Path: news1.ucsd.edu!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!swrinde!news.sgi.com!enews.sgi.com!decwrl!tribune.usask.ca!rover.ucs.ualberta.ca!news.ucalgary.ca!adilger From: adilger@enel.ucalgary.ca (Andreas Dilger) Newsgroups: comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing,comp.answers,news.answers Subject: comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing FAQ (part 1/2) Supersedes: Followup-To: comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing Date: 2 Sep 1996 05:25:53 GMT Organization: ECE Department, U. of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada Lines: 1083 Sender: adilger@enel.ucalgary.ca (Andreas Dilger) Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.EDU Expires: 28 Sep 1996 05:27:34 GMT Message-ID: Reply-To: adilger@enel.ucalgary.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: adilger@munet-d.enel.ucalgary.ca Summary: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about raytracing software on comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing Keywords: FAQ ray tracing POV-Ray Precedence: bulk Xref: news1.ucsd.edu comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing:9704 comp.answers:16138 news.answers:64597 Archive-name: graphics/raytrace-faq/part1 Last-modified: 1996/06/28 Posting-Frequency: every 10 days "But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: 'It's clever but is it art?'" Rudyard Kipling _The_Conundrum_of_the_Workshops_ This is the comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) List. It's not the most definitive ray tracing reference you'll ever come across, but then, it was never meant to be. What it does set out to do is to answer some of the questions which keep cropping up on c.g.r.r and to give pointers to other references. It keeps the noise down on the group and we get to spend an extra 10 minutes in bed. This is a Good Thing. It was originally cobbled together by Andy Wardley, , from answers posted to c.g.r.r (actually from when it was c.g.r), from information people have supplied and from other existing ray tracing lists and references, most notably, Eric Haines' Ray Tracing News and other lists. Since the spring of 1995, I have taken over the maintenance of the FAQ. You may distribute this document to whoever, or wherever you like, as long as you keep the copyright message and give correct attributions for material used. This is just to stop nasty people with a substantial lack of moral fibre from taking the document and fobbing it off as their own. The FAQ belongs to the group, Andy just wrote it (and I update it). Lines with a + in the first column have been added or changed recently. If you think that parts of the FAQ are outdated, or need improvement, please feel free to send me your updates, and I will try to maintain and update it, as time permits. Authors of utilities should definitely send updated descriptions if they feel their tool has improved since this was written. The latest version of this FAQ is available via WWW at: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/bngusenet/top.html under comp->graphics->rendering->raytracing. It is also available via anonymous ftp at: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/raytrace-faq/ If you only have email, you can get it by sending email to: with both "send usenet/news.answers/graphics/raytrace-faq/part1" and "send usenet/news.answers/graphics/raytrace-faq/part2" in the body of the message (without the quotes). And if you're only reading this document because your machine is locked up tracing, remember that all things come to those who wait. Andreas Dilger (C) Copyright 1994 Andy Wardley (C) Copyright 1995, 1996 Andreas Dilger ------------------------------ Subject: Table of Contents What is Ray Tracing? 1 - Ray Tracing Software 1.1 - POV-Ray 1.2 - Polyray 1.3 - Vivid (including BOB) 1.4 - Rayshade 1.5 - Radiance and ADELINE 1.6 - Others 1.7 - Non-Ray Tracing Software 2 - FTP Sites, Web Sites, Bulletin Boards, etc. 2.1 - FTP Sites 2.2 - Bulletin Board Systems 2.3 - Mailing Lists 2.4 - Others 3 - Modelling Software 3.1 - SCED 3.2 - POVLAB 3.3 - MORAY 3.4 - GUM 3.5 - Other Modellers 4 - Utilities and Other Software 4.1 - Image Display/Conversion Programs 4.2 - Format Conversion Utilities 4.3 - Creation Creators 4.4 - Texture Editors 4.5 - Animation 4.6 - Miscellaneous Utilities 5 - Further Information and Resources 5.1 - On-line Resources 5.2 - Other Newsgroups 5.3 - Books 5.4 - Image Libraries 5.5 - Texture Libraries 5.6 - Ray Tracing Competition 6 - Frequently Asked Questions 6.1 - "Who is..." 6.2 - "This picture doesn't trace." 