[PLUG] POVray on Ubuntu Hardy

Richard C. Steffens rsteff at comcast.net
Fri Jul 10 04:51:18 UTC 2009


Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> I suggest you download the pdf documents from the POVray website;
> easier to read and navigate, IMHO .
>
> ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/Official/Documentation/povdoc-3.6.1-us-pdf.zip
>
> This contains both the 420 page reference manual and the 276
> page tutorial.  There are also Tex and PS versions in that same
> directory.  
>   

Got them. Thanks. A little light reading for laundry day, tomorrow.

> Note that a lot of the tutorial examples are code fragments buried
> in the text, not available online AFAIK.   So, you get to do copy
> and paste, and often figure out the lights and camera yourself.
>
> I just started playing with POVray this week, and will be making
> a heck of a lot of POVray output over the next month.  Perhaps
> we ought to team together to solve problems and learn things.
>   

I may still have some old POVray DOS floppies from the 1980's when I had 
to order share ware by mail. I never had a machine fast enough to do 
anything useful with them. I'm looking forward to developing some photo 
realistic images for a project. I'll be happy to share anything I learn.

> Other POVray notes:
>
> In many cases it is easier to learn specific things by looking at
> other people's .pov and .ini files, and the drawings that they make.
> Then tweak the parameters and see what happens.
>   

That is the way I have usually learned programming related stuff. I look 
at what someone else did in a book, and then adapt it to what I want to 
do. Along the way, I sometimes learn something useful, too.

> Realism is costly.  The rendering time difference between
> "understandable" and "photorealistic" can be seconds to days. 
> Much of the POVray community seems committed to the latter, so
> they will suggest things like Rayleigh atmospheric scattering 
> media to get pictures Just Right, even though that is enormously
> more costly (hours) than absorption and emission (seconds).  OTOH,
> they make some beautiful pictures ...
>   

Kind of like building solid models in wire frame to get the geometry 
right before running the rendering engine on one of the old CAD systems 
I used to use.

> Finally, POVray doesn't make animations directly - just a sequence
> of numerically ordered images you can turn into an animation with
> other tools.  I make SWF movies for the web with the open source
> SWFTOOLS.
>   

My initial interest is in photo realistic stills. But one day I might 
want to do some animations.

I'm looking forward to the journey.

-- 
Regards,

Dick Steffens
www.dicksteffens.com
 




More information about the PLUG mailing list