In article <3E0125AF.B0325AA1@pacbell.net>, tyl### [at] pacbellnet says...
> 
> 
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
> 
> > I always found it a bit annoying that no one ever started a free GUI
> > modeller project with the same open development as POVRay itself,
> 
> That's not entirely true. In fact there have been at least two 'attempts'
> at open source modelling programs for POV-Ray that I am aware of but they
> both failed for various reasons. POVLAB, which had a sizable user base at
> one time, was released by it's author as open source over three years ago
> yet no one has touched it since. Why? Don't know, but it seems it takes a
> rare group of individuals to take on an open source project and provide the
> long term dedication and resources necessary to keep it alive. The POV-Ray
> developers deserve a lot of credit in that regard.
> 
> 
Yes that is quite annoying. POVLab had a great deal of potential (more 
than Moray in some respects, since development on Moray seems to be 
dedicated to never quite correctly supporting all POVRay's features...). 
The fact that it never quite did everything always bugged me. On a side 
note.. Does the new version still only display a container box for 
meshes? That was something else that I found quite useless.

In any case, digging around my system to see what stuff I had installed I 
found a version 4.0 of one called 3D Canvas. It imports 3DS, DirectX, 
TrueSpace COB, DXF, VRML 1.0 and POVRay!? (only 2.2 syntax though). It 
also exports to POVRay. I am pretty sure I got it off a 3D magazine of 
some sort, so finding the a free copy could be difficult, but the thing I 
like is that it correctly imports the DXF files as separate objects 
(instead of doing what most others I tried do and export them as one 
single undifferentiated mesh) and lets you apply textures to each of 
those pieces. I still need to get used to the interface and I do find it 
annoying that object properties are harder to get to than in Moray, but 
it seems like the always have to screw something up in these things. lol

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> 
> In article <3E0125AF.B0325AA1@pacbell.net>, tyl### [at] pacbellnet says...
> >
> >
> > Patrick Elliott wrote:
> >
> > > I always found it a bit annoying that no one ever started a free GUI
> > > modeller project with the same open development as POVRay itself,
> >
> > That's not entirely true. In fact there have been at least two 'attempts'
> > at open source modelling programs for POV-Ray that I am aware of but they
> > both failed for various reasons. POVLAB, which had a sizable user base at
> > one time, was released by it's author as open source over three years ago
> > yet no one has touched it since. Why? Don't know, but it seems it takes a
> > rare group of individuals to take on an open source project and provide the
> > long term dedication and resources necessary to keep it alive. The POV-Ray
> > developers deserve a lot of credit in that regard.
> >
> >
> Yes that is quite annoying. POVLab had a great deal of potential (more
> than Moray in some respects, since development on Moray seems to be
> dedicated to never quite correctly supporting all POVRay's features...).
> The fact that it never quite did everything always bugged me. On a side
> note.. Does the new version still only display a container box for
> meshes? That was something else that I found quite useless.

There are some features in POV-Ray that are simply not possible to do in
a modelling program or would require so much work that it would not be
possible and still the price of the program down. That said, I am pretty
sure that Moray v3.5 (now in beta) has much better support for mesh based
objects. You still have to use 3rd party software to get an existing model
into Moray but once there you can perform various options on the mesh
objects including UV mapping.
 
> but it seems like the always have to screw something up in these things. lol

Can't please all the people, all the time...

-- 
Ken Tyler

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In article <3E0278A7.C1D08FA4@pacbell.net>, tyl### [at] pacbellnet says...
> 
> 
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
> > 
> > In article <3E0125AF.B0325AA1@pacbell.net>, tyl### [at] pacbellnet says...
> > but it seems like the always have to screw something up in these things. lol
> 
> Can't please all the people, all the time...
> 
>
 
Quite true, but I find it really fun how they all seem to miss the things 
that can simplify the program.

Examples:

1. Nurbs or full mesh design, but no way to enter precise numbers, even 
if you know what those should be.
2. Hiding object properties so you have to go to a sub menu to find them.
3. Not including textures as one of those properties (obviously this 
would make life far too easy).
4. Importing DXF, but as a single mesh instead of sub objects.
5. Providing nice tools to edit nurbs or the like, but no way to convert 
non-nurbs into something you can use those tools on, including objects 
and surface types generated by the program itself.
etc.

I just get tired of having to have 5-6 different programs because all of 
them either make certain things overly complicated, difficult to do or 
simply impossible. This is I suspect one major reason why some people do 
everything by hand, but making meshes that way... lol

Lets just say I have yet to find anything that did what I expected it to. 
Not mind you what I really truly 'wish' it did, but what I expected based 
on their own documentation.

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