Am 31.10.2016 um 00:16 schrieb [GDS|Entropy] in povray.advanced-users:

> I was wondering (hoping) that I could pay someone to add Glows to UberPov,
> and include enough implementation info via comments or whatever that
> whoever in the future could easily forward this to the next version when 4
> comes out. If you are interested Clipka, even better. ;-)

I've just noticed to my surprise that you're apparently not the guy who
had requested the very same MegaPOV feature just a few weeks ago on the
povray.macintosh newsgroup, so I've decided to use this occasion for a
shameless plug or two:


While I love working on POV-Ray and UberPOV as a hobby, and will quite
certainly continue to do so no matter what I get out of it, I'm not
above taking donations that allow me to spend more time on this hobby --
nor am I above taking bribes to prioritize my ToDo list.

So to anyone wishing to back up Ian's (aka GDS|Entropy) motion to get
the MegaPOV "glow" feature implemented in UberPOV ASAP, feel free to
place a bounty on the corresponding GitHub issue via Bountysource:

https://www.bountysource.com/issues/38809617-port-megapov-s-glow-feature-to-uberpov


In related news, anyone inclined to send some round tuits my way for
general POV-Ray and UberPOV development is happily invited to take a
look at https://salt.bountysource.com/teams/uberpov.

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On 2016-10-31 10:38:46 +0000, clipka said:

> Am 31.10.2016 um 00:16 schrieb [GDS|Entropy] in povray.advanced-users:
> 
>> I was wondering (hoping) that I could pay someone to add Glows to UberPov,
>> and include enough implementation info via comments or whatever that
>> whoever in the future could easily forward this to the next version when 4
>> comes out. If you are interested Clipka, even better. ;-)
> 
> I've just noticed to my surprise that you're apparently not the guy who
> had requested the very same MegaPOV feature just a few weeks ago on the
> povray.macintosh newsgroup, so I've decided to use this occasion for a
> shameless plug or two:
> 
> 
> While I love working on POV-Ray and UberPOV as a hobby, and will quite
> certainly continue to do so no matter what I get out of it, I'm not
> above taking donations that allow me to spend more time on this hobby --
> nor am I above taking bribes to prioritize my ToDo list.
> 
> So to anyone wishing to back up Ian's (aka GDS|Entropy) motion to get
> the MegaPOV "glow" feature implemented in UberPOV ASAP, feel free to
> place a bounty on the corresponding GitHub issue via Bountysource:
> 
> https://www.bountysource.com/issues/38809617-port-megapov-s-glow-feature-to-uberpov 
> 
> 
> 
> In related news, anyone inclined to send some round tuits my way for
> general POV-Ray and UberPOV development is happily invited to take a
> look at https://salt.bountysource.com/teams/uberpov.

I had a few requests about the glow patch.
It is one of the most wanted patches from MegaPOV, the current patch 
was unfinished if I remember well.
But it seemed to be useful for a lot of users.

Yvo

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


POV-Ray 3.7 unofficial: http://megapov.inetart.net/povrayunofficial_mac/
UberPOV Mac: http://megapov.inetart.net/uberpov_mac/index.html#Mac
MegaPOV: http://megapov.inetart.net
E-mail: yvo(DOT)s(AT)gmx.net

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For everyones general information, I think bounties like this are a great
way not only to get new features, but most especially to say "thanks" to
the folks who put in work making PovRay what it is.

I am very excited for the opportunities this opens up for everyone.

Once this feature is in I want to look at true displacement, which will be
a ton of work and I won't be able to fund it alone. I think TD would buy a
lot for both the package and the community as a whole.

There was at least one PovRay modification that supported  true
displacement, but the way it was accomplished was to make Pov conform to
some degree with the Renderman SL standard, and if I recall correctly it
broke entirely with the way pov handles materials (not the pov term, but
general).

It is dead but the source lives on courtesy of Archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090103185310/http://www.aetec.ee/fv/vkhomep.nsf/pages/povman2

Povman is based on MP 1.1, and Vahur Krouverk was the author.

Obviously we would want to keep the way pov handles materials in SDL, but
also allow true displacement as seen in Renderman. I don't know what this
would entail specifically but I would feel safe betting it would be
nontrivial work.

I am not advocating full RM spec compliance, only hijacking the
displacement code from PovMan in some form, preferably without having to
use a shader compiler.

I would like to know how many folks would like to see true displacement
ported over because like I said I can't fund that one alone (at least not
in a single shot).

If there isn't much interest (which frankly would shock me) then it
wouldn't even be worth trying to size the work...but conversely if the
interest is great, then there may be some merit at least in investigation
of the idea.

