@news.povray.org: 

> That's probably true. But I think, that I learn more by working with
> POV-Ray. I learn things, that I probably wouldn't learn if I was hired
> by a company to make something as fast as possible. 

You are preaching to the choir ;)


> Many such people are excellent artists that can draw by hand. But
> they aren't technical geniuses. 
> 

Many(but not most) of the folks in the "industry" that I have met were an 
interesting blend of artistic and technical.  Where they fit into the 
production pipeline determines the skillsets they need.  Take a look at 
three current openings at Blue Sky Studios to see what I mean.

http://www.blueskystudios.com/jobs/ads/rnd.html
http://www.blueskystudios.com/jobs/ads/td_lighting.html
http://www.blueskystudios.com/jobs/ads/character_animator.html

The decision criteria of what tool to use is ultimately economic.  What 
is the return on investment? Maya, Adobe, Avid and others are pervasive 
because they reduce production costs, and often provide a competitive 
edge in product quality.  Simple as that.  In most cases, POV-Ray would 
be a very expensive tool to use.







-- 
Tom
_________________________________
The Internet Movie Project
http://www.imp.org/

Post a reply to this message

POV has its strengths and weaknesses. One of POV's strengths is that it is a
very good tool to use to learn about math, and programming. One of POV's
greatest weaknesses is that it doesnt export to other renderers or modelers.
When we learn POV, we must invest a lot of time and energy into learning the
program. Once we learn the program, we can do some powerful and gratifying
things with it. However, currently, the things we make with POV can only be
rendered with the POV raytracer. I think there may be many POV users out
there who would like to take the investment of time and energy that they
made in learning POV, and use it to make or help make large or important
projects, such as commercial movies, scientific documentaries, etc. In order
to do this, I believe that POV must be able to export to commercial
rendering, modelling, and animation packages. For me, this would be one of
the most important wish list features for a new version of POV.


In the mean time, I have been experimenting with writing a set of POV
macros, which export a few basic shapes to .OBJ file format. Initial results
are encouraging. I submitted a drawing to the IRTC, where all the models
were made with POV macros, and the scene was rendered with my favorite
renderer, Vue d'Esprit 4.

If a new version of POV could export models, (and even textures), to other
renderers and modellers, this would open up POV to a much wider world of CG.
This might also make POV much more important and well known in the CG
community.
It would also be gratifying to those who struggle hard to learn POV, that
their knowledge of POV could be well used and appreciated by the wider CG
community.

Maybe this post would be more appropriate in another thread, but it seemed
relevant here also.


sinc.

Nathen Watson

Post a reply to this message

"Gilles Tran" <gitran_nospam_@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
news:3fe42e50$1@news.povray.org...
>
> In short: POV-Ray doesn't "talk" natively to other products.
> 1) Your modelers, animators, texturers won't be able to have
>  their fine work correctly and fluently translated in POV-Ray.
>

I suppose I was suffering from a myopia that if I have done some modelling
in povray blobs, everyone ought to be able to do it professionally. and a
blind optimism that one day someone will make a boning sytem for bicubic
patches that can be easily handled in povray.

> These are just examples: there are many other issues to consider
> such as rendering speed, availability of POV-savvy graphic artists,
> tech support etc.
>

So where's 4.0 headed?  Will the future development process for povray
simply involve introduction of new MegaPov features, or will it ever get to
a much faster rendering engine?  (Hey, I'm not disparaging its rendering
speed or demanding a feature request: I don't even know enough about the
engine to know whether a manyear of volunteer effort could make "povray" a
faster renderer.)

Post a reply to this message

> So where's 4.0 headed?  Will the future development process for povray
> simply involve introduction of new MegaPov features, or will it ever get
to
> a much faster rendering engine?  (Hey, I'm not disparaging its rendering
> speed or demanding a feature request: I don't even know enough about the
> engine to know whether a manyear of volunteer effort could make "povray" a
> faster renderer.)

