Sometime ago, a friend of mine sent me several rather good renders of his,
and I was quite impressed. I asked him where I should start if I wanted to
do 3d rendering etc. Excuse me for the lack of correct vocab here... I'll
get used to it soon, I hope.

Anyways, he said for me to try POV-Ray to begin with, and here I am! This is
my first time having anything to do with "3d", and could use all the help I
can get.

I know this is a broad request, but well, I don't really know enough to ask
about specifics am I?

P.S. I haven't finished the manual, rather, it's 2AM in the morning and I'm
on the first chapter... *yawn*

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On Fri, 12 Jul 2002 02:06:24 -0700, "Chen Lin" <lin### [at] ivwnetcom> wrote:
> Anyways, he said for me to try POV-Ray to begin with

It was wrong advise. You should begin with POV-Ray and _stay_ with it ;). It
is great in POV-Ray that it fits needs of beginner and of advanced-user as
well. Take a look at http://www.oyonale.com/ for example.

> and here I am! 

Welcome!

ABX

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"Chen Lin" <lin### [at] ivwnetcom> wrote in message
news:3d2e9ae9@news.povray.org...

Hi Chen,

And welcome to the POV community.

Personally, I would jump straight to the "Beginning Tutorial" section and start
working through that (and don't just read it - start trying out the code in
POV).

You don't say which OS you're on, but I'm assuming Windows (since you used OE
for posting). Depending on when you downloaded POV, please note that a new
version has just been released a couple of days ago (version 3.5). If you are
using an earlier version of POV, I would suggest that you upgrade to the latest
version instead.

About the most complex thing you will come across as a beginner is understanding
the co-ordinate system, and the effect of transformations (scaling, rotating and
translating) - e.g. why rotating and then translating an object is different
from translating and then rotating an object (the main trick to getting the hang
of this is to throw out any idea of objects having a defined centre NOW!).

 Check out the faqs, and don't hesitate to post any questions here if you run
into problems.

You might be tempted/interested in trying out Moray, a gui modeller for POV.
However, although it can help beginners to produce more complex scenes than they
would otherwise manage, it can hold you back in the long run. The URL is
http://www.stmuc.com/moray/

BTW There is a long standing tradition that the first render you should attempt
should be a mirrored sphere hovering over a checkered plane - have fun!

Post a reply to this message

Chen Lin wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> I know this is a broad request, but well, I don't really know enough to ask
> about specifics am I?

The beginning tutorial from the documentation is a good point to start,
especially if you don't have prior 3d experience.  In this case i would
also advise against using a graphical modeller, it won't make
understanding the basics any easier.

Apart from that i would also suggest a good math book with emphasis on
geometry.  This is especially important if you did not have much
mathematics at school or this already has been some time ago.

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, IsoWood include,                 
TransSkin and more: http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/  
Last updated 30 Jun. 2002 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______

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"Christoph Hormann" <chr### [at] gmxde> wrote in message
news:3D2EE830.251D38FD@gmx.de...

> Apart from that i would also suggest a good math book with emphasis on
> geometry.  This is especially important if you did not have much
> mathematics at school or this already has been some time ago.

Why didn't you just put on a big scary mask and jump out at Chen from behind a
bush or something? ;)

Post a reply to this message

Tom Melly wrote:
> 
> Why didn't you just put on a big scary mask and jump out at Chen from behind a
> bush or something? ;)

I didn't advise him to study 5 years mathematics and then come back, did
I?

Seriously, some math is important to work with POV-Ray, at least the very
basics and some trigonometry.  And you don't even have to know all things,
you just have to know where to look them up, that's why i suggested a
book.

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, IsoWood include,                 
TransSkin and more: http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/  
Last updated 30 Jun. 2002 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______

Post a reply to this message

> Seriously, some math is important to work with POV-Ray, at least the very
> basics and some trigonometry.  And you don't even have to know all things,
> you just have to know where to look them up, that's why i suggested a
> book.

I agree here.  It helps to be uble to understand 3d geometry to work through
POV.  I think this is also why it is very important to get a good handle of
the POV SDL before trying any 3rd party modeller like Moray.

-tgq

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"TinCanMan" <Tin### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message
news:3d2efa8b@news.povray.org...
> > Seriously, some math is important to work with POV-Ray, at least the
very
> > basics and some trigonometry.  And you don't even have to know all
things,
> > you just have to know where to look them up, that's why i suggested a
> > book.
>
> I agree here.  It helps to be uble to understand 3d geometry to work
through
> POV.  I think this is also why it is very important to get a good handle
of
> the POV SDL before trying any 3rd party modeller like Moray.

Just addenduming (?) here.

You also don't need a coloringbook if you have the crayons already. A person
can play plenty with POV-Ray (personal experience) and not go into much
detail about how things work in it.

All that's needed is the list of keywords and the basics about how to fill
in the blanks. Although I must also agree that to grasp the concept beyond
the simplist things a person needs some understanding of how it all works to
build up a technical skill with it. Notice I said technical.

If it were not for my interest in just the "xyz" of computer graphics I'd be
still be nowhere, I think. I almost failed geometry in school. I believe you
can learn a lot by doing. Speaking of the geometry class... I was lost in
that realm of 2D textbook pages where everything was essentially about 3D
instead. Or maybe I was simply lost  ;-)

bob h

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> BTW There is a long standing tradition that the first render you should
> attempt should be a mirrored sphere hovering over a checkered plane -
> have fun!
 
I'm new to 3d as well, but I do rember trying a 3d prog on my amiga 500
back in 1990, and yes, proud to say I did the mirror ball thing.

I gave up on 3d pretty quick, it was a pain waiting over night, getting
up and looking at the screen top see it was only half done.  

The joys of an 8mhz cpu and 1 meg of ram :o)

Any way, can some one please explain the following to me?  The two values
on each line bit, I cant reem to find it in teh docs, but there are
examples of one colour on each line.

color_map
{[0.000, 0.154   color rgbt <0.894, 0.886, 0.886, 0.000>
		color rgbt <0.745, 0.745, 0.753, 0.000>]
[0.154, 0.308   color rgbt <0.745, 0.745, 0.753, 0.000>
		color rgbt <0.902, 0.902, 0.859, 0.000>]
[0.308, 0.444   color rgbt <0.902, 0.902, 0.859, 0.000>
		color rgbt <0.729, 0.706, 0.694, 0.000>]
[0.444, 0.615   color rgbt <0.729, 0.706, 0.694, 0.000>
		color rgbt <0.588, 0.592, 0.635, 0.000>]
[0.615, 0.803   color rgbt <0.588, 0.592, 0.635, 0.000>
		color rgbt <0.608, 0.616, 0.659, 0.000>]
[0.803, 1.001   color rgbt <0.608, 0.616, 0.659, 0.000>
		color rgbt <0.894, 0.886, 0.886, 0.000>]
}

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In article <3d31eb56@news.povray.org>,
 Rob Brown-Bayliss <rob### [at] zoismorg> wrote:

> Any way, can some one please explain the following to me?  The two values
> on each line bit, I cant reem to find it in teh docs, but there are
> examples of one colour on each line.

That is just the old version of the blend map syntax, it's been kept 
around for backwards compatibility. This:

[0.0 color Red]
[0.5 color Green]
[1.0 color Blue]

would be something like:

[0.0, 0.5 color Red, color Green]
[0.5, 1.0 color Green, color Blue]

-- 
Christopher James Huff <chr### [at] maccom>
POV-Ray TAG e-mail: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
TAG web site: http://tag.povray.org/

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