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2004
Silence- Snowflakes
- Paranoia Pays
- Microsoft Help
- Polyglot 11: More C
- Polyglot 11: C
- Polyglot 10: Smalltalk
- Toronto Wisdom
- Exterminated
- The Last Straw
- BT Broadband Trap
- Polyglot 9: Moo
- Polyglot 8: SVG
- Polyglot 7: POV-Ray
- Polyglot 6: Python
- Polyglot 5: PHP
- Polyglot 4: Euphoria
- Polyglot 3: JavaScript
- Polyglot 2: Java
- Polyglot 1: VB
- POV-Ray
- Etch A Sketch
- Slashdotting
- Flashy Lies
- Scientific Illiteracy
- Creeping Featurism
- VidScope
- Saturn V
- Perspectives
- Slide Rule
- eBay Sale
- Iron Filings
- Gimble
- VBA Security
- Random Morsels
- Exact Change
- Easter Egg
- Diametral Pitch
- mod_deflete
- Ethical Spam?
- Deadlines
- CPU Power
- Fosdem 2004
- Academic Reversal
- Mars Memorial
- Culture Clash
- Watching the Users
- 2003
- 2002
POV-Ray
7 August 2004
Recent work on the VidScope Java applet and the Etch A Sketch has left me feeling a bit, erm, two-dimensional. Learning POV-Ray seemed like a good solution.
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First reaction: How can one possibly do 3D rendering without a GUI? |
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POV-Ray is ideal for generating technical renderings. But what about more artistic renderings? The image on the left demonstrates that it's more than capable of generating photo-realistic scenes. Unfortunately it took 12 hours and 1GB of swap space to render that image. Which rules out casually playing with the lights and shadows.
[Source] |
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Although POV-Ray is capable of animations, this short movie isn't an example of it. I needed very tight control of each frame, so this turned into a stop-motion exercise. The puppet of a worm was built, then carefully posed in eight different positions. Each position was rendered, then the result glued together in an animated GIF. My favourite frame was an out-take caused by a fencepost error:
worm crash.
[Source] |
POV-Ray is a really good tool. Especially for programmers. I can't see myself using ProtoCAD, Bryce or Dream3D again.