6.3 - "I traced my picture, but I can't see anything." 6.4 - "I traced my picture, but the output is garbage." 6.5 - "How can I view these pictures?" 6.6 - "Rotating/Scaling this object doesn't work properly." 6.7 - "Where can I find model data for..." 6.9 - "Can I post binaries/images to this group?" 6.9 - "What does this mean..." 6.10 - "What is the difference between rendering and ray-tracing?" 6.11 - "When will POV-Ray 3.0 come out?" 6.12 - "Where are the .inc files for POV-Ray?" 7 - Roll The Credits... ------------------------------ Subject: What is Ray Tracing? Ray Tracing, in a one-line description, is a method that allows you to create stunning photo-realistic images on a computer. All you need is a computer, some ray tracing software, a little imagination and some patience. The first stage of creating this masterpiece is to "describe" what it is that you want to depict in your picture. You may do this using an interactive modelling system, like a CAD package, or by creating a text file that has a programming language-like syntax to describe the elements. Either way, you will be specifying what objects are in your imaginary world, what shape they are, where they are, what colour and texture they have and where the light sources are to illuminate them. Having done all of this, you feed it into your ray tracer, sit back and wait. And wait... That's the main drawback of ray tracing - it's not fast. The software actually mathematically models the light rays as they bounce around this virtual world, reflecting, refracting and generally having a good time until they end up in the lense of your imaginary camera. This can quite literally involve thousands and millions of floating-point calculations and this takes time. Tracing images can take anything from a few minutes to many days. It's a long process, I know, but the results can make it all worth while. Ray tracing isn't the only method for creating photo-realistic pictures. There are packages like 3D Studio which uses scanline rendering, Radiance, which uses radiosity, and so on. Although these don't count as ray tracing, the methods you use from one system to the next are often sufficiently similar to warrant their discussion in this group. So if you think it's relevant, feel free to bring it up. These systems will be mentioned in a little more detail later on. ------------------------------ Subject: 1 - Ray Tracing Software ------------------------------ Subject 1.1 - POV-Ray The Persistance of Vision Ray Tracer (POV-Ray) is an all-round excellent package, but there are two things that particularly make it stand out above the rest of the crowd. Firstly, it's free, and secondly, the source is distributed so you can compile it on virtually any platform. It's without doubt the most used package among the comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing crowd and well worth checking out if you haven't already. POV-Ray is based on David Buck's original ray tracer, DKB-Trace and has been (and still is) developed and supported by a whole crowd of people on CompuServe Graphics Developers' Forum (GO GRAPHDEV). The latest version currently available is 2.2, however, the long awaited release of POV-Ray 3.0 is near. It is currently in a public beta testing stage, after having undergone a lengthy private alpha and beta testing following nearly two years of modifications and enhancements. See http://www.povray.org/ for more information. There are now three official distribution sites for POV-Ray. ftp://ftp.povray.org/ [192.216.222.14] the main site in North America. ftp://alfred.ccs.carleton.ca/ [134.117.1.1] an alternare site. ftp://uniwa.uwa.edu.au/ [130.95.128.1] for the Southern Hemisphere. There is also a growing list of sites that mirror all or part of ftp.povray.org (see 2 - FTP Sites, Web Sites, Bulletin Boards, etc.). The files that make up the DOS version of POV-Ray are: - povsrc-2.2.zip Source files for compiling POV-Ray yourself. - povdoc-2.2.zip Documentation - povscn-2.2.zip Sample scenes - povibm-2.2.exe Runtime binary for IBM PC systems. There are also official executables available for Amiga, Linux, and MacOS, as well as unofficial executables for MacPPC, DEC Alpha, DEC OSF, HP, FreeBSD, SGI, RS/6000, SunOS, and RiscOS. If your system is not in this list, it is recommended that you use the generic Unix sources for compiling POV-Ray. You can also find the above archives packaged in different formats or binaries for other platforms. If you have access to several networked computers and a compiler, it is possible to