What I've read on these groups so far seems to suggest that POV-Ray 4 will
be more flexible on the "modding" side, for example stuff like *real*
plug-ins, not just include-files. The new number shows that it'll be a
complete rewrite, and if I recall correctly, there were numerous times when
someone mentioned that the new texturing model in 4 might be completely
different from what we have today, to make room for a much more flexible
texturing. Making POV-Ray faster might be nice, though I don't really know
how that could be achieved. To me, it seems like the way things are done
right now are as efficient as they can get with this model (bounding boxes,
vista buffers, light buffers, etc), and I don't really expect a speed-up,
though maybe certain aspect might be made faster (media, isosurfaces, but I
don't know what I'm talking about here, I just know that they're slow most
of the time :-).
Notice though that I do not speak for the POV-Team and these are just my
thoughts and things I believe to remember, maybe I'm completely wrong (aside
the fact that 4 is a rewrite, duh! :-).

Anyways, I do think the POV-Team does lurk around and not only listen to
these newsgroups, but keep an eye on other software as well. And the ones
doing the programming are very likely the ones having discussions about what
to do with what feature, how to change it or if to leave it out for
something completely new. I trust their expertise and experience. As far as
I'm concerned: as long as POV-Ray is as stable as it is now, I can't
complain. Some guru will come along and add the next feature I need. :-)

Regards,
Tim

-- 
"Tim Nikias v2.0"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>
Email: tim.nikias (@) nolights.de

Post a reply to this message

In article <3fe4d404$1@news.povray.org>, "Greg M. Johnson" <gregj;-
)565### [at] aolcom> says...
> 
> "Gilles Tran" <gitran_nospam_@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
> news:3fe42e50$1@news.povray.org...
> >
> > In short: POV-Ray doesn't "talk" natively to other products.
> > 1) Your modelers, animators, texturers won't be able to have
> >  their fine work correctly and fluently translated in POV-Ray.
> >
> 
> I suppose I was suffering from a myopia that if I have done some modelling
> in povray blobs, everyone ought to be able to do it professionally. and a
> blind optimism that one day someone will make a boning sytem for bicubic
> patches that can be easily handled in povray.
> 
> > These are just examples: there are many other issues to consider
> > such as rendering speed, availability of POV-savvy graphic artists,
> > tech support etc.
> >
> 
> So where's 4.0 headed?  Will the future development process for povray
> simply involve introduction of new MegaPov features, or will it ever get to
> a much faster rendering engine?  (Hey, I'm not disparaging its rendering
> speed or demanding a feature request: I don't even know enough about the
> engine to know whether a manyear of volunteer effort could make "povray" a
> faster renderer.)
> 
> 
Someone is currently in the process of converting a patch to C (so it can 
be used in the current versions) that seems to have to potential to make 
*major*, lets repeat that, *major* speed increases with scenes that have 
large amounts of CSG. This would probably produce minimal speed ups for 
most scenes that only have a few dozen objects and minimal CSG, but for a 
large scale project it will make a lot of difference. One example is a 
project called POV-City. While I haven't heard much about it for a while, 
it would have used lots of user created SDLs to generate the layout of a 
city when viewed from various places. This would have been 100% certain 
to exceed the small number of CSG used in the average scene. Same with 
anything else that someone wanted to do which required any significant 
scale and number of objects.

There are bound to be additional speed improvements and things get 
cleaned up or better methods are found. A lot of fine tuning will still 
probably be done 'after' the first V4.0 design though, but it will almost 
certainly end up being faster right from the beginning.

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

Post a reply to this message

Tim Nikias v2.0 wrote:
> though maybe certain aspect might be made faster (media, isosurfaces, but I
> don't know what I'm talking about here, I just know that they're slow most
> of the time :-).

Well, with version 3.5, the adding of method 3 gives an enormous
speed and quality boost to media...^_^

Post a reply to this message