POV-Ray 3.6 Released 201
ehmdjii writes "After a long betatesting-phase the POV-Ray team just released version 3.6 of the popular opensource raytracer. It's been two years since the last version and many bugs have been fixed as well as some changes in the render core. This release concentrates on stability and providing a framework for future re-implementations."
What this really means ... ;-) (Score:5, Funny)
This release concentrates on stability and providing a framework for future re-implementations.
Translation:
We know this shit is kind of broken, but we've cleaned it up best we can; here, we've tried to make sense of it; could someone who knows what they're doing maybe come in and rewrite it for us?
Re:What this really means ... ;-) (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What this really means ... ;-) (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know if you know this, but the methods of raytracing and those used in 3D games are pretty different in how they work, from what I understand. Raytracing is also quite different from most 3D rendering applications. POVRay uses relatively "pure" mathe
Re:What this really means ... ;-) (Score:4, Informative)
I've been ray tracing since BOB, a precursor to pov-ray that was published as floppies bundled with a textbook. Back when a complex vga resolution render would take a few days on a 386.
The theory hasn't changed much. Just the efficiency of the algorythems, and of course, the horsepower of the computers.
Re:What this really means ... ;-) (Score:3, Informative)
Specifically, have a look at:
http://www.ati.com/developer/demos/rx800.htm l
Click on the Quicktime of the Ruby demo...
You want to click on "the doublecross" this is a realtime rendering that can be done on the newest ATI GPUs. Alternatively, if you HAVE one of the newest ATI GPUs, download the executables and watch them render in realtime...
I'll agree it isn't perfect yet, but it is a big step above Far Cr
Holy *#%@#$%! (Score:3, Informative)
Implemented in a video card in real time? Wow. I'm impressed.
Re:What this really means ... ;-) (Score:3, Interesting)
::shaking head:: (Score:4, Informative)
That's not nearly the same kind of thing.
POV-Ray generates the shadows, lighting, and often the textures, right on the spot. So a very short input file can generate a realistic 3d scene. And it does it using raytracing, so you get _real_ reflections, bump maps, and shadows. None of this is being done with GPUs, they still use precalulated texture maps and a scanline renderer (which is fine for interactive presentation and games... but again, all the hard work is done up front by the creator of the game/application/etc.)
Re:::shaking head:: (Score:2)
Re:::shaking head:: (Score:4, Interesting)
Pov-ray can do soft shadows by doing shadow ray tests at every point sampled, with the light source moved slightly at each sample. It also can compute global illumination using a radiosity-like algorithm (they call it radiosity, but I'm not sure it's a true radiosity algorithm, path tracing perhaps?) They also have photon mapping, which is in many ways superior to radiosity (lower computational complexity, can simulate non-diffuse interreflections). I haven't tried photon mapping, though.
Radiosity [povray.org]
Area Lights [povray.org]
Photons [povray.org]
-jim
Re:::shaking head:: (Score:4, Funny)
Photon speed improvements (Change 1937, 2037)
and I was wondering how they did that.
"c, not just a good idea, its the law!"
Re:::shaking head:: (Score:3, Informative)
I already mentioned this in another post, but these [anu.edu.au] people created a ray tracer with non-instantaneous values of c, like 1m/s. They have a few interesting animations on their site that simulate doppler shift and some of the relativistic effects that occur when travelling at speeds approaching c.
-jim
Re:What this really means ... ;-) (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What this really means ... ;-) (Score:2)
In what way? You can usually loopback mount CD filesystem images from modern OSs such that you don't have to burn to CD to use the data on them. Similarly with mkisofs or something, you can wirte a CD image and loopback mount it without burning it. I think you should also be able to do the same thind with hard disk file systems (you can with floppies).
Woo! (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, welcome our new chrome-sphere-over-checkboard overlords.
You know, a friend of mine, after I installed povray on his machine, asked me, "So, where's the GUI...?"
Re:Woo! (Score:3, Informative)
GUI (Score:4, Informative)
PovRay OpenSource? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:PovRay OpenSource? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:PovRay OpenSource? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only was POV distributed under it's own license, the maintainers had (have?) a policy of identifying people and organisations who violated their license terms in the next update of the license document. The v3.1 license states:
Up until I first noticed this passage in one of their licenses, I really never stopped to think about the difference between open source / freeware / PD / shareware - it was the first time I realised that giving away your software doesn't mean you're giving away your rights as well. The irony, of course, is that I first got into POV-Ray after finding v1.0 on a "PC Format" cover diskette. :)
Specific Vengeance License (Score:5, Funny)
Whoah!