have POV-Ray render using multiple CPUs using the PVM system of distributed computing. More information is at: http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/povray/pvmpov.html There is a large collection of software related to POV-Ray available on the Raytrace! CD-ROM from Walnut Creek. This includes modellers, viewers, utility programs, scene files, and rendered images. For For your browsing pleasure, you can have a look at almost the whole contents of the CD-ROM at http://www.povray.org/pov-cdrom/ ------------------------------ Subject 1.2 - Polyray The program Polyray is a rendering program for producing scenes of 3D shapes and surfaces. The means of description range from standard primitives like box, sphere, etc. to 3 variable polynomial expression, and finally (and slowest of all) surfaces containing transcendental functions like sin, cos, log. Polyray supports rendering in a number of different modes: Raytracing, Zbuffered polygon rendering (fully textures or Gourad shaded), wireframe and hidden line, and raw triangles (as ASCII output, one tri per line). The texturing in Polyray is not limited to a few predefined styles - you can use mathematical expressions to modify any part of the shading. If you find Polyray valuable and can afford it, the registration cost is $35.00. Note that the version available online is the complete thing. Polyray is not crippled in any way, nor are there any annoying nag screens. The extended DOS version of Polyray is available at: ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/polyray/ UNIX versions are available at: http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/~leitner/grafik/polyray.html (binaries for: HP-UX, Linux, FreeBSD, Sun OS 4&5, SGI/IRIX 4&5) ------------------------------ Subject 1.3 - Vivid (including BOB) Vivid is a shareware ray tracer for IBM PC's by Stephen Coy . Version 2, the current publicly available version, is available from several FTP sites as vivid2.zip. Version 3 is expected soon (I expect it is already available [AED]). Compared to POV-Ray, Vivid doesn't have as many features, but in many cases it can run faster. Source code isn't available, so the package is limited to systems which can run DOS executables. Stephen Coy, Christopher Watkins and Mark Finlay co-authored a book on Ray Tracing called "Photorealism and Ray Tracing in C". Distributed free with the book was an example ray tracer called BOB. This was actually a cut down version of Vivid which did include source. (see also 5 - Further Information and Resources). ------------------------------ Subject 1.4 - Rayshade Rayshade is a free ray tracing package originally developed in 1988 by Craig Kolb , David Dobkin, and David Hoffman for unix/X11, but it has since been ported to several platforms and re-written and improved several times since. Several non-UNIX ports are available, including DOS, Amiga, Mac, and OS/2. This is the program often used by universities for teaching ray-tracing and as a result, it is often also used for research on rendering and object generation. Because of its extensibility, there are a large number of user-contributed additions and modifications to the base renderer. This means that many incredible images and ideas saw first "light" under Rayshade. The image gallery at the Rayshade Homepage can bear witness to this statement. The "official" ftp and WWW sites are located at: ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/Graphics/rayshade/ ftp://graphics.stanford.edu/pub/rayshade/ http://www-graphics.stanford.edu/~cek/rayshade/rayshade.html There are (at least) two programs to distribute rayshade traces over multiple machines. One is called inetray, the other raynet, available at: ftp://maggia.ethz.ch/pub/inetray/ ftp://mars.sapham.debis.de/pub/raynet/ ------------------------------ Subject 1.5 - Radiance and ADELINE Radiance is a free Unix software package that adopts a radiosity- type approach to lighting simluation. A MS-DOS version is now available as part of the ADELINE 1.0 software package for a site license fee from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Greg Ward , discusses Radiance here: "I've spent the past ten or so years developing a ray-tracing program for lighting simulation and rendering called Radiance. Although it doesn't use the typical finite-element/form-factor approach of radiosity programs, it does compute what they compute plus some. Specifically, Radiance computes diffuse, specular and directional- diffuse reflection and transmission in arbitrarily complicated environments. Here is a short