#Scene editors, Viv/PoV
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Hi Guys,
I've been using Stephen Coy's Vivid ray tracer for some time now. It works
great for rendering but I find it quite tedious and time consuming to build the
scenes by hand. I notice, there are a couple of scene editors in the libraries.
Are any of you using them with Vivid or are they strictly for PoV? At one
point, I considered writing my own wire frame scene editor for Vivid but I
realize now that I'll never be able to find the time for it. If the existing
scene editors are any good and they're only for Pov, I might consider a switch.
What are the main differences in capabilities and user concepts between Vivid
and PoV? What files do I need for running PoV on a 486 (there seems to be an
enormous amount of PoV files in the libs)?
Thanks
– Per
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You might want to give Sculptura a try. Sculptura is a new 3d modeler that
supports both Vivid and POV output. There is a demo over in the GRAPHSUP forum,
area 9 – commercial demos.
– Michael
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Michael,
I'll take a look, thanks.
– Per
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Michael,
I went ahead and downloaded your Sculptura demo, and I must say that I'm
somewhat disappointed with it. Not with the fact that it's so severely
crippled that you can't do anything useful with it. The demo gives you no
opportunity to test whether the claim about Vivtruth, and how far it inherits
to Vivid or PoV standards. At $100+, the program is more expensive than my
ray-tracer itselfSculptura is only an add-on. Now, if you'd just limited the
number of objects or disabled reloading of scenes and kept the rest of the
functionality, I might have gotten ons: Apparently, the program is based on
polygon meshes, which is fine for wire frame editinSculptura convert graphics
primitives like spheres and cones to the appropriate Vivid primitives when
building V files? If so, is clipping primitives against each other suppoThis is
one of the most powerful features of Vivid).
– Per
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I have noticed a little friction about the Sculptura demo package. I think that
the main problem is a matter of perception. Sculptura was not built primarily
as an add-on to Vivid or POV. It was mainly built as a stand-alone
modeling/rendering package that could output to Vivid or POV as an option. It
has a built-in solid renderer. Since I decided to market Sculptura as an
inexpensive commercial product, the freely availiable version has some features
disabled. All of the features of Sculptura are availiable ( every modeling
command), only the File I/O and the solid rendering are disabled, but this is
what makes it different from the commercial package. When you look at the
amount of stuff that is active in the demo, only a couple of menu items are
disabled. A lot of demos of commercial programs just show some kind of guided
tour or slideshow or something, but Sculptura's demo is completely interactive
and works exactly like the full version. Sculptura can't generate clipped
objects directly, but it can generate sphere, cone, and cylinder primitives for
Vivid and POV. I think that the demo version has more than enough features in
it to demostrate how the product works. One thing that will help is that I will
be getting around to posting some sample output here pretty soon..
– Michael
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Per,
There really are not a lot of POV files in the libs… just a lot with
POV in the name. You'll want POVIBM.ZIP, POVSCN.ZIP, and POVDOC.ZIP.
In addition, the source is in POVSRC.ZIP (all this info is contained in
POVINF.DOC and all files are in Lib 8).
I don't know of any modellers for Vivid yet, but it's just a matter of
time. The programs are similar enough where the same editor should work
with any of the common raytracers without much more work than changing
the output format. There are some bigger differences (like
CSG/clipping, grouping syntax, etc) that may bog things down a bit,
though. Still, if I had to make a guess, I'd say that you'll be seeing
something that outputs Vivid code in a few months or less. Of course,
there's always "Bob's" friend "Ed" (BOB is the subset of Vivid that was
included with S.Coy's "Photorealism and Raytracing in C". "Ed" is a
simple editor that was packaged with it. Haven't heard much good about
"Ed", though).
Main differences: POV-Ray has many more primitives and CSG (constructive
solid geometry). Vivid is faster and has a somewhat "cleaner"
anti-aliasing, but that difference gets minimized as you increase
resolution. POV-Ray uses left-handed coordinates, Vivid uses
right-handed. This can cause a bit of confusion at first, but you'll
get used to it.
