On Tue, 12 Nov 2002 09:12:00 +0100, ABX <abx### [at] abxartpl> wrote:

>Note we are here platform independant community. I know what OS use Warp only
>becouse of off-topic group, and I know what OS use Christopher James Huff
>becouse he had site with mac in url, but for example I never know what OS
>currently use Christoph Hormann or Peter Popov becouse I don't need to know.

That's easy: Win2k Workstation, Win2k server, XP Home, XP
Professional, Debian Linux (2.4.19-based), Mac OS X 10.

Not quite what you can get from the headers, though :)


Peter Popov ICQ : 15002700
Personal e-mail : pet### [at] vipbg
TAG      e-mail : pet### [at] tagpovrayorg

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On 7 Nov 2002 17:24:37 -0500, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>Johannes Dahlstrom <sad### [at] tkukoulufi> wrote:
>> And of course an isosurface height field is much more 
>> flexible than a traditional one.
>
>  If you have the time for waiting for it to finish rendering. ;)

Zen and the Art of POV-Ray, new bestseller

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ABX wrote:
On Sun, 10 Nov 2002 17:43:46 EST, "normdoering" <nor### [at] yahoocom>
wrote:
>> However, I'm looking at this from a user's perspective, not a programmers.

> But this is 'povray.programming' group.

Who else would I ask for changes and patches but the programmers who wrote
it?

> If POVRAY could be outdated, slow and not efficent why manufacturers use
> it to proof their computers/processors are fast ?

Because it's known to be slow? You can caculate Pi to a few thousand decimal
places to bench test a computer's speed, bench testing doesn't require
useful programs. But then, since when does POV have to be useful. It's
free.

Using POV as a bench test is not impressive. What would be impressive is if
you could name a film company that used it to do some computer generated
graphics for a film. If you could name a somewhat famous artist or
illustrator who used it to do their work. If you could name POV programmers
who went on to work with Pixar or some other noted computer graphics firm.
The last case I assume to be more likely than the first two. POV is a
programmer's ray tracer and programmers such as yourself don't even seem to
respect users.

> What happened with that code delivered from Intel and introduced in 3.5 ?

Hell if I even know what you're talking about.

> Can you start scripts from Corel to achive something on Amiga without
> additional tools ?

Why should I care? I don't have an Amiga and I don't think they make them
any more.

> Would it be possible to create macro by macro online ?

Well, things that function like macros, yes, Corel scripts and plugins. They
can be shared online.

> Would it be safe to start compiled plugin ?

Why not?

> Can you promise nobody would use it for viruses ?

Nope. In fact, Corel script has already been used to write a virus. It is
possible to compile Corel scripts and sell them as plugins. It is possible
to put worms and viruses in them.

Are you sure someone couldn't write a virus into a POV macro now? POV can
write files, it supposedly writes text files, however, what if someone were
to look at a virus program in a debugger and then write a macro that wrote
that to a file as string literals? Are certain parts of the ASCII character
set not allowed in string literals after backslashes or not?

> If you can write plugin in Pascal/C why can't you write it as separate application
> for your own and it put it in Tools menu of POV-Ray.

Eventually, I want to. However, time and lack programming resources stand in
the way. POV gives me a lot of overhead for things I don't have to write
myself. If I wrote a separate program I'd have to figure out how to deal
with image files of at least one format, write more code to display the
work so I could see it, and a shit load of other stuff like that.

Better see how far I can get with my idea using POV. If I can get it working
as macros then move to C and use the macros as pseudocode.

> It can ask you for inputs and put output in Clipboard so you can put it into POV
> editor with simple Ctrl+V.

Yea, that's one way. Another way is to just have the program write an
include file.

> Note we are here platform independant community. I know what OS use Warp only
> becouse of off-topic group, and I know what OS use Christopher James Huff
> becouse he had site with mac in url, but for example I never know what OS
> currently use Christoph Hormann or Peter Popov becouse I don't need to know.
> We can share our knowledges and sources becouse povray is _well_written_
> platform independant application. I recently counted 3.5 was sucesfully
> compiled with about 7 compilers on different platforms and I have two next to
> try.