Can you imagine pissing off the authors of an open source project so much that they specifically name you in their modified license?!?
This would be akin to a modified GPL version 4,
Re:PovRay OpenSource? (Score:5, Informative)
This seems to be an interesting contrast to this comment [slashdot.org] where someone (apparently a POV-Ray developer?) discusses plans to release POV-Ray under an open source license and explains why this is not currently possible:
"we can't reach many of the people who contributed the original code under the old license, so we don't have the right to just switch the license. We'll have to rewrite some pretty big chunks of code before we can think about a more open license. That (the rewrite) is slated to happen for the next major release."
Re:PovRay OpenSource? (Score:2, Informative)
POV-Ray is not free software. But it seems to be open source. At their web site there are links that seems to point at the source [povray.org]
Re:PovRay OpenSource? (Score:3, Informative)
Satisfied?
Re:PovRay OpenSource? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not *closed* source if you can download the source; if you mean "it's not GPL", why not say that?
Re:PovRay OpenSource? (Score:2)
The term "open source" has never had the meaning "software with source code available". Prior to being used to describe software that meets certain openness criteria, it simply did not exist. Instead you would have said something along the lines of, well, "software with source code available".
Of course now that it has a commonly accepted definition, some people would like to distort it by claiming that it simply means "wi
Re:PovRay OpenSource? (Score:2)
Any software distributed under the GPL is open source, but not all open source software is distributed under the GPL. Other common licenses include X11, BSD, MIT and LGPL.
Re:PovRay OpenSource? (Score:4, Informative)
The header of the license you linked points out that it is for end-users only, not distributors.
Re:PovRay OpenSource? (Score:2)
It's still very restrictive: It for example forbids distributing ANY derived code, or even renaming anything. Clause 4.5 even effectively prevents including it in any (IMO) sane static (i.e. CD or such) distribution planned to be current for more than two years.
In fact it seems to me even more non-free than things like Shared Source
Re:PovRay OpenSource? (Score:2)
Not allowing distributions of modified versions would probably be the main sticking point. Though that might not prevent inclusion of patches that the user can apply.
Note true. Read the distribution terms (Score:3, Informative)
Rules on distribution found inside the license page, or here [povray.org].
Basically, they require you to get permission to distribute it commercially, or even as a file posted on your webpage or P2P software, but you're free to give it out to your students, your peons, or your friends.
I'd like to provide text, but the formatting they have there... it would likely come out horribly mangled here. But follow the link and look at section 3.1
Re:PovRay OpenSource? (Score:2)
Great POV-Ray artist: (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.oyonale.com/
http://www.oyonale.com
Gorgeous stuff! All rendered with POV-Ray!
Awesome! (Score:4, Funny)
As a long time POV-Ray user (Abuser?) I've kinda fallen off watching the development since the official felt like it slowned after the big 3.1 release. It's nice to see a strong, friendly community surrounding POV-Ray even though it pales in comparison to larger 3d programs. Even so, I still feel that learning how to use POV-Ray is a great introduction to 3d and coding.
In celebration of 3.6, I bring you this lovely scene.Thank you developers, helpers, users and everyone else within the community. You all help make POV-Ray kick ass to this very day.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Awesome! (Score:2)
Also, I love doing lego stuff in POV-Ray.
Check out my renders here.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/povrayman/ [livejournal.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Awesome! (Score:3, Funny)
Did you really need to render it to get that?
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Interesting)
Gilles Tran! (Score:5, Informative)
Highly recommended!
Re:Gilles Tran! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Gilles Tran! (Score:2, Interesting)
I also stand-by your "really cool about email" comment. One of his works' wasn't available in his gallery, I emailed him; and he got back to me when he did a high-res render and published it!
Re:Gilles Tran! (Score:2)
Re:Gilles Tran! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Gilles Tran! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Gilles Tran! (Score:2)
Don't feel too bad though, I was using an Amiga 1200 without any accellerator at the time of the 486SX...I was slower than you were =)
Re:Gilles Tran! (Score:2)
I agree though about the fun, maybe it was just that we were younger ????