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Dan,
Thanks much for your information. I think I'll stick with Vivid then, and
wait for a modeller to be available.
– Per
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Hi Per,
For POV-Ray there's a couple of possibilities for modellers. There's POVCAD
that runs under Windows, PV3D that runs under dos, Lutz is working on a
modeller too. There's a 3DSPOV converter for using 3DS data in POV-Ray models
(works pretty good) and some other converters for using DXF or 3D2 (I think) as
input to POV-Ray.
To get POV-Ray running you'll need the following files:
POVIBM.ZIP executables for IBM-PC, min 386, min 2 MB ram.
POVDOC.ZIP documentation for POV-Ray, all versions.
POVSCN.ZIP standard include files and sample scenes for all versions.
If you want to look in the source (not neccesary for using POV-Ray) it's in
POVSRC.ZIP
Hope that helps a bit.
Erkki
ps: sjovt at se en anden dansker her, det sker ikke ofte <g>.
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Hi Erkki,
Your reply is pretty much in-line with what Dan said. I don't have access to
AutoCAD or 3D Studio, but I'll certainly be checking out POVCAD.
Thanks
– Per
P.S. Nej, du har ret. Der er dog mindst et par stykker til – selvom det er
nogle aar siden, jeg har set dem her.
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> "Der er dog mindst"
Hey… WHOS'S got the mind of a dog?!?
🙂
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Hey Dan,
>> "der er dog mindst"
>Hey… WHOS'S go the mind of a dog?!?
You need a Danish-English dictionary to figure that out <g>. I just might be
able to get you a good deal on one, they are far cheaper in Copenhagen than in
Minneapolis <G>. Has spring arrived yet ?? I remember spring in the woods up
north as being absolutely GREAT!! Catch any trout yet ??
Erkki
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"Catch any trout yet?"
One yesterday, one today. Wanna hear my excuses?
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"one yesterday, one today. Wanna hear my excuses?"
Not really, I know the feeling even though I've never fished trout. In the
wintertime I'm usally out fishing a couple of times for codd and heering. Last
time we only got 3 codds even though we were 28 people on the boat so I know
all the excuses <g>.
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Actually, no excuses needed for yesterday's trip. It was great! Lost count of
the total number, caught some pretty nice ones, too. Went back today and got
totally skunked! End of fishing report. Back to graphics..
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Dan,
"dog" means "though" in Danish.
"dog" in English is "hund" in Danish.
We have a saying in Denmark: French is easy, "horse" is "cheval" and it's
like that all the way through 😉
– Per
P.S. We'll stop talking Danish now, <smile>.
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"French is easy"… that's cute! I used to know a bit of Finnish (grew up in
Michigan's Upper Penninsula where a lot of Finns settled) but the words
wouldn't be appropriate here.
Don't feel you've got to stop your PS's because of me… I was having fun
trying to figure out what you were saying.
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Dan,
Getting back to the subject of this thread: I actually went ahead and
downloaded PoV and all the Scene editors available here (except for the huge
beta demo trilogy). Quite a few nice scenes of yours in there (I made 120 by
160 pixel renderings of all the demos over the week-end).
Are you using any of these editors? I've begun to play around a bit with PV3D
and it seems to be relatively capable. I do have one problem, though: It works
fine on my 486/66 here at work. That's the one I use for rendering. But I've
got a 386/25 at home that I would like to use for planning and editing scenes.
I can't make PV3D work, however. Apparently, it fails to switch to graphics
mode (the machine has VGA). Any idea what's wrong?
I haven't been able to do anything useful with POVCAD. Maybe I just need to
invest some more time in it, but the docs are rather poor.
– Per
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Per, I've been testing Lutz' (brand-new) MORAY modeller and I've punched a few
buttons in PV3D. Don't have Windows so I haven't looked at POVCAD, but Alfonso
is here if you've got questions.
