POV-Ray 10th Anniversary Contest

erich666 writes "You could win a great computer by making a cool image. POV-Ray is a free multiplatform ray-tracing renderer with source available. To celebrate POV-Ray's tenth anniversary some hobbyists are having a contest, and they convinced a few sponsors to donate some nice goodies. Me, I'm a no-talent slug, but still found their site's hall of fame worth visiting."

POV-Ray is for the Hardcore!

[soluzar22]

Seriously, POV-Ray is a great piece of software, but if it's not changed since I last used it, then you need to be some kind of math/spacial-relationships/geometry god to create anything cool. Muchos Respect going to those who can do that stuff.

Also check out...

[Anonymous Coward]

Also check out http://www.irtc.org/ [irtc.org].

Internet Ray Tracing Competition

On usenet:news.povray.com

[suso]

There are a couple of binary groups for povray on their own news server and some of the things that the people do there are really neat. They experiment with making povray do cloth effects and glowing. It's neat to see them develop these functions over time. Some of the early tries are kinda funny. Plus, there is a lot of cool stuff on the newsgroup that never makes it into the IRTC contest or POV-Ray hall of fame.

Re:That's backwards

[soluzar22]

No you don't, that's just it. POV-Ray is incredibly light-weight on your machine. It works by processing plain text files, which have scene definitions written in a pseudo-code language. If you have a machine that is sucky, it will just take that much longer to process your final image. You have used POV-Ray before?

Re:POV-Ray is for the Hardcore!

[Solder Fumes]

Yeah, that helps, and it's the way I prefer to do it. But many modelers export to POV-Ray, and there are modelers specifically for it like Moray [stmuc.com].

Re:For one frame, cool

[syousef]

Povray is a ray tracer.
Photoshop is a photo editor.

You might as well say MS Word is great but does it have the same text editing capabilities as Excel.

Apples and Oranges.

3D for the masses

[michaelbuddy]

POV RAY is not for the feint of heart, that's for sure. I don't know about most slashdotters, but I have a great challenge as it is, learning blender and YAFRAY to create and render 3D scenes.

Go To blender.org and download 2.34, you won't be disappointed. OK, I maybe you will be disappointed, but at least you'll have GUI to learn.

Re:For one frame, cool

[soluzar22]

POV-Ray is not a program like Photoshop. POV-Ray could better be compared to a program like 3DS Max, or Lightwave, or any other 3D Modelling software. For a free equivalent to Photoshop, you should use GNU's "The GIMP" (GNU Image Manipulation Program).

To program a 1-minute full-motion 3D scene in POV-Ray? Well that depends on the complexity... how many primitives you are using, and such like. You will need to have a VERY clear idea in your head of what you want, before you even begin. POV-Ray is, as I said before, not terribly easy to use. It's EXTREMELY powerfull though. You just need to invest 15 lifetimes in learning how to use it. :-D

POV-Ray is for the Hardcore!-Thac

[Anonymous Coward]

Wings3D on thacs.rpms can export POV-Ray and other renderers as well.

Re:POV-Ray is for the Hardcore!

[MillionthMonkey]

A free graphical front end for POV-Ray is Moray [stmuc.com].

Also check out Art of Illusion [artofillusion.org] which is a full-featured cross-platform modeler/raytracer but has a POV-Ray export feature. I know the author from work and he is a genius.

Re:For one frame, cool

[michaelbuddy]

It would take somewhere between 1 minute and 1 week to render a 30 frame series for a scene. Depends on the calculations. normally if you don't have any speculars, and mirror reflection, you've cut your time considerably. photoshop and POVRAY is like comparing slashdot to michaelmoore.com

IRTC

[Thomas Charron]

Another location too see amazing Pov-Ray images is http://www.irtc.org

Alot of the hall of fame images are actually winners of that ongoing competition

Re:POV-Ray is for the Hardcore!

[ShinmaWa]

A free graphical front end for POV-Ray is Moray [stmuc.comx].

Well, to be clear, Moray is not free. Its nagware. A fully registered license costs 80 Euros. However, the unregistered version is not crippled. It does nag a lot though.

Re:what's that sign?

[B1ackDragon]

That's the pov-ray logo.

Re:For one frame, cool

[Kismet]

POV-Ray is not 3D modelling software. It is a ray-tracer: a program that reads a scene description file and uses a ray-tracing algorithm to produce an image.

For 3D modelling software that works with POV-Ray, check out Moray or Wings3d. You can also use a program such as 3DS Max to model scenes for POV-Ray if you have appropriate software to convert the scene file to a format that POV-Ray understands.

Speaking of which...

[aquasheep]

One of the hall of fame pictures featured, The Wet Bird [povcomp.com] was the March-April 2001 IRTC Winner.

This is an amazing piece of artwork. One of the other artists [oyonale.com] (scroll to bottom) even mentions that "The Wet Bird" was accused of being a photograph when it was submitted.