Cool stuff. (Score:5, Interesting)
e.g. rendering mars [swin.edu.au]. Also done here [uni-muenchen.de]
Re:Cool stuff. (Score:4, Interesting)
See http://research.orf.cx for pics.
I'm a fan (Score:4, Interesting)
What happened to Mike Miller? (Score:2)
I used to use POV-Ray on a 486 in the early nineties, writing scenes by hand. At the time there was a POV artist called Mike Miller, who has created some very impressive scenes by the standars of yesteryear.
Does anyoe know what happened to Mike? It seems he disappeared from the POV scene completely. I bet some Slashdot reader is bound to know... Or not?
Re:What happened to Mike Miller? (Score:2)
I'm still dreaming (Score:4, Interesting)
Will that day come in the next 40 years, or even ever ?
Day will come sooner than you may think (Score:4, Informative)
Mental Ray taking advantage of OTS hardware [mentalimages.com]
Dedicated raytracing hardware [saarcor.de]
Raytraced Quake 3 [uni-sb.de]
OpenRT realtime raytracing framework [openrt.de]
Re:Day will come sooner than you may think (Score:2)
Re:I'm still dreaming (Score:4, Insightful)
IF (and this is a big "if") Moore's law holds (i.e. processor speed doubles every 18 months), then it should happen easily. Some quick calculations come up with:
40 years * 12 months / 18 months = 26 doublings of processor speed .0000008940 fps on a current processor.
2^26 = processor is 67108864 times faster than before
Something that runs at 60 fps in the future / 67108864 =
Taking the reciprocal, we get 1118481 seconds/frame or roughly 12 days per frame on a current processor. So anything we can raytrace now in 12 days, we would be able to raytrace at 60 fps 40 years down the round. Again, assuming that Moore's law holds.
However, I don't think it's going to be so cut and dried. It seems like we're always on the cusp of the failure of Moore's law by reaching some sort of limit on how small we can make things. On the plus side, proper raytracing isn't exactly a prerequisite to good looking, photo-realistic images -- we're getting better and better at "cheating" with more efficient rendering algorithms that look good enough. So we might not exactly have what we're looking for, but I don't doubt for a second that rendered graphics 40 years from now will look amazing.
Photon speed improvements (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Photon speed improvements (Score:4, Funny)
Cubert: That's impossible. You can't go faster than the speed of light.
Farnsworth: Of course not. That's why scientists increased the speed of light in 2208.
Relativistic ray tracer from Australia (Score:3, Interesting)
I know you're joking, but these [anu.edu.au] people really did make a ray tracer where you can change the value of c. They have a few animations where they set the speed of light to small values like 1m/s.
-jim
A very good tool. (Score:5, Interesting)
I would say a few things in regard to PovRay.
1) It is a complete ray tracer.
2) Its interface is not as good as (some of) the pro-tools, but...
3) Its open source.
Item 1. PovRay support all you need to render images in 3D. Just look at their site, in the hall of fame. The rainy street image is amazing.
Item 2. This is probable the issue that will be discussed most. But I believe the interface developed over the years (originally I worked with PovRay way back when it didn't have a GUI) - is now at a level where it is useful for anyone who which to use it. Of cause you need to think mathematically about 3D, rather than visual. There is not any drag and drop functionality where you can add a box, a cone etc. to your scene. This scares a lot of people away, but most of the professionals I have worked with, and most of my own work, the drag-drop-icon-what-ever GUI is not really that useful. You always end up entering some popup box to insert the exact measurements of you box, cone, sphere...
Item 3. Yes! I once was in a project where we needed a 3D engine to display the results we made. (The project itself was not related to 3D at all, but we needed a good way to display the complex set of results and date.) We made it in such a way that it displayed the results as pov-ray data files, and integrated it into powray. It was awesome. I don't know of any other product that would allow you to do this. Most of the integration was related to Item 2 above, as pov-ray uses text based and script like files as input. This is ideal for programs to handle as their output. Try to do that in any other program.
In relation to all the items above, I believe you have to be slightly nerdish or mathematically minded in order to fully benefit from PovRay - but then again, welcome to Slashdot.
Re:A very good tool. (Score:3, Interesting)
POVRay has a GUI now? COOL!
Re:A very good tool. (Score:2)
Re:A very good tool. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:A very good tool. (Score:2)
Although the source code for POV-Ray is available, the POV team does not consider the program to be Open Source, nor does the license.