I too have some sort of video problem with PV3D. I've seen the same problem
with a couple other programs, so I suspect it's actually a problem with
whatever video driver he's using (possibly in combo with my Logitech mouse).
Does the 386 have a math-co? PV3D may require one… not sure.
(what is the "huge beta demo trilogy"?)
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Dan,
What can you say about MORAY, impressions, availability, pricing ?
Aah, Logitech mouse. That could be it. I've got one of those as well at home,
and I use a Compaq (MicroSoft compatible) here. I'll try a switch. My 386
doesn't have a coprocessor, but if that was the problem I would suspect PV3D to
refuse to run at all.
I was referring to PVSCN1.ZIP + PVIMG3.ZIP + PVB20.ZIP from the PoV lib here
(december upload). They're labeled as a beta version of a 3D-editor for PoV.
– Per
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Hi Per,
> What can you say about MORAY, impressions, availability, pricing ?
I can answer the availability and pricing questions<g>. It'll be available
either later today or tomorrow in LIB 8 and it's shareware at $59. You *need* a
math coprocessor, though.
– Lutz
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Lutz,
I'll certainly check it out when it appears in the lib. I've been thinking
about buying a math-co for my home machine for some time now, anyway.
– Per
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Lutz,
I've downloaded MORAY and the docs look very good. Unfortunately, that's all
I can say 'cause I can't run it. That's no fault of yours, I should add:
The problem is, that my machine is a Compaq Portable 486c/66, and Compaqs
come with a custom SVGA board which (most annoyingly) isn't compatible with any
other SVGA standard. The card dalso 800x600x16 using special drivers for
Windows and the AutoDesk family of programs. Is there any chance you could
either standard) or alternatively support ordinary VGA, i.e. 640x480x16?
– Per
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Per, I don't think that anyone will be disappointed with MORAY. There's still
some things that it doesn't do (yet?) like displaying CSG in its CSG form), but
Lutz has done a terrific job.
I believe that the PV3D "big 3" are outdated and should be removed. There is a
(more recent) single file version available here. I think it's PV3D2.ZIP or
something like that.
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Dan,
Great, I'll check out MORAY when it appears.
– Per
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Peter,
No matter which modeller you use watch out for the bounding. I just got a bunch
of scenes made with PV3D and the bounding is awfull. Either it's on a single
simple object or it's the whole CGS object. With large CGS trees this gives
very slow traces. Well, bounding is still somewhat of an artform in itself <g>.
Erkki
ps. Jeg saa en anden dansker her for et par maaneder siden eller var det dig ??
Er du med i nogle af de danske grafik konferencer ??
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Erkki,
I see, well it's my impression that Vivid adds bounding boxes to it's
primitives automatically. I'll try to keep this in mind. Other than that, are
you satisfied with PV3D?
– Per
re. your P.S.: I'll respond via E-Plex. I don't want to put off Dan Farmer <g>.
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Per,
You're quite right, Vivid uses automatic bounding slabs and so does Polyray.
From what I've heard here it seems like POV 2.0 will use them as well. Vivid
doesn't do CSG at all. I haven't used PV3D much so I don't really have an
opion. I've gotten a bit lazy with CSG since I got 3D-Studio <g>. I do intend
to play a bit with it so I can see a bit of what I do with blobs. Blobs are
fun, especially cause the docs are pretty sketchy <g>.
Erkki
P.S. Lad vaere med at tage dig af Dan F, han har godt af at gaette lidt. (Just
look for your name, Dan, and guess what we're saying <g>).
P.P.S. CIS doesn't have an english-only rule as far as I know.
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>>CIS doesn't have an english-only rule as far as I know.
Just don't let the SYSOPS suspect that you are getting rude,
crude, or lewd. It might make them a little jumpy <G>.
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"dig af Dan F." That's what I say.
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