This platform independence you seek may come at a price. Some of the systems
you want to run on are becoming too obsolete.

Also, I recently bought an AGP Xtasy 6564 2D/3D accelerator card that has
got most of my other graphics programs really zooming and looking better.
But not POV. In order to interface with this card you have to be using
DirectX or openGL. DirectX is Windows only. I don't know about openGL -- is
that suppose to be platform independent? If you can't use either of those
you can't take advantage of some major graphics technology advances.

> person wrote four years ago: http://news.povray.org/povray.programming/16984/
> And you know what ? He is now in povray team and he still not introduced
> pluging system. He must be just lazy.... ;-)

Okay, it's hard to do. It may be impossible for platform independent
systems.
And no one is paying you to do this, so why care?




 --normdoering

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In article <web.3dd1626e195c50e41dffbb4f0@news.povray.org> , "normdoering"
<nor### [at] yahoocom> wrote:

> Also, I recently bought an AGP Xtasy 6564 2D/3D accelerator card that has
> got most of my other graphics programs really zooming and looking better.
> But not POV. In order to interface with this card you have to be using
> DirectX or openGL. DirectX is Windows only. I don't know about openGL -- is
> that suppose to be platform independent? If you can't use either of those
> you can't take advantage of some major graphics technology advances.

Get a clue about ray-tracing, then bother us again.


    Thorsten


____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich
e-mail: mac### [at] povrayorg

I am a member of the POV-Ray Team.
Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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normdoering wrote:

> This platform independence you seek may come at a price. Some of the
> systems you want to run on are becoming too obsolete.

The officially supported platforms are Window$, Linux and Mac. Which of 
those do you consider "obsolete"? Not everyone in the world wants to use 
the same OS as you.

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On Tue, 12 Nov 2002 15:19:58 EST, "normdoering" <nor### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> > If POVRAY could be outdated, slow and not efficent why manufacturers use
> > it to proof their computers/processors are fast ?
>
> Because it's known to be slow?

No. Becouse it is known to make various difficult floating point operations.

> You can caculate Pi to a few thousand decimal
> places to bench test a computer's speed

But that's only one type of calculations. The goal is to test real product.

> bench testing doesn't require useful programs.

Then it does not test real life.

> Using POV as a bench test is not impressive. What would be impressive is if
> you could name a film company that used it to do some computer generated
> graphics for a film.

Nobody is looking for something impresive here (except images).

> If you could name a somewhat famous artist or
> illustrator who used it to do their work.

Sorry, I don't know _any_ famous artist who used _any_ CG. I know Picasso,
Michale Angelo, Leonardo etc ... And I know my fellows from this community who
help each other to achive something they currently need. Help is pretty fast
and older resources are usually compatible with newer versions. Best POV
artists can appear on http://www.irtc.org/ or
http://www.zazzle.com/posters/gallery/search/product_list.asp?q=POV . I would
like to be as good as some of them.

> If you could name POV programmers
> who went on to work with Pixar or some other noted computer graphics firm.

I don't know any editor who flowed from Word to Britannica. Is it so
important? 

> POV is a programmer's ray tracer and programmers such as yourself don't even seem to
> respect users.

Each one recpects each other here. That's why *users groups were created.
That's why TAG-Team appeared. That's why betatesting stage was performed.
That's why perfect documentation appeared in 3.5. Respect to the users is
fulfilled as part of community here, not part of software. I imagine POV has
to be created with respect to the previous versions, platform independence,
general design and simple mantaining in the future. Nobody said plugin feature
is not interested. But it has not to be intruduced only becouse it is
interested. It is simple against those rules. For example imagine next year
some company introduce new platform like advanced fast palmos, transmeta
modification or anything with own C++ compiler. Currently moving POV-Ray could
be simple. Personally I think some day we will have POV on mobile phone.
Having POV with plugins/macros compiled for each platform separately will
require additional amount of work to prepare safe and stable code for it. And
you never be sure if next intel/windows will be backward compatible.