I just got into POVRay (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway, I was at first put-off by the lack of a visual interface ("how the f**k are you supposed to do all that with just text?!?"), but after messing around with Moray (a visual front-end for POV), I determined that I had fewer problems just typing it all in. I think it's my experience programming versus my lack of experience with doing anything in 3D other than a few Quake maps.
Of course, I'm still limited to doing very basic things, but I'm beginning to understand the power of POV--especially the fact that it's a complete language. I find it amazing that people have written macros that will automatically generate everything from trees to whole cities.
Re:I just got into POVRay (Score:2)
That, really, is the beauty of POV-Ray. I also use various commercial modelers, but when I need (or just want) to do something algorithmically, I turn to POV-Ray. Personally, I find the macro language annoying, so I usually use Per
ObIRTC plug (Score:4, Interesting)
No discussion of the excellent POV-Ray renderer would be complete without a mention of The Internet Ray-Tracing Competition [irtc.org], which is graciously sponsored by a member of the POV-Ray team. While POV-Ray would certainly exist without the IRTC, it is questionable whether the reverse is true.
On a personal note, I'd like to echo all of the positive comments about POV-Ray. Around 1988, I began writing my own ray-tracer, in Modula-2 of all things. But then I ran across POV-Ray on a BBS, and realized that I'd spend the rest of my life eating their dust and sniffing their butt fumes, so I dropped mine and have never regretted it. POV-Ray stands out among its kin--not perfect by any means, but excellent nevertheless.
IRTC (Score:5, Informative)
Too little too late.... (Score:3, Informative)
Since then not much has changed with povray, but A LOT with the rest.
Now povray is still slow as hell (the radiosity core is RIDICULOUS. it takes longer per scanline then others per picture while still having artifacts)
Look here:
http://www.pointzero.nl/renderers/
and find at least 10 other open source renderers that were developed in less time than the povray-tram needed for this half-assed update, are 10 times faster (or 100 times if you use some sort of GI) and feature the ability to render stuff other than their own format (e.g. plugins for blender/3ds/ect).
Re:Too little too late.... (Score:2)
Re:Too little too late.... (Score:3, Informative)
There are a few things you should notice BEFORE claiming that POV-Ray is slow and especially, "half-assed".
POV-Ray makes no use of a Graphics Card GPU, but relies solely on the CPU. Why? Because the double-floating point precision isn't supplied on a GPU.
Why is radiosity faster on commercial apps making use of the scanline-technique? Because their just showing f***ing triangles, which can be rushed t
Re:Too little too late.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Too little too late.... (Score:2)
They list their own software render (selective raytracing) and the Mental Ray rendered (real raytracer), the vector renderer (for Flash and the like), and a hardware rendered. Since the hardware renderer doesn't support Irix, it would be hard to imagine a feature as important as particles not being available on a platform that important...
there is competetion (Score:3, Informative)
Re:there is competetion (Score:3, Insightful)
Conversely, POV-Ray is more mature and more portable. For example, Yafray required the very most recent point release of GCC when 0.0.6 came out...sigh). Also, POV-Ray comes with documentation (fancy that!).
Re:there is competetion (Score:2)
Not only that, they're locked to that specific point release of GCC. (You need something like gcc 3.3.2 to compile; gcc 3.4, for instance, won't cut it.)
I wanted to give Yafray a try, but to be honest, I'm not about to go through the pain of downgrading gcc just to play with a new raytracer. There's something to be said about excersizing a little restraint in your code so that it's portable.
yafray docs (Score:2, Informative)
there is documentation, just not on the yafray pages
A Good Teaching Tool for 3D concepts (Score:3, Interesting)
When I had to teach Computer Graphics (circa POV-Ray 3.1) I found it a great way of getting kids to see how all the concepts involved in 3D computing came into being without having to worry too much about those with weak programming skills. (This was an issue at the place I was teaching at).
Each type of concept (eg merging primitive objects/translucency etc) can be introduced one at a time into the text script file with instant pretty pictures to look at as output.
They could also take the program home with them and the nerdier ones could try running it on their linux distros too ;-) This was a huge advantage
over any commercial packages.
Programmer art (Score:3, Interesting)
I like it because I can pretend for a moment that Im an artist, and not a geek. Even though I'm editing what looks like a programming language to the casual observer.