Other things which might be useful:

- OpenCL/GPU. This has been talked to death but because of the complexity
perhaps a large enough bounty would be sufficiently motivating and provide
a good ROI for the team.

- A reasonable alternative to GPU raytracing is "progressive raytracing", a
quick google search even gets you articles stating that this is far less
complex to do than GPU but is much faster than normal RT and is advocated
as either an alternative to GPU RT or an intermediate point between normal
RT and a GPU implementation.

- Ability to "scan" objects into a distance based resolution adaptive mesh
instead of rendering the object as normal, which might speed up render. (I
know marching triangles macros exist, would an internal implementation be
faster?)

- Navier-Stokes flow, compressible and incompressible implemented as a
primitive. So if you place the primitive in a hollow hemisphere it would
naturally fill it, or if you put it in a HF valley with rocks and such it
would fill it to the Y position of the primitive and "flow" around the
rocks, making eddies and ripples and such. Flow direction would be a
vector, fluid would naturally fill whatever was around it as well.

- Enhancements to volumetric rendering, so media behaves
consistently/predictably regardless of container volume and/or scale. Right
now making a good looking variable density fog or cloud can get a bit weird
and it is difficult to predict the outcome of any given input. Having some
kind of distance based resolution may enhance speed as well. Perhaps the
volumetric rendering task can be sent to the GPU alone. 

- Implement a plugin based architecture for pov, so new features could be
added without having to rework the whole application each time. I have
solved many problems using plugin based architecture, and am quite a fan of
it. If done correctly this might allow Pov to get more features faster, but
would take a lot of work to do initially.

Ian

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Am 01.11.2016 um 09:38 schrieb [GDS|Enropy]:

> Once this feature is in I want to look at true displacement, which will be
> a ton of work and I won't be able to fund it alone. I think TD would buy a
> lot for both the package and the community as a whole.
> 
> There was at least one PovRay modification that supported  true
> displacement, but the way it was accomplished was to make Pov conform to
> some degree with the Renderman SL standard, and if I recall correctly it
> broke entirely with the way pov handles materials (not the pov term, but
> general).
> 
> It is dead but the source lives on courtesy of Archive.org:
>
https://web.archive.org/web/20090103185310/http://www.aetec.ee/fv/vkhomep.nsf/pages/povman2

From what I can see in that project's documentation, it only implemented
surface shaders, not displacement shaders.

Support for true displacement is extremely hard to implement for
arbitrary primitives. Probably the only reasonable way to get there is
via tesselation, i.e. converting arbitrary geometry into meshes.

Parallax mapping might be a reasonably good alternative for various use
cases.


> - A reasonable alternative to GPU raytracing is "progressive raytracing", a
> quick google search even gets you articles stating that this is far less
> complex to do than GPU but is much faster than normal RT and is advocated
> as either an alternative to GPU RT or an intermediate point between normal
> RT and a GPU implementation.

Progressive tracing should be easy enough to implement once the internal
architecture has been sufficiently cleaned up. MCPov had it, and it's
firmy on the ToDo list for UberPOV.

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On 1-11-2016 9:38, [GDS|Enropy] wrote:
> For everyones general information, I think bounties like this are a great
> way not only to get new features, but most especially to say "thanks" to
> the folks who put in work making PovRay what it is.
>

[Devils Advocate]

Yes, but...

Consider: (1) One day = 24 hours; (2) Number of people working on 
POV-Ray << infinity; (3) Highest bid gets development priority; (4) 
Regular POV-Ray development will slow down / be put on hold for lack of 
manpower/womanpower.

Possible/likely scenario?

[/devils Advocate]

-- 
Thomas

Post a reply to this message

Wow no comments huh? Lol... I thought someone would have something to say
at least.

This just motivates me more to personally take out strategic bounties for
stuff that might make Pov more attractive as a 3rd party rendering plugin
at the least...whatever it takes to keep it alive...it looks like our
community is in trouble...not nearly as active as the early 90s...not much
new blood, not much new in the way of IDE/Modelers...

Im going to need to think about what to offer payment for.
I am not rich but I am willing to do my part in thanks to those whose
efforts have given us all, freely, what I feel is one of the most
interesting, useful and beautiful rendering packages out there.

Maybe a gofundme or patreon page for pov would stimulate dev work and
attract new devs, and with certain features maybe attract new users.

I have seen a huge drop off in activity over the decades and want to affect
change. Bounties is the best answer I have come up with so far. For me
Glows are just the start. I am going to invest in this, by damn.

Pov **cannot** be allowed to slowly wither; it is responsible for my entire
23yr career in software engineering (I'm now a VP), my meeting my wife (in
art appreciation class due to death-metal, a presentation on Gilles Tran
Pov work, and a scene I made in Pov) and supporting my family (because Pov
taught me to code)...I *owe* Pov and team...

