Hard Light Productions Forums

Off-Topic Discussion => Arts & Talents => Topic started by: Petrarch of the VBB on June 20, 2002, 01:05:13 pm

Title: POVRAY, tutorials?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on June 20, 2002, 01:05:13 pm

Having downloaded and used MLCAD, I now want to render my creations with povray. So I downloaded it at school (broadband you see) and installed it. However, I was highly confused by what I saw, a load of files and not one recognisable exe! (bear in mind that I was rushing this as if you are seen doing anything vaguely useful you are put on jankers for a year) So how do I use POVRAY with MLCAD?

Title: POVRAY, tutorials?
Post by: Nico on June 20, 2002, 01:12:20 pm

POV... talk about a big step back in time lol. you almost need a programming license to use that. but maybe some ancient elder around remembers how the thing works... maybe

Title: POVRAY, tutorials?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on June 20, 2002, 01:14:21 pm

Oh, that bad is it? Then what else can I use to render MLCAD stuff?

Title: POVRAY, tutorials?
Post by: an0n on June 20, 2002, 01:14:26 pm

All I could ever figure out was how to make a really crappy sphere. Does it even have a proper UI? Far as I can remember it only lets you do stuff through changing tables of parameters and a command line.

Title: POVRAY, tutorials?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on June 20, 2002, 01:17:27 pm

I read in PCFormat (in 1995, ahem) that it can take data from things like truespace and other design progs.

Title: POVRAY, tutorials?
Post by: an0n on June 20, 2002, 01:18:46 pm

Quote

Originally posted by Petrarch of th VBB
I read in PCFormat (in 1995, ahem) that it can take data from things like truespace and other design progs.

Think of it as you would 3D Exploration. It can open just about anything from that era but changing stuff is pretty much impossible.

Title: POVRAY, tutorials?
Post by: Nico on June 20, 2002, 01:23:20 pm

oh, no, you can  do a lot of stuff. but there's NO UI ( you wanted one, you had to get MORAY ). It'll all scripting.
Btw, it's at least 10 years old, and probably older in fact.

Title: POVRAY, tutorials?
Post by: mikhael on June 20, 2002, 01:59:38 pm

You want a UI on a pure raytracer? :lol: You'll want to grab MORAY, as Venom said, else you'll be building all your stuff from raw mathematical functions.

POVray's been around since before I started college, so you're looking at... oh... at least 10 years old. A short Google Groups search reveals that v1.0 came out in 1992, so figure that there were at least two, maybe four years of >1.0 releases.

Title: POVRAY, tutorials?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on June 21, 2002, 04:40:30 am

Well, what else can I use for rendering MLCAD stuff?

Title: POVRAY, tutorials?
Post by: wEvil on June 21, 2002, 04:53:33 am

Well....i'd take a look at BMRT if you have the option to export to a RIB (which most programs do, as RIB is the most prevalent 3D format...ever)

www.exluna.com

BMRT is fairly advanced and does radiosity and displacement mapping, albeit pretty bloody slowly.

Its nowhere near as good as Entropy or PRman, but since both those cost a few thousand each processor you won't be looking at them ;)

Title: POVRAY, tutorials?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on June 21, 2002, 01:50:58 pm

What is everyone else using? If you look on brickshelf, there are loads of rendered MLCAD models, someone who did them or knows about them please reply!

Title: POVRAY, tutorials?
Post by: Corhellion on June 23, 2002, 12:14:09 pm

www.ldraw.org

Go to downloads and then download L3lab, and L3p and L3pao

You need all those to make rendered ships, trust me, I have them all.

*watches Rose Red, GOOOOOOOD scary movie :yes: :yes: :yes: *

Well, hope that helped Petrarch!

Cya

Title: POVRAY, tutorials?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on June 25, 2002, 01:12:18 pm

I hope it helps, too.

BTW, I have got quite skilled at it now, I will post some shots on my site.

Link to my dodgy site (http://www.grahambeverley.freewebspace.com)