> > What happened with that code delivered from Intel and introduced in 3.5 ?
>
> Hell if I even know what you're talking about.

http://news.povray.org/3d55aa5d%241%40news.povray.org

> > Can you start scripts from Corel to achive something on Amiga without
> > additional tools ?
>
> Why should I care? I don't have an Amiga and I don't think they make them
> any more.

Does it mean POV-Ray should have features _only_ for you ?

> > Would it be possible to create macro by macro online ?
>
> Well, things that function like macros, yes, Corel scripts and plugins. They
> can be shared online.

I don't mean sharing online. I mean evaluate string like it could be native
script.

> > Would it be safe to start compiled plugin ?
>
> Why not?

Becouse executing anonymous exacutables is not safe.

> Are you sure someone couldn't write a virus into a POV macro now? POV can
> write files, it supposedly writes text files, however, what if someone were
> to look at a virus program in a debugger and then write a macro that wrote
> that to a file as string literals? Are certain parts of the ASCII character
> set not allowed in string literals after backslashes or not?

POV-Ray can't take responsibility for bugs in OS. But it can do it's best:
Options->Script IO Restrictions on windows and apropriate equivalent on other
platforms.

> > If you can write plugin in Pascal/C why can't you write it as separate application
> > for your own and it put it in Tools menu of POV-Ray.
>
> Eventually, I want to. However, time and lack programming resources stand in
> the way. POV gives me a lot of overhead for things I don't have to write
> myself.

Like what ?

> If I wrote a separate program I'd have to figure out how to deal
> with image files of at least one format, write more code to display the
> work so I could see it, and a shit load of other stuff like that.

And that's why you prefer volounteers should introduce your features for free?

> Better see how far I can get with my idea using POV. If I can get it working
> as macros then move to C and use the macros as pseudocode.

If you know C/C++ you don't have to write separated application to run
anything like pseudocode. You missed you can download sources of POV and
create own function for Parser when you call appropriate functions from POV
just like "pseudocode" you mentioned. It will not be trivial but much simpler
than writing engine for plugins or own libraries to operate on images.

> Also, I recently bought an AGP Xtasy 6564 2D/3D accelerator card that has
> got most of my other graphics programs really zooming and looking better.
> But not POV. In order to interface with this card you have to be using
> DirectX or openGL. DirectX is Windows only. I don't know about openGL -- is
> that suppose to be platform independent? If you can't use either of those
> you can't take advantage of some major graphics technology advances.

As Thorsten said you should learn a little. I suggest you to spend some time
on reading old posts. I know it can take some time but POV requires patience.

> > person wrote four years ago: http://news.povray.org/povray.programming/16984/
> > And you know what ? He is now in povray team and he still not introduced
> > pluging system. He must be just lazy.... ;-)
>
> Okay, it's hard to do. It may be impossible for platform independent
> systems.
> And no one is paying you to do this, so why care?

Becouse of all above

ABX

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>> If you could name a somewhat famous artist or
>> illustrator who used it to do their work.
>
>Sorry, I don't know _any_ famous artist who used _any_ CG.

Let me introduce you to one example "famous" artists who uses CG:

Syd Mead, he served as a special visual consultant on TRON back when CG was
just getting off the ground and has been designing futuristic concepts for
corporations and the movies. He's considered a world renowned "visual
futurist" with movie credits for Tron, Blade Runner, 2010, Star Trek: the
Motion Picture, Time Cop, Johnny Mnemonic, and Aliens. His futuristic
designs have been employed for game design by Sega, aerospace design at
Boeing, automotive design at Ford and Honda, and product design at Sony,
Minolta, and Bandai.