Unbelievable stuff.

Re:Where's the cross-project support?

[aardvarkjoe]

Last time I looked, Blender's renderer, while decent, couldn't hold a candle to raytracers; it was mainly good for previewing. However, that was back before the whole open source blender thing, so it may be improved.

Unfortunately, Yafray has some of the weirdest compilation requirements I've ever seen. And glancing at their page, it looks like they've gotten even worse than last time I looked -- now you not only need a particular point release of g++, you also need some weird build tool called scons. And you have to compile Blender from scratch, too. When I tried to get the thing working a few months ago, I finally gave up in disgust. Maybe someday when I can install it easily, I'll give it a shot, but for now I'll just stick with pov-ray.

Re:That's backwards

[leonscape]

There are GUI front ends for Pov, http://www.kpovmodeler.org/ [kpovmodeler.org] for one, which is part of KDE's graphic package.

Re:Where's the cross-project support?

[ScottGant]

you should take a look again at Blender.

Also, I haven't had any problems with Yafray and Blender 2.3.4...which is the latest release that integrats Yafray into Blender.

But I also compiled it all from scratch since I'm on Gentoo...and "emerge blender" took care of everything really. But your milage may vary.

Re:That's backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

"but I think the idea is that you're supposed to use a GUI that creates that text file for you."

Not really. While you might use a GUI modler to make some of the 3D models, it's easier to do most of the stuff in the text files.

The easiest examples to demonstrate this that I can think of are the Povray Short Code Contest [swin.edu.au] Where 256-byte(!!!) programs make incredible 3D scenes including realistic landscapes, pottery collections, urban landscapes, jungles, red-blood-cell closeups, etc.

With a few more than 256 bytes of source code, you can do wonders. It's an amazing language.

Re:POV-Ray is for the Hardcore!

[geekychic]

Is Midnight Modeller still being developed? I remember using that quite a while back. I don't think that was much easier to use than the scripting language, though.

sPatch was a fun little program too - great for those organic shapes I couldn't script. I don't know how much help these programs are though -- it's been several years since I've done any raytracing.

Re:For one frame, cool

[dcuny]

RenderMan is very cool, but animation isn't an intrinsic feature. The program that does the animation magic at Pixar is called Marionette, and I've only seen a couple screenshots of it. The interface looks like a spreadsheet, but it's very powerful - there are all sorts of parameters the animators can adjust for pre-determined actions (roughly akin to morphs).

RenderMan itself is an implementation of the Reyes renderer ("Renders Everything You See"). First and foremost, it's a zBuffer rendering engine.

It had lots of really cool features - the ability to render tons of geometry without having to have the entire scene in memory, a very powerful shading language, the brilliant folks at Pixar pushing it to the limits...

Anyone remember "The Road to Point Reyes"? (A link to it would be appreciated; I can't seem to Google it).

These days, it's even got a raytracer built into it. (A moment of silence for ExLuna and BMRT, please).

It also helps to have folk like John Lassiter running the place, who's well grounded in "classical" animation.

Got Ya Beat

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm one of the 2 original developers of POV-Ray. Originally, it was called DKBTrace. I actually coined the name "POV" for it, and did the initial port to IBM-PC from Amiga, as well as wrote the orginal display preview routines and many of the internal textures.

When I co-developed POV-Ray, I did it on a 20 Mhz 286, with a '287, That right, a 286!! It had about 8 MB of extended memory. It ran 4 60 GB Full-height 5-1/4" MFM Hard Drives - 2 with an old XT controller and the main 2 with the standard AT controller. The VGA card had just been introduced and we needed more colorful apps badly!

A simple test trace of a sphere and checkerboard would take 2-4 hours. A moderately complex scene would take 2-3 DAYS at 640x480 and AA on.

POV-Ray was developed between the two of us over the period of about 3 years, transferring files via MODEM at 2400 baud back and forth. A friend set us up a Raytracing BBS to distribute it, called "You Can Call Me RAY". Eventually, Compuserve gave us a complimentary development area to use there (and that was back when they were charging $$$ by the MINUTE, that was nice of them!).

After 5 yars of intense development, the original author and I burned out and let the current group continue to develop and distribute the program. All this was several years before "The Internet" became a thing. It is really gratifiying to see what some of the true artists have done with "my baby".

Tutorials

[Rydain]

This Blender User Interface Tutorial [blender3d.com] demonstrates the basics of the interface, even explaining how to create the 4-pane view you speak of. There are a slew of other tutorials on that same site as well.

Re:only 10 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's 18 years old. David buck originally developed DKBTrace in 1986 and I did the first PC port and called it POV-Ray in 1987. The website, povray.org [povray.org] is what is having the 10 year anniversary.