description: Radiance is a suite of programs for the analysis and visualization of lighting in design. Input files specify the scene geometry, materials, luminaires, time, date and sky conditions (for daylight calculations). Calculated values include spectral radiance (ie. luminance & color), irradiance (illuminance & color) and glare indices. Simulation results may be displayed as color images, numerical values and contour plots. The primary advantage of Radiance over simpler lighting calculation and rendering tools is that there are no limitations on the geometry or the materials that may be simulated. Radiance is used by architects and engineers to predict illumination, visual quality and appearance of innovative design spaces, and by researchers to evaluate new lighting and daylighting technologies. Radiance has been written up in many technical and non-technical articles in various journals and magazines. Most recently, a Radiance-generated image appeared on the cover of the 1992 Siggraph Proceedings. There are hundreds of happy Radiance users world-wide, including public and private research institutions as well as engineering and architecture firms. I guess that's all I can think of to say about it at the moment..." -Greg The Unix version of the software is free, in source code, runs on most UNIX/X11 platforms (including Linux), and is available in source form: ftp://hobbes.lbl.gov/ [128.3.12.38] in California and ftp://nestor.epfl.ch/ [128.178.139.3] in Switzerland. The Radiance WWW home page can be found at: http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/HOME.html A version of Radiance for MS-DOS is available as part of a software package called ADELINE. ADELINE is being distributed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for a site-license fee of $450.00 US. For detailed information, please browse: http://radsite.lbl.gov/adeline/HOME.html An ftp site with basic information and an order form is available at: ftp://hobbes.lbl.gov/pub/adeline for PC to: ------------------------------ Subject 1.6 - Others There are many other ray tracing packages available; ART, DKBtrace, RTrace, RAY4, MTV, QRT, and DBW for instance, and some for parallel tracing: XDART, RRLib, prt, and VM_pRAY. Eric Haines' Ray Tracing News (see 5 - Further Information and Resources), or the comp.graphics.misc FAQ for more info. The Blue Moon Rendering Tools (BMRT) is of special note because it is a shareware ray-tracing and radiosity implementation of Pixar's Renderman language. This was written by Larry Gritz as a student and he is, not surprisingly, working for Pixar now. For more info look at: http://www.seas.gwu.edu/student/gritz/bmrt.html ------------------------------ Subject 1.7 - Non-Ray Tracing Software * Pixar's Photo-Realistic Renderman Because of the excellent and sophisticated techniques used in PRMan, many people think that it is a ray tracer, when in fact PRMan is a scanline based software package. PRMan is the grand-daddy of all high-end rendering packages, and was the source of many of the techniques used in rendering software today. Pixar showcased their skills in short animations such as Tin Toy and Red's Dream. PRMan to animate the Walt-Disney feature film Toy Story. There is a newsgroup news:comp.graphics.rendering.renderman devoted to the discussion of all implementations of the Renderman language. * 3D Studio Autodesk's 3d Studio is an interactive 3d modelling, rendering and animation package for the IBM PC platform. It employs scanline rendering to achieve photo-realistic effects rather than ray-tracing. Because of this, it cannot do true shadows, reflections or refractions, but can, in many cases, simulate them accurately enough for most purposes. The package costs around $3000 or $1200 with the educational discount. There is a newsgroup for discussions on this package. news:comp.graphics.packages.3dstudio * Alias The newsgroup for this software is news:comp.graphics.apps.alias * Lightwave The newsgroup for this software is news:comp.graphics.apps.lightwave Note that there is also a group news:comp.graphics.rendering.misc for the discussion of general rendering issues. ------------------------------ Subject: 2 - FTP Sites, Web Sites, Bulletin Boards, etc. ------------------------------ Subject 2.1 - FTP Sites The following list details some of the main graphics related FTP sites, their maintainers (where known) and any other info. For a more complete list of FTP sites, see the list by Eric Haines and Nick Fotis from which much of the following has been taken. * ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/ [128.252.135.4] George Kyriazis A huge repository of graphics stuff, particulary: - /graphics/graphics - get CONTENTS file. - /graphics/graphics/objects/TDDD - the TDDD objects and converters. - /mirrors/unix-c/graphics - Rayshade, MTV, Vort, FBM, PBMPLUS, etc. - /mirrors/msdos/graphics - DKB ray tracer, FLI RayTracker demos. - /graphics/graphics/mirrors - mirrors many sites. - /pub/rad.tar.Z - SGI_RAD. - /graphics/graphics/radiosity - Radiance and Indian packages. - /systems/ibmpc/msdos/graphics - loads of PC graphics stuff. * ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de/ [134.106.1.9] Frank Neumann Another good site for ray tracing, particulary POV-Ray. - /pub/pov-ray - get INDEX for full details - /pub/pov-ray/conv - format converters - /pub/pov-ray/edit - graphical editors - /pub/pov-ray/ext - source extensions - /pub/pov-ray/gen - data file generators - /pub/pov-ray/misc - other tools, ray tracers, etc. - /pub/pov-ray/new - uploads - /pub/pov-ray/obj - objects - /pub/pov-ray/pack - compression - /pub/pov-ray/pix - pictures - /pub/pov-ray/scen - scenes - /pub/pov-ray/text - text articles - /pub/pov-ray/view - viewers - /pub/pov-ray/pbin - unofficial POV binaries * ftp://ftp.povray.org/ [192.216.222.14] http://www.povray.org/ [192.216.222.14] Christopher Cason This has become the primary site for POV-Ray. It contains a large number of POV-Ray utilities, executables, and scenes. This site has also grown to have a mirror of avalon.vislab.navy.mil (see below), as well as polyray and rayshade. - /pub/povray/Hall-Of_Fame - incredible ray-traced images - /pub/povray/Official - official sources and executables - /pub/povray/Ray-Tracing-News - archive of Eric Haines' newsletter - /pub/povray/animation - animations created with POV-Ray - /pub/povray/ezine - a magazine about POV-Ray - /pub/povray/fonts - font utilities - /pub/povray/modellers - CAD packages for creating scene files - /pub/povray/objects - a collection of POV objects - /pub/povray/scenes - complete POV-Ray scene files - /pub/povray/unofficial - modifications and executables by others - /pub/povray/utilities - tools and programs to make life easier - /pub/competition - images from old monthly ray-tracing competition - /pub/irtc - images from new bi-monthly ray-tracing competition - /pub/mirrors/avalon - mirror of avalon.vislab.navy.mil (Objects) - /pub/polyray - Polyray source files - /pub/rayshade - Rayshade source files Due to increasing demand for better access, ftp.povray.org now has several mirror sites around the world. ftp://alfred.ccs.carleton.ca/ (Official) [134.117.1.1] ftp://uniwa.uwa.edu.au/ (Official) [130.95.128.1] ftp://sunsite.wits.ac.za/pub/mirrors/ [146.141.15.214] http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/mirrors/ [128.252.135.4] ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/mirrors/ [128.252.135.4] ftp://plaza.aarnet.edu.au/graphics/graphics/mirrors/ [139.130.23.2] ftp://ftp.shu.ac.uk/pub/computing/packages/raytrace/ [143.52.20.24] http://www.hensa.ac.uk/ftp/mirrors/povray/ [129.12.200.129] ftp://www.hensa.ac.uk/ftp/mirrors/povray/ [129.12.200.129] http://ftp.nectec.or.th/pub/mirrors/ray-tracing/ [192.150.251.33] ftp://ftp.nectec.or.th/pub/mirrors/ray-tracing/ [192.150.251.33] ftp://ftp.etsimo.uniovi.es/pub/raytrace/ [156.35.23.24] ftp://ftp.tu-clausthal.de/pub/mirror/povray/ [139.174.2.10] The POV-Ray CD-ROM from Walnut Creek Raytrace! is now available online. Check it out at: http://www.povray.org/pov-cdrom/ * ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/ [128.112.128.1] Craig Kolb Home of Rayshade, and other graphics tid-bits. - /pub/Graphics/GraphicsGems - source code from Graphics Gems books - /pub/Graphics/URT - Utah Raster Toolkit - /pub/Graphics/SPD - Standard Procedural Database - /pub/Graphics/rayshade - rayshade source code - /pub/Graphics/RTNews - Ray Tracing News - /pub/Graphics/Papaers - ray tracing papers, bibliographies * ftp://avalon.viewpoint.com/ [204.212.34.3] http://www.viewpoint.com/ [204.212.34.10] Webmaster Avalon was created to be a 3D object "repository" for the net. 3D objects (multiple formats), utilities, and file format documents are only part of what is available here. Since July 1995, Avalon has been run by Viewpoint, a commercial 3D model vendor, but they insist that the Avalon models will still be available for free to all. This site is also mirrored by (among others): http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/mirrors/avalon/ ftp://sunsite.wits.ac.za/pub/mirrors/ftp.povray.org/mirrors/avalon/ * http://cedar.cic.net/~rtilmann/mm/ [192.131.22.3] Webmaster Meshmart is a repository of 3D objects in a variety of formats. Not only does meshmart have objects available, they also have objects on consignment as well as an "objects wanted" area. * ftp://hobbes.lbl.gov/ [128.3.12.38] http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/HOME.html [128.3.12.33] Greg Ward Official distribution site for Radiance ray trace/radiosity package. * ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/ [128.32.35.31] - /pub/graphics/mm/encode - MPEG encoding software - /pub/graphics/mm/play - MPEG decoding/display software * ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/ [18.70.0.209] http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/bngusenet/top.html [164.107.8.52] - /pub/usenet/news.answers - the land of FAQs. ------------------------------ Subject 2.2 - Bulletin Board Systems The following list details some Bulletin Boards Systems dedicated to graphics and, in particular Ray Tracing. At the end of the section there is a list of BBS'es of PCGNet (Professional CAD and Graphics Network) kindly provided by Bjorn-Kare Nilssen This list may be out of date at the time of printing. If you know one of the boards here no longer works please let me know. * The Graphics Alternative TGA is heavily orientated around Ray Tracing, 3D Rendering, Modelling and Animation. It's the official support BBS for Vivid and has an extensive library of utilities, programs, source and images built up by its 1300+ users. Location: El Cerrito, CA, USA. Sysop: Adam Shiffman Data: (510) 524-2780 (PM14400FXSA v.32bis 14.4k, Public) (510) 524-2165 (USR DS v.32bis/HST 14.4k, Subscribers) WWW: http://www.tgax.com/ * Pi Squared On the East Coast of the USA is Pi Squared. Alfonso Hermida is the sysop and he is the creator of POVCAD. All the latest POV files available as well as support for his own products. Location: Maryland, USA. Sysop: Alfonso Hermida (CIS: 72114,2060) Data: (301) 725-9080 (14.4K, 24hrs) * The Tackle Box A huge BBS dedicated to POV-Ray with hundreds of modelling utilities, source, pictures and animations. 2 GIG online, 24 hours a day. Walnut Creek "RayTrace!" CD ROM is now loaded with 200 file areas. The first month is 100% FREE with subscription. Location: Edmond, Oklahoma, USA. Sysop: Neil Clark Data: (405) 359-3301 (14.4K, N/8/1, 24hrs) WWW: http://www.ionet.net/~clark/ (Files available for ftp) * The New Graphics BBS A graphics specific system for those interested in 3D, objects, image processing, animation, MPEG, JPEG, GIF, file formats, etc. Knowledge Media "Graphics 1" CD-ROM available, 645 Mb "MultiMedia" CD online shortly. Location: ? Sysop: Bob Lindabury Data: (908) 469-0049 (14.4K, 24hrs) * The Graphics Emporium BBS A BBS for the graphics professional and hobbyist to exchange ideas, information and creativity. Not dedicated to any one platform. Location: Redondo Beach, CA, USA. Sysop: ? Data: (310) 374-8805 * Windows World BBS Specializing in DOS/MS-Windows based ray tracing, mathematics, stock market technical analysis and also the latest CICA Windows CDs (1 gig). No fees and free access. Requires MS-Windows 3.1 and the Excalibur(tm) client communications program to access the BBS. It is down-loadable on the first call. Location: Dayton, OH, USA Sysop: H. Lawrence Rowe (hrowe@erinet.com) Data: (513) 866-8181 (V.22-V.34, 24hrs) * Boards of the Professional CAD and Graphics Network USA and Canada ------------------------------------------------------------------- SAUG BBS Bellevue WA 206-644-7115 Joes CODE BBS West Bloomfield MI 810-855-0894 Engineering Services Atlanta GA 404-325-0122 Autodesk Global Village Sausalito CA 415-289-2270 The Graphics Alternative El Cerrito CA 510-524-2780 PC-AUG Phoenix AZ 602-952-0638 Convergence Spline BBS Richmond BC 604-275-3462 Graphicly Speaking Langley BC 604-534-2954 Tern Solution BBS Ottawa ON 613-228-0539 Canis Major Nashville TN 615-385-4268 CAD Engineering Services Hendersonville TN 615-822-2539 The Virtual Dimension Oceanside CA 619-722-0746 The Drawing Board BBS Anchorage AL 907-349-5412 The University Shrewsbury Twp NJ 908-544-8193 France ------------------------------------------------------------------- CAD Connection Montesson 33-1-39529854 Zyllius BBS! Saint Paul 33-93320505 United Kingdom ------------------------------------------------------------------- Raytech BBS Tain, UK 44-1862-832020 The Missing Link Surrey, England 44-81-641-8593 CADenza BBS Leicester, UK 44-533-596725 New Zealand ------------------------------------------------------------------- The Graphics Connection Wellington 