Who else feels this way?
How has Pov changed your life?
Has it introduced you to programming, helped you visualize your thesis, got
you into a career in 3d art, or what?

I cannot be the only one for whom Pov has opened professional, artistic and
intellectual doors.

Ian

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On 3-11-2016 17:30, [GDS|Enropy] wrote:
> Wow no comments huh? Lol... I thought someone would have something to say
> at least.

Well, my answer as Devil's Advocate above was not considered to be 
trivial to me :-) as I raise a practical as well as a moral issue, all 
good faith intentions being acknowledged of course.

>
> This just motivates me more to personally take out strategic bounties for
> stuff that might make Pov more attractive as a 3rd party rendering plugin
> at the least...whatever it takes to keep it alive...it looks like our
> community is in trouble...not nearly as active as the early 90s...not much
> new blood, not much new in the way of IDE/Modelers...

Why is our community in trouble? It seems to me that over the last 
couple of years at least there has been quite a lot of activity by our 
respected POV-Ray developers.

>
> Im going to need to think about what to offer payment for.
> I am not rich but I am willing to do my part in thanks to those whose
> efforts have given us all, freely, what I feel is one of the most
> interesting, useful and beautiful rendering packages out there.
>
> Maybe a gofundme or patreon page for pov would stimulate dev work and
> attract new devs, and with certain features maybe attract new users.

Maybe...

>
> I have seen a huge drop off in activity over the decades and want to affect
> change. Bounties is the best answer I have come up with so far. For me
> Glows are just the start. I am going to invest in this, by damn.

There has been a drop of activity, mainly on the users side, with the 
old guard turning away to other activities for instance but maybe also 
because of age. Maybe that was due to the state-of-the-art of POV-Ray, 
maybe not; I seem to remember some discussion about this in the past. 
However, there has also been some new additions to the community, and I 
think that - coming out of the "experimental" (?) stage - images have 
become more complex/involved and/or needing more time and thought to be 
composed. It certainly has evolved for me like that. And talking of age, 
my own POV-Ray production is slowly dwindling over the years and that is 
largely due to those same years accumulating on my shoulders. At 
seventy, I am not as productive any more as I was twenty years ago.

>
> Pov **cannot** be allowed to slowly wither; it is responsible for my entire
> 23yr career in software engineering (I'm now a VP), my meeting my wife (in
> art appreciation class due to death-metal, a presentation on Gilles Tran
> Pov work, and a scene I made in Pov) and supporting my family (because Pov
> taught me to code)...I *owe* Pov and team...

Again, I am not convinced personally that POV-Ray "slowly withers" but I 
would like to hear other opinions on that.

>
> Who else feels this way?
> How has Pov changed your life?
> Has it introduced you to programming, helped you visualize your thesis, got
> you into a career in 3d art, or what?
>
> I cannot be the only one for whom Pov has opened professional, artistic and
> intellectual doors.

To me it has opened several artistic doors as it gave me the possibility 
to express almost perfectly what I dream about.

>
> Ian
>


-- 
Thomas

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clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> 
> From what I can see in that project's documentation, it only implemented
> surface shaders, not displacement shaders.
> 
> Support for true displacement is extremely hard to implement for
> arbitrary primitives. Probably the only reasonable way to get there is
> via tesselation, i.e. converting arbitrary geometry into meshes.
> 
> Parallax mapping might be a reasonably good alternative for various use
> cases.
> 

Ah, that's my luck.

I have seen some macros that allow some form of surface deformation, and
then the deformations from pigment patterns I have seen folks use seem
nice, but my goal would be something altogether more powerful and more
fully fleshed out, while occurring internally instead of by macro. 

Any reasonable progress in that direction I would be happy to add my
patronage to. I am a huge fan of true displacement. :)

> 
> Progressive tracing should be easy enough to implement once the internal
> architecture has been sufficiently cleaned up. MCPov had it, and it's
> firmy on the ToDo list for UberPOV.
> 

This is a good sign then, and perhaps due to it already being on the list
and having a source backing somewhat in place would serve to move this up
the list.

Im going to check out the other posts I missed due to nit being subbed to
this group previously, then collect what I have from those and see if we
can get some kind of rather short (less than 5 items) that are reasonable,
sizable, and that we can take and move forward on with coming up with some
first stab at with building some kind of system to go forward with.

Ian

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I concur in some respects, though keep in mind things for which they might
be willing to accept bounties is obviously completely under the control of
those actually doing the work.

