Hey, I'm pretty much just starting Povray.  I did a tiny bit with it a few
years ago.  What would be the best thing for me to do to get really good at
it.  Are there books that will help me or what do you people suggest?
Thanks

    - Matt

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Matt Harbers <gte### [at] prismgatechedu> wrote:
> What would be the best thing for me to do to get really good at
> it.  Are there books that will help me or what do you people suggest?

  Read the documentation. That's what I did (and I'm sure most povrayers did)
to learn to use the program.

-- 
#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 -

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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message news:3e81ae1f@news.povray.org...
> Matt Harbers <gte### [at] prismgatechedu> wrote:
> > What would be the best thing for me to do to get really good at
> > it.  Are there books that will help me or what do you people suggest?
>
>   Read the documentation. That's what I did (and I'm sure most povrayers did)
> to learn to use the program.
>

What Warp said. Also (since he's too modest), check out Warp's VFAQ at:
http://www.students.tut.fi/~warp/povQandT/

and, if you want to avoid my main error, make sure you understand how transforms
(scale, rotate, translate) work, particularily in reference to <0,0,0>

Other apparently required activities include:-

1. Post an image of a mirrored sphere hovering over a checkered plane. Ideally,
if its your first post, you should pick some humungous format such as BMP. Oh,
and don't forget to post it to a non-binary group. If you can multi-post it to
several non-binary groups, so much the better.

2. Get in a fight with ABX in .general

3. Get in a fight with BDW in .off-topic

4. Post a message to .general pointing out how crappy pov is, explaining you
could write a better program in your sleep if only you knew how to program.

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Tom Melly wrote:
> "Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message news:3e81ae1f@news.povray.org...
> 
>>Matt Harbers <gte### [at] prismgatechedu> wrote:
>>
>>>What would be the best thing for me to do to get really good at
>>>it.  Are there books that will help me or what do you people suggest?
>>
>>  Read the documentation. That's what I did (and I'm sure most povrayers did)
>>to learn to use the program.
>>
> 
> 
> What Warp said. Also (since he's too modest), check out Warp's VFAQ at:
> http://www.students.tut.fi/~warp/povQandT/
> 
> and, if you want to avoid my main error, make sure you understand how transforms
> (scale, rotate, translate) work, particularily in reference to <0,0,0>
> 
> Other apparently required activities include:-
> 
> 1. Post an image of a mirrored sphere hovering over a checkered plane. Ideally,
> if its your first post, you should pick some humungous format such as BMP. Oh,
> and don't forget to post it to a non-binary group. If you can multi-post it to
> several non-binary groups, so much the better.
> 
> 2. Get in a fight with ABX in .general
> 
> 3. Get in a fight with BDW in .off-topic
> 
> 4. Post a message to .general pointing out how crappy pov is, explaining you
> could write a better program in your sleep if only you knew how to program.
> 
> 
LoL. Oh my, I've got to do 1, 2 and 4 still. Although one could argue 
that 3 hasn't been accomplished yet with satisfaction :)

/Nathan

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Nathan Letwory wrote:
> Tom Melly wrote:
> 
>> "Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
>> news:3e81ae1f@news.povray.org...
>>
>>> Matt Harbers <gte### [at] prismgatechedu> wrote:
>>>
>>>> What would be the best thing for me to do to get really good at
>>>> it.  Are there books that will help me or what do you people suggest?
>>>
>>>
>>>  Read the documentation. That's what I did (and I'm sure most 
>>> povrayers did)
>>> to learn to use the program.
>>>
>>
>>
[[SNIP]]
>>
>>
> LoL. Oh my, I've got to do 1, 2 and 4 still. Although one could argue 
> that 3 hasn't been accomplished yet with satisfaction :)
> 
> /Nathan

To stay on topic: I've found it very useful to brush up my math.