64-4-566-8450 Australia ------------------------------------------------------------------- The Baud Room Melbourne 61-3-481-6873 Sydney PCUG Compaq New South Wales 61-2-540-1842 My Computer Company Erskineville 61-2-557-1489 Slovenia ------------------------------------------------------------------- MicroArt Koper 386-66-34986 Germany ------------------------------------------------------------------- NEWS BBS Duesseldorf 49-211-680-1458 The Netherlands old number new number ------------------------------------------------------------------- BBS_Bennekom: Fractal Board Bennekom 31-8389-15331 31-318-415331 CAD-BBS Amsterdam 31-3402-90287 31-30-6090287 Foundation One Baarn 31-2154-22143 31-35-5422143 Some of the above may require additional country or long-distance codes. ------------------------------ Subject 2.3 - Mailing Lists Listed below is a selection of mailing lists related to graphics and/or ray tracing. If I haven't included specific details on subscription, it's because I don't know. Best bet is to send a "help" message. * POV-Ray Called the dkb-list for historical reasons (POV-Ray was based on David Buck's "DKBTrace"), the list exists for users of POV-Ray and associated products, on all platforms. Subscription: listserv%TREARN.BITNET@vm.gmd.de Body Text: subscribe dkb-l Posting: DKB-L%TREARN.BITNET@listserv.gmd.de * Rayshade Mailing list for Rayshade users, mainly on UNIX platforms. Subscription: rayshade-users-request@cs.princeton.edu Posting: rayshade-users@cs.princeton.edu Archive: ftp://graphics.stanford.edu/pub/rayshade/rayshade-users/ * Radiance Greg Ward, the author of Radiance has a distribution list of all users. Register with him: greg@pink.lbl.gov * Imagine For users of the Imagine 3d rendering and animation package for the Amiga and, more recently, the IBM PC. Subscription: listserv@sjuvm.stjohns.edu Body Text: subscribe imagine Posting: imagine@sjuvm.stjohns.edu * Toaster This mailing list deals with the Video Toaster system for the Amiga. Subscription: toaster-request@bobsbox.rent.com Body Text: subscribe
toaster Posting: toaster@bobsbox.rent.com * Lightwave Lightwave is part of the suite of programs that come with the Video Toaster system for the Amiga. Subscription: lightwave-request@bobsbox.rent.com Body Text: subscribe
lightwave Posting: lightwave@bobsbox.rent.com * TrueSpace This is a mailing list for users of trueSpace, maintained by Shane Davison . Subscription: truespace-request@caligari.com Body Text: subscribe
truespace Posting: truespace@caligari.com * 3D Studio Autodesk's 3d modelling and rendering system for the IBM PC. Subscription: 3dstudio-request@bobsbox.rent.com Body Text: subscribe
3dstudio Posting: 3dstudio@bobsbox.rent.com ------------------------------ Subject 2.4 - Others * CompuServe The CompuServe Graphics Developers' Forum (GO GRAPHDEV) is the home of POV-Ray (multiple sections devoted to POV and POV images) as well as other development projects including fractals, animation and morphing. You can get information of joining CompuServe (in the US) by calling (800) 848-8990. CompuServe access is now available in other countries, including Japan and Europe. * America On-Line AOL also has a section (PCGRAPHICS) dedicated to POV-Ray support. ------------------------------ Subject: 3 - Modelling Software ------------------------------ Subject 3.1 - SCED SCED is a constraint based scene editor written by Stephen Chenney . Stephen also maintains a mailing list for bug reports, patches, and early notification of new releases. Sced is a scene modeller for UNIX and X. It runs on many UNIX platforms, including Linux. It is being distributed as source code. The latest version is always available at: http://http.cs.berkeley.edu/~schenney/sced/sced.html ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/modellers/sced/ ftp://ftp.cs.su.oz.au/stephen/sced/ An enhancement to SCED by Denis McLaughlin, called SCEDA, has all the features of SCED, but also adds support for keyframed animation. Animated objects have their position, rotation, and scale interpolated smoothly across multiple keyframes via a (modified) spline function. SCEDA is available at: ftp://ftp.cyberus.ca/pub/sceda/ You can find out more about SCEDA at: http://www.cyberus.ca/~denism/sceda/sceda.html. Feature List: * Cube, Cylinder, Cone, Plane, Sphere primitives. * Full support for CSG, including CSG wireframes that look like CSG objects. * A constraint based editing interface, which supports the accurate placement of object relative to other objects, and dynamic constraint maintenance. * Previewing using your