Currently I'm using it to produce animated alpha channel sprites for a game, and having a ball.
http://www.pingball.com [pingball.com]
GPLed POV-Ray? (Score:3, Informative)
So... does this mean there's hope for a GPL-ed POV-Ray? IIRC, the main reason why it's distributed under those restrictive terms was that the developers have no means anymore to get in contact with some authors who still have a significant amount of code in there, so they cannot get their OK for a licensing change.
Are they going to redo those parts now and adopt a more open development model? I'd love that.
povray vs maya/max/etc (Score:4, Insightful)
there are some fundamental differences between povray vs maya/max/etc which aren't so apparent but important to distinguish the applications.
pov models and renders objects based on the mathematical description of the surface. maya/max on the other hand models objects based on triangulating the surface. while it seems esoteric, it is a fundamental difference which really puts these applications into two different classes. try modeling a quaternion fractalor other mathematical shape/function in maya... additionally the complex and random model generation that pov has(onyale's pipe macro, chris colfax macros) is not something easily created with these other apps.
maya and max on the other hand have a strong UI to help put a layer between the user and the code itself. there's no way you could do the type of modeling in pov that you could in maya. pov is very methodical; plan out the image, heavy previsualization, utilization of macros and includes to manage the items you previously created. maya provides immediate feedback as items are created, providing a more fine art approach of creation, kinda like working with clay as opposed to architecting a building.
comparing these applications (pov/max/maya) is like comparing a car to a plane... they are both used for transportation, but the mechanisms to implement the main function is vastly different(it's not the best analogy, take it with a grain of salt)...
perhaps a more productive discussion would be to have some kind of shootout between maya, max, and blender.
The Zen of POV-Ray (Score:3, Interesting)
What stops people generally is that it has no visual modeling facility. This leads people to believe that it is only good as a renderer where the input is created by some visual modeling tool like Moray, etc. Nothing could be further from the truth.
While you certainly can use POV as an ordinary backend renderer, the true fun and power of the program comes with hand-written scene description files.
Yes, hand-written.
You can accomplish in 20 lines of POV code things that would take hours with a visual modeling interface. It's all about procedural descriptions rather than visual construction. Take some time and look through the many excellent sample scenes that are included, then start out by making small changes to the code and rendering them to see how it looks with your change.
Most of the best images created with POV were not done using a modeling program but hand written scene descriptions.
POV is a programming language for scenes the way C is a programming language for computer programs, and it really is a full-blown programming language (though a little unusual in places I will admit).
While things like modeling complex organic forms (the human body for example) are generally impractical to do procedurally, you can do just about anything else this way, and often much more easily and with more control than you would have positioning a lot of points in space iwth a modeling program.
And if you have any interest in the more abstract artistic kind of compositions, you can do just amazing things in a single page of POV code. The ability to use conditional and looping stuctures along with macros and functions in your scene description gives you amazing power.
And as far as GUIs go, at least POV for Windows has one of the best designed and most functional GUI interfaces that I've used. It's not a modeler, but as an interface to the POV renderer and even as a general purpose code editor it is superb.
One of POV's best uses (and most overlooked ones) is as an introductory programming environment for children. You can quickly show a child a program that creates 100 reflective transparent randomly colored spheres randomply positioned, and then show them how to change one or another of the parameters that control the apperance or number of spheres, and they can iteratively experiment with changes and rendering their results.
It's simple programming with a visual payoff.
G.
Re:Great, for a free package (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if that might be more accurately stated in the reverse: Definitely better than some of the pro stuff out there, but not nearly as usable for the rank amateurs among us.
It's actually far harder to use than simple point-click-and-drag solutions like 3dsmax or Maya, but the results can be just as good. Two of my favorite POV-Ray images:
'The Wet Bird' [povray.org]
'Chado' [povray.org]
I can't even imagine putting those images together using POV-Ray. Using 3dsmax, sure. But POV-Ray? Wow.
Re:Great, for a free package (Score:5, Informative)
Gilles Tran, the artist who made 'The Wet Bird' piece has a wonderful 9-page series of web pages on The Making of the Web Bird [oyonale.com] He's one of the best 3D artists our there in any media. You can see more of his gallery here [oyonale.com]
Re:Great, for a free package (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Great, for a free package (Score:2)
Re:Great, for a free package (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, even that isn't a good giveaway. Some buildings designed by Mies van der Rohe, one of the architects responsible for the modern "glass box building," were designed so that the blinds could only be drawn to certain levels, thus enforcing a rather homogeneous look. MvdR was extremely influential, so it wouldn't surprise me if there are quite a few buil
"Pro" comparison (Score:3, Insightful)
If it takes longer to produce acceptable output then its NOT as 'good' in the general sence.