/Nathan

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"Matt Harbers" <gte### [at] prismgatechedu> wrote in message
news:3e81a944$1@news.povray.org...
> Hey, I'm pretty much just starting Povray.  I did a tiny bit with it a few
> years ago.  What would be the best thing for me to do to get really good
at
> it.  Are there books that will help me or what do you people suggest?
> Thanks
>
>     - Matt

I checked with Barns & Noble a couple of months ago, and there has been
nothing new published in hardcopy on POV or its Scene Description Language
in a few years-- all current books would be dealing with earlier and less
capable versions. That might change soon since recent improvements in
desktop hardware mean a lot more people now have the means to do ray tracing
in an effective way. At the least, I expect something like a "POV for
Dummies" book to be published in the next year or so.

As others have said, study the documentation (it is HUGE-- allow several
weeks to work through it all). You can get it online at
http://www.povray.org/documentation/ but it may be more convenient to get to
it through your own POV installation. It would print out to several hundred
pages, but it is designed for on-line use-- a printed version wouldn't be
anywhere near as good.

As Tom points out,  Read Warp's FAQ at
http://www.students.tut.fi/~warp/povQandT/

 Explore the resources at the official POV-Ray web site resource pages--
there is a huge amount of material available through the resources and
download pages. http://www.povray.org/

I've found a lot of information in the archives of several of the online
groups. Check them out from the above link.

Web rings of value: the POV-Ray Ring at http://webring.povray.co.uk/  and
the POV-Ray New Ring at http://webring.povray.org//

http://www.3dlinks.com/tutorials_povray.cfm has a bunch of useful toots.

http://www.f-lohmueller.de/pov_tut/pov__eng.htm also has some very good
toots

You'll probably need a math reference. I like Ask Dr  Math at
http://mathforum.org/dr.math/ and some of my old college books (mostly
because I halfway remember where to find things in them).

I also found  Bram de Greve's toots on 3D geometry useful:
http://www.flipcode.com/geometry/

There's lots more available. Googling on a specific topic and including
"POV" in the query will usually be useful.

Have fun with it!


--
Will Woodhull
Thornhenge, SW Oregon, USA
willl.at.thornhenge.net

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the others have had really good suggestions. I would have to add this one:

work hard on texturing. For a reference, go look for anything done by H.E.
Day in these newsgroups from a year or more ago. Not only are his modelling
skills really good, but he completes the image with excellent textures.

unfortunately he's mostly working with other graphics packages these days.

good textures can make a sphere look damn cool.

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LOL! Nice one Tom. :)

 Matt:  Do a *find/search* for ANY posts that you may be interested
in, using these PoV-Ray News-Groups. Quite often a source code will be
submitted, and one can often work from that depending on what you want
to do for an image. If not, just ask in either p.newusers or
p.general. We like to share, and there are more than enough people
here that want to help out.

  Heh... and as you can see from Toms' post, we also indulge in a bit
of fun now-and-again too...  ;)

  Good luck,

  ~Steve~

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Matt Harbers wrote:
> Hey, I'm pretty much just starting Povray.  I did a tiny bit with it a few
> years ago.  What would be the best thing for me to do to get really good at
> it.  Are there books that will help me or what do you people suggest?
> Thanks
> 
>     - Matt
> 
> 
Be patient and take it step by step.  Isolate different aspects of the 
program and learn them one by one.  If you try to put it all together 
too soon you may get overwhelmed.  Cycle through the different skills, 
modelling, texturing, light and camera manipulation, gradually improving 
your skills with each new pass.  You will find the community here will 
patiently acknowledge your progress.

-Jim

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Read the documentation, and model lots of stuff! No lessons are as good as
experience.
Fingolfin

Matt Harbers <gte### [at] prismgatechedu> wrote in message
news:3e81a944$1@news.povray.org...
> Hey, I'm pretty much just starting Povray.  I did a tiny bit with it a few
> years ago.  What would be the best thing for me to do to get really good
at
> it.  Are there books that will help me or what do you people suggest?
> Thanks
>
>     - Matt
>
>

Post a reply to this message