Here are some links:

http://www.sydmead.com/v/01/splash/
http://www.scrubbles.net/sydmead.html
http://www.planetary.org/html/mmp/artis/meads/meads70.htm

Syd Mead also plugs other people's software, in this case, VIDI's Presenter
3D:
http://www.vidi.com/gallery/usergal/syd.html

>Best POV artists can appear on http://www.irtc.org/ or
>http://www.zazzle.com/posters/gallery/search/product_list.asp?q=POV . I would
>like to be as good as some of them.

Some of those images do look good. Some of those artists should think about
turning pro.

>> If you could name POV programmers
>> who went on to work with Pixar or some other noted computer graphics firm.
>
>I don't know any editor who flowed from Word to Britannica. Is it so
>important?

Because you might be someone who can move on to work as a professional
graphics programmer for one of these companies by showing them code you
created for POV:

http://www.mtv411.com/3d-software-reviews.htm

>> POV is a programmer's ray tracer and programmers such as yourself don't even seem
to
>> respect users.
>
>Each one recpects each other here.

Okay, to a certain extent that's true. However, I've gone to artist's
conventions where the graphics programmers for companies that sell programs
like Maya and Lightwave ask artists how they want to work. They never say
things as dismissive as what Thorsten wrote. They accept the fact that the
artists don't understand the internal workings of the programs and are more
polite when an artist suggests a method that can already be done.

> That's why *users groups were created.
> That's why TAG-Team appeared. That's why betatesting stage was performed.
> That's why perfect documentation appeared in 3.5.

All good stuff and I'm learning to use it.

>> > Can you start scripts from Corel to achive something on Amiga without
>> > additional tools ?
>>
>> Why should I care? I don't have an Amiga and I don't think they make them
>> any more.
>
>Does it mean POV-Ray should have features _only_ for you ?

No. But for my work...
http://www.geocities.com/normdoer
I just want to be able to do the things with my software that I want to do.
I'm trying to make the transition from working with acrylics and pens to
working with 3D programs. That's my ultimate concern.

>> Eventually, I want to. However, time and lack programming resources stand in
>> the way. POV gives me a lot of overhead for things I don't have to write
>> myself.
>
>Like what ?
>
>> If I wrote a separate program I'd have to figure out how to deal
>> with image files of at least one format, write more code to display the
>> work so I could see it, and a shit load of other stuff like that.
>
>And that's why you prefer volounteers should introduce your features for free?

If your goal is to become a professional graphics programmer you might be
interested in the real life desires of artist/users who want to work in a
special way. In my case, using special pencil drawings, scanning them, and
using them to create 3D meshes that are photorealistic mesh2 models of
faces and alien creatures. You could, if you work on that, use the code you
produce to get yourself a job with a 3D company that makes programs like,
say, Maya or Lightwave.

> You missed you can download sources of POV and create own function
> for Parser when you call appropriate functions from POV

I have downloaded the source code... but I don't understand it well yet.

>> Also, I recently bought an AGP Xtasy 6564 2D/3D accelerator card that has
>> got most of my other graphics programs really zooming and looking better.
>> But not POV. In order to interface with this card you have to be using
>> DirectX or openGL. DirectX is Windows only. I don't know about openGL -- is
>> that suppose to be platform independent? If you can't use either of those
>> you can't take advantage of some major graphics technology advances.
>
>As Thorsten said you should learn a little. I suggest you to spend some time
>on reading old posts. I know it can take some time but POV requires patience.

I have to learn a lot, I'm sure.
And thank you for your help in that process. Unlike Thorsten you pointed out
where I could go to learn.

 -- normdoering

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"normdoering" <nor### [at] yahoocom>:
> Here are some links:

Thanks.

> > I don't know any editor who flowed from Word to Britannica. Is it so
> > important?
>
> Because you might be someone who can move on to work as a professional
> graphics programmer for one of these companies by showing them code you
> created for POV:

While I agree companies look for creative people with some experience I don't
think showing code from POV means something. IMO such art companies use own
tools mostly based on triangles and nurbs. That's different concept than in
POV but I can be wrong becouse I never worked in art company. I have heard
some top level movies used clips rendered in POV but I don't remember details.
And that's subject for different thread in different group.