Raw productivity goes down in that situation, which costs money.
Amateurs dont count in the professional world, its just a fact of life. ( being an amateur 3D person myself, i can say that honestly )
Re:Great, for a free package (Score:5, Interesting)
POV-Ray's a bit different from usual 3D rendering and modelling software, in that a lot of the effort has gone into making a programming language which can then be used to generate objects. Typical renderers strive to render as many triangles as possible as quickly as possible, while POV-Ray gives you an entire programming environment. For instance, while a typical 3D modeller might laboriously hand-craft a tree out of triangles, shaders and alpha-blended foliage textures, a POV-Ray user would effectively write a program for generating trees [oyonale.com].
A different approach giving different sorts of results, and while POV-Ray might not be suitable for, say, modelling, animating and rendering feature films, it can be used to create some quirky, glorious images. Who cares if it's not some carbon-copy of Maya or Renderman - an alternative approach is always appreciated.
People are always complaining about 'programmer art'. With POV-Ray, programming is visual art.
Re:Great, for a free package (Score:4, Informative)
This has some unexpected advantages: firstly, CSG trees are very efficient on space, so it's perfectly possible to create a single complex tree and then instantiate it a thousand times with different scaling factors, textures etc and the scene graph will still contain a single tree; and secondly, since POV primitives are mathematically perfect, the can be scaled arbitrarily and will remain mathematically perfect.
A while back I had a passion for rendering planets. To scale. I used a POV unit of 1.0 for a kilometre. So I made a sphere 12000 units in diameter, put a light source 150x10^6 units away, put a camera .002 units above the sphere's surface... and it all worked. Fast, too. You can't do that in Blender.
The only thing I couldn't work out was how to match light intensities to physical units, but I'm sure it's possible. Plus some of the textures seemed to go a little funny, probably due to rounding errors...
Re:Great, for a free package (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Great, for a free package (Score:3, Insightful)
POV ray definately has its place. However, it really is not a replacement for 3dsmax and a real artist.
Someone who can't draw, use colors and compose will not be a good 3D artist regardless of the tools used. In the same way that a novice photographer can't (normally) compose artistically interesting photographs, a programmer won't be able to make an interesting raytrace without artistic skills even when the tools are perfectly photorealistic.
As far as commerical packages go, they have really nice tools
Re:Great, for a free package (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? What features are you talking about? I ask because if you go back and forth between MAX, Maya, and Lightwave, there's very little you don't get. Usually the big difference is in implementation, can't say I know anything about the 'excuses to use patents' bit.
As for 'claiming all kinds of features'... what exactly is your motivating thought behind that comment? The last 3 releases of Maya, 3D Studio MAX, and Lightwave (probably true for XSI as well, but I have not followed it) have all had impressive features that made the creation of quality 3D art easier to do. You claim that povray's renderer is 'second to none'. Well I honestly can't tell you where it stands as I haven't used it. I can tell you, though, that these days the big bottleneck is the artist, not the engine moving the pixels around. 'Features' are a big part of making sure an artist can express themselves. If the interface is getting in your way, then the renderer isn't doing you a lick of good.
I have NFI why anybody'd dismiss 'software for the pros' so easily.
Re:Great, for a free package (Score:2)
Re:Great, for a free package (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Benchmarking early linux with POVRay (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah if that result was typical, most of us 3D artists wouldn't be using Windows 2000.
Re:Benchmarking early linux with POVRay (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that the interactive portions of the programs are often better in Windows, and sometimes (especially with XSI) include things that aren't possible with Linux (integration with IE, for one, and also often the use of VBS).
So you might think that we should just use Windows for interactive and Linux for rendering, but there were subtle differences in the rendered images - not better
Re:Benchmarking early linux with POVRay (Score:2)
Re:This happened some days ago now (Score:5, Informative)
The version 3.6 source code will be made available within a few weeks."
And their ftp server tell us:
"With the POV-Ray 3.6 release on 9 June 2004, source is not
immediately available. It will be released shortly. If you
want source code, you could look in our old versions dirs."
So, be patient.