Re:Give parent mod points

[Anonymous Coward]

Hehe... Well, I guess this is a Slashdot exclusive; it's been a long asked and wondered about question. It's Persistence of Vision. It was named in homage to my favorite Salvador Dali painting, "The Persistence of Memory", the one with the melting clocks. There, now you have it, the real story.

It was later pointed out to me that it was a nice double entendre for "Point of View" as well. We were worried maybe the TV show "POV" might get mad (well, not really). Actually, there was another copyrighted program called POV. I can't remember exactly was it was for, but it wasn't rendering or visualization, but that's why we called it "POV-Ray" instead of just "POV".

POV-Ray is user friendly

[j1m+5n0w]

Once you get used to the language, it's not that hard to make good looking, complicated stuff. Povray has dozens of built in geometric primitives, CSG support (you can subtract objects from each other), loops, and macros (which can be invoked recursively to generate things like trees). Some things are easier to make in a gui modeller, but many things are actually easier to code directly.

Here's something I've been working on [ogi.edu]. It's all code except for one of the textures and the Jolly Roger on the boat.

-jim

povray.org is 10 years

[Anonymous Coward]

The program is older. It's been ten years since they registered povray.org

"It was ten years ago today - on 18 August 1994 - that the POVRAY.ORG domain

was registered. We've been on the internet continuously since then. Back in
those days it was fairly unusual for a free software project to have its own
domain and/or server and the logistics of setting one up were entirely different
than they are now." -- Chris Cason

Amigas Rock!

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot Mods. This is fact is EXACTLY ON TOPIC!!

DKBTrace was the forerunner to POV-Ray. It was originally programmed on an Amiga and ported to the IBM-PC second. After it became POV-Ray, the Amiga was the first back-port. Give the man (?) a cigar, he's right. Also, one of the first file import conversion utilities written for it was for Sculpt-3D. Right Again!

Re:Yafray

[SLi]

The parent post does make some sense, though I'd agree it's a flamebait in such a terse form without elaboration.

From Open Source point of view, POV-Ray is problematic. Technically it is not Open Source; for example, commercial distribution is not allowed. One of the most misunderstood and most important strengths of OSS is the ability to use in any kind of settings, including commercial, military, etc. For example Apache would never have become popular if its license forbade using it for commercial purposes.

Also your right to modify it and distribute your modifications (this includes using parts of it in a new open source program) are severely limited.

Re:For one frame, cool

[WWWWolf]

I love the idea of hobbyist software, but would love to have truly professional power in it. Does Povray have the same capabilities as Photoshop?

Well, as others pointed out, Photoshop isn't quite the same thing. What you're looking for is a comparison to other big commercial rendering tools.

What I can say is that PoV-Ray is definitely just as good as any pro renderer. I think the only bad thing about it is that the scene description language is their own doing, definitely not compatible with anything else - you need a modeller (or converter) that specifically supports PoV-Ray. There's no modeller with the package either, so you need to stick with something that you know and has exporter or direct support for PoV-Ray. That said, the language is extremely versatile too, you can do very impressive things if you tweak the code before feeding it to PoV-Ray. And with complex enough scenes, the output is definitely comparable to commercial pro renderers - just take a look at the hall of fame pictures linked in the article.

Not photo-free, though.

[Chazmati]

Ive seen this image. It's great. I never saw accusations of the entire image being a photograph, the comments [irtc.org] were more like

"What city did you take this photograph in? (:"

The author, however, describes the process here [irtc.org], and you soon realize that many photographs were as texture maps to make it.

...The bird is an image map with an alpha channel put on a box...

...The first building on the left is derived from pictures I took from a real one in New York. It is pure CSG (with some help of my windows macro), textured with an image map painted directly on an orthographic view of the model. The second building on the left is made of a CSG frame textured with 30 different small image maps of windows and wall panes (scanned from a photo)...

...The street lamps and traffic lights are a mix of CSG constructs and sPatch models. The shapes, sizes and proportions were (clumsily) derived from several detailed photos. The "Don't walk" image is a photo of the real thing. The signs are photos of real NYC signs, heavily retouched and sometimes
rewritten...

Not that any of this diminishes the artistic and technical ability of the author to 'put it all together' and produce an excellent image. If I could be so talented. :)

Re:I'm confused

[grumbel]

Easy, they didn't. Stuff like trees, grass and landscape can be generated with fractals and macros of course, but when it comes to humans, special textures or other kinds of objects that you can't easily express via scripting they fall back to textures taken from photos, 3d modeles, modeled in 3dmax, Poser or wherever and other stuff outside of Povray. Povray is than of course used to link anything back together and render the final image, but Povray is by no means the only application that played a role in creating the final image.

That said, there are of course also a lot amazing images that are 100% done in Povray, but as said, that is than more done with fractals and stuff, than 'modeled'.

As an example see the Making of 'The wet bird' [oyonale.com]