POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.programming : puzzling it out Server Time
28 Jul 2024 08:29:20 EDT (-0400)
  puzzling it out (Message 1 to 4 of 4)  
From: Marc M  Adkins
Subject: puzzling it out
Date: 27 May 2002 23:13:22
Message: <3cf2f5d2@news.povray.org>
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong...

There are no flags on the basic objects (e.g. Sphere) that differentiate one
from another.  The only way to tell one from another is the method pointers
attached to the objects when they're initialized.  Or to look at it another
way, you can poke them and see which way they run, but they don't have
nametags.

Related question...is there a body of documentation about POV-Ray internals
that I have yet to find?  The documentation about how to use it is quite
extensive, and includes some overview of the ray-tracing process.  I was
wondering if anyone had collected anypointers or FAQs about the internals
for those of us who want to venture there?

Thx,
Marc M. Adkins


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From: Ken
Subject: Re: puzzling it out
Date: 27 May 2002 23:42:25
Message: <3CF2FD59.3B60EB37@pacbell.net>
"Marc M. Adkins" wrote:

> Related question...is there a body of documentation about POV-Ray internals
> that I have yet to find?  The documentation about how to use it is quite
> extensive, and includes some overview of the ray-tracing process.  I was
> wondering if anyone had collected anypointers or FAQs about the internals
> for those of us who want to venture there?

There is no such body of work that I know of (though there have been
rumors from members of the POV-Team that one day one will be written).
The closest you can come to it for now is to sift through the various
messages in this group and perhaps in the unofficial patches group.
If you have specific questions post them here and those in the know
will generally be happy to share their knowledge with you. A study
of the source code itself will lend some enlightenment and in many
cases the alogrithms used are fairly well documented by the programmers.

For general info on raytracing and some of the algorithms and methods
used you can try -

http://www.acm.org/tog/resources/RTNews/html/

and perhaps -

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/graphics/algorithms-faq/

-- 
Ken Tyler


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From: Le Forgeron
Subject: Re: puzzling it out
Date: 28 May 2002 02:51:16
Message: <3CF3291B.8010701@free.fr>
Marc M. Adkins wrote:

> Someone please correct me if I'm wrong...
> 
> There are no flags on the basic objects (e.g. Sphere) that differentiate one
> from another.  The only way to tell one from another is the method pointers
> attached to the objects when they're initialized.  Or to look at it another
> way, you can poke them and see which way they run, but they don't have
> nametags.


Correct.
There is no need for nametags because the memory representation of objects
in the world/scene is write-only for the parser.
(With the exception of #declare/#local which allow to give a name to
a template object which might be later instancied with object{...} )

Nametags are only usefull in modelers.

Same goes for a Class identifier: it is not useful because it is done
by the method pointer.
-- 
Non Sine Numine
http://grimbert.cjb.net/
Puis, s'il advient d'un peu triompher, par hasard,






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From: Vadim Sytnikov
Subject: Re: puzzling it out
Date: 28 May 2002 03:52:54
Message: <3cf33756@news.povray.org>
"Marc M. Adkins" <POV### [at] Doorwaysorg> wrote:
> Related question...is there a body of documentation about POV-Ray
internals
> that I have yet to find?  The documentation about how to use it is quite
> extensive, and includes some overview of the ray-tracing process.  I was
> wondering if anyone had collected anypointers or FAQs about the internals
> for those of us who want to venture there?

You may want to have a look at ftp://ftp.ru.com/pub/gamos/povpro/

Although that is a 3.02-based work, it does allow for examining scene
internals, and that did not change much since then. At least, should serve
as a good starting point...


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