I am not going to argue with them or push them. I will state my case, see
if there is any interest or takers, and go from there.

No one is forcing them to do anything, and at least initially the goal is
low hanging fruit, with discussion around bigger items to see what interest
is for both devs and users, and ultimately the devs calling the shots.

My goal is to both reward he devs and to enable things to be done which
otherwise might not be possible. They spend their time doing this work, and
if a bounty is sufficient to offset some of the personal cost from this, I
am happy to support.

As far as highest bid getting the work, well that is free market economy
for you. ;-) if someone is willing to pay then they obviously care enough
about that feature to trade their money for it, which is a completely valid
exchange.

I am not proposing small bounties either. I advocate serious bounties only;
fair ones, and if a dev and patron agree on a reasonable price for a
reasonable thing, more is the benefit for us all, as even those who did not
or could not pay benefit, and the devs get tangible rewards beyond a warm
fuzzy feeling. :)

I think though if this did take off and folks saw there is money here, it
could increase the number of devs.

On a personal note, any bounty I pay will also have a donation to the Pov
Team/org as a whole if such a thing is possible. Do they have a Patreon
page or something? I want to make sure the whole org benefits.

Maybe in future bounties there could be a % to implementing dev (the
negotiated bounty) with a fixed percent *on top of that* which goes to the
pov org overall.

Ian

Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> [Devils Advocate]
> 
> Yes, but...
> 
> Consider: (1) One day = 24 hours; (2) Number of people working on 
> POV-Ray << infinity; (3) Highest bid gets development priority; (4) 
> Regular POV-Ray development will slow down / be put on hold for lack of 
> manpower/womanpower.
> 
> Possible/likely scenario?
> 
> [/devils Advocate]
>

Post a reply to this message

My apologies man, I didn't know the posts were going here as my reader (iOS
NewsTap) was not subbed to this group, I intended no disrespect. :)

Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> Why is our community in trouble? It seems to me that over the last 
> couple of years at least there has been quite a lot of activity by our 
> respected POV-Ray developers.
> 

Beyond the google trends result that the searches for pov have decreased
100x since 2004, I am considering the volume of posts, new/extant pages
about pov or with pov content, places I see Pov mentioned around the web,
etc compared to the same from around lets say, 1994-1998 or so.

There were once numerous Pov webrings, many new folks coming through all
the time, loads of IRC activity, all kinds of unofficial patches,
specifically pov supporting shareware...substantially all of that
has...ebbed. :'-(

Us old guys and the badasses writing the code are all that is left it
seems. I have seen a lot go away over the last twenty something years.

> 
> Maybe...
> 

Anything that we can do which would drive more people to use Pov I am down
for, and I think that will be achieved through having certain (I don't have
a list) features combined with the quality of render, speed and one of the
most important things....having plugins for commonly used modeling packages
that interop with PovRay.

Getting textures from app A to render in pov...thats one hellova sticky
bit. Interop is a big, difficult thing, but ultimately you see that the
fastest growing renderers grow precisely because of the properties I listed
above.

If I am missing anything let me know.

> 
> There has been a drop of activity, mainly on the users side, with the 
> old guard turning away to other activities for instance but maybe also 
> because of age. Maybe that was due to the state-of-the-art of POV-Ray, 
> maybe not; I seem to remember some discussion about this in the past. 
> However, there has also been some new additions to the community, and I 
> think that - coming out of the "experimental" (?) stage - images have 
> become more complex/involved and/or needing more time and thought to be 
> composed. It certainly has evolved for me like that. And talking of age, 
> my own POV-Ray production is slowly dwindling over the years and that is 
> largely due to those same years accumulating on my shoulders. At 
> seventy, I am not as productive any more as I was twenty years ago.
> 

I am merely 35 (for the next few weeks lol), but I look back fondly on my
time with this community. Pov has a place, and as long as we can
strategically select and implement certain things that we know directly
influence render package adoption, as evidenced by many out there, Pov will
live.

Pov was formed under a different precept that governs recent packages,
primarily this has been discussed above already but put simply it comes
down to speed, quality and interoperability.

Pov largely has the quality, it can have the speed, and it needs the
interoperability. It has a feature set that is just awesome, and if we can
get the speed and interop part down, and get the word out, I think we will
be golden.

> 
> Again, I am not convinced personally that POV-Ray "slowly withers" but I 
> would like to hear other opinions on that.
> 

If you do not think so, go to Google trends, type in pov-ray, select from
2004 until today.

Its dire, man, dire.

It has decreased 100x.

> To me it has opened several artistic doors as it gave me the possibility 
> to express almost perfectly what I dream about.
> 

The worlds you make are pretty dang cool man. :)

Ian

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