> http://www.mtv411.com/3d-software-reviews.htm

This description of POV is wrong. It is not modeller.

> They accept the fact that the
> artists don't understand the internal workings of the programs

As I said above POV-Ray is raytracer/renderer not modeller. If you don't want
to know internals of it just use modeller as shell. There is Moray available.
It has plugins and SDK for extensions IIRC.

> > Does it mean POV-Ray should have features _only_ for you ?
>
> No. But for my work...
> http://www.geocities.com/normdoer
> I just want to be able to do the things with my software that I want to do.
> I'm trying to make the transition from working with acrylics and pens to
> working with 3D programs. That's my ultimate concern.

Then I really suggest you to use modeller first. Moray is not free but not
expensive.

> > You missed you can download sources of POV and create own function
> > for Parser when you call appropriate functions from POV
>
> I have downloaded the source code... but I don't understand it well yet.

It's good to know C++ and some basic raytracing rules/terminology. I don't
remember any good web resources for it. Perhaps something can be found in POV
Links Collection.

> I have to learn a lot, I'm sure.
> And thank you for your help in that process. Unlike Thorsten you pointed out
> where I could go to learn.

Thorsten is known to be concise which can sound like rude. But general we
(volunteer hobbiest) are really nice people :-)

ABX

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In article <unj6tuk1mbbd7du0hks1gjdqnqsnvcn3lb@4ax.com> , ABX 
<abx### [at] abxartpl>  wrote:

>> I have to learn a lot, I'm sure.
>> And thank you for your help in that process. Unlike Thorsten you pointed out
>> where I could go to learn.
>
> Thorsten is known to be concise which can sound like rude. But general we
> (volunteer hobbiest) are really nice people :-)

Actually, in this case my response was meant as he read it.  After all this
group is about discussion the POV-Ray source code.  The absolutely minimum
prerequisite should be that a person at least know a tiny little bit about
ray-tracing, which, given he suggested POV-Ray should use his "AGP Xtasy
6564 2D/3D accelerator card", is obviously not the case.  Not to mention
that the documentation of POV-Ray, section 9.4, as well as Warps website
linked to the the faq group already explains this important point.  A
section titled "Rendering speed" should be easy to find for everybody who
looks for information: <http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/327/>.

Apart from this, the person did not bother to read any previous messages in
this group either but started a completely redundant 75+ message long
discussion about topics already discussed to death in this group.  Not
really a good introduction when being new in a newsgroup IMHO.


    Thorsten


____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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"normdoering" <nor### [at] yahoocom> wrote in
news:web.3dd2f35c195c50e467e58b130@news.povray.org: 

>>> If you could name a somewhat famous artist or
>>> illustrator who used it to do their work.
>>
>>Sorry, I don't know _any_ famous artist who used _any_ CG.
> 
> Let me introduce you to one example "famous" artists who uses CG:
> 
> Syd Mead, he served as a special visual consultant on TRON back when
[snip]
Hey I know this guy (who doesn't?), I even have 2 or 3 books of him 
(Sentinel, Sentinel II, and perhaps another).
He is more known for his paintings than for his CG, though. Actually, I 
didn't knew he is doing CG, although it is logical.

>>Does it mean POV-Ray should have features _only_ for you ?
> 
> No. But for my work...
> http://www.geocities.com/normdoer
> I just want to be able to do the things with my software that I want
> to do. I'm trying to make the transition from working with acrylics
> and pens to working with 3D programs. That's my ultimate concern.

Not bad at all... Some pictures look squashed, showing ovals where I 
suppose they were circles.

-- 
--=#=--=#=--=#=--=#=--=#=--=#=--=#=--=#=--=#=--
Philippe Lhoste (Paris -- France)
Professional programmer and amateur artist
http://jove.prohosting.com/~philho/

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