favorite renderer. * Arbitrary, dynamic view of the scene. * Support for Radiance, RenderMan, POV-Ray, Rayshade, and VRML. * Target renderer specific attributes - allowing the full range of POV textures to be accessed, including the declaration of new textures and the inclusion of files. * Arbitrarily dense wireframes. * A simple input file format. * Support for arbitrary OFF format polygonal objects. * Automatic compression and decompression of files. * Spotlight and Area light sources. * Removal of many restrictions on the editing of CSG objects, including the ability to change the basic type of an object. * Lots of bug fixes. This version is now very stable under Linux and Solaris at least. The last very was regretably unstable. * Lots of small improvements to things like previewing, selection, handling of objects behind the eye and so on. Tutorials are provided to introduce use of the interface. The system has been tested on several platforms, and appears to be easy to port to different systems. It REQUIRES X11 Release 5. Note that POV 2.2 NEEDS TO BE PATCHED to use files created by SCED. Binaries will soon be available for Linux and Solaris. Binaries for other platforms are also desired. Planned in the future: * POV->Sced conversion program, for editing an old POV file. * Bezier patch and arbitrary wireframe support. ------------------------------ Subject 3.2 - POVLAB POVLAB is a freeware DOS based 3D graphic modeller for POV-Ray 3.0 written by Denis Olivier . Here's are some of its features: * Very very friendly to use (new style interface, never seen before !). * Plug-ins allow you to program you own object generators/animators. * Support for a lot of the new options in POV-Ray 3.0. * 4 viewports (left, front, top and camera), full viewport allowed. * Material & texture preview/editing, library management, add your own. * Real time camera, like 3D Studio does. * Use a real camera, based on the FOV in POV-Ray, including focal blur. * Normal/fast/boxed display, freezed/ignored objects, polygon heightfield. * Raw objects - sphere, box, cone, blobs, tube, torus, plane, ... * CSG (copy, merge, difference, union). * 3D TrueType fonts (thanks to Jean Arnaud). * Selection (rotation, scale, translate, copy, ...). * Deformation (matrix scale, translate and rotate based). * Lights : omni, spot, area light (color, shadows, on/off). * Atmospheric effects (fog, distance attenuation, atmosphere) * Built-in or external image viewers can be used. System requirements for POVLAB are floating point accelerator (387/487SX or 486/P5/P6), 8MB RAM (up to 32 MB virtual memory), 30MB disk space, mouse, and 16/256 color SVGA/VESA 1.2. It also works under OS/2 and Win95, and supports rendering with WinPOV. POVLAB images, tips, faq, plug-ins and more are available at: http://www.cyberstation.fr/~dolivier/povlab.html ------------------------------ Subject 3.3 - MORAY MORAY, by Lutz and Kretzschmar [CIS: 100023, 2006], is a shareware modeller for PC's that directly supports POV-Ray 2.x primitives and more. Registration is US $64 which will get you a protected mode version, allowing full memory usage, plus all the usual support and upgrade info. MORAY is a program with which you can design scenes for the POV-Ray raytracer to render. Contrary to normal scene design, with MORAY you design the scenes graphically. Up to now it was pretty difficult to imagine what the scene looked like, without laying it out on graph paper, or doing many test renders. MORAY is like a graph paper, it lets you place and change objects in wireframe while you see them. MORAY then generates the text file that POV needs to read. MORAY can thus also be used as a rapid prototype tool, to place objects quickly and write the scene file. You can then edit scene files to suit your needs, just like you have been doing up to now. MORAY stores and works with POV-Ray primitives, as opposed to normal CAD systems, which mostly convert all objects to triangle meshes or similar polygon based formats when outputting. This ensures optimum performance and image quality from the raytracer. If you're a POV enthusiast and have access to CompuServe you should check out the GRAPHDEV forum for the latest news and tips on using POV. The RayTracing conference on PCGnet also carries lots of tips for POV. The emphasis in designing MORAY was to be able to work as easily and as graphically as possible. Most of the work can be done with the mouse. Three 2D views and a 3D view of your scene are visible on screen. You can perform all transformations of the objects in the 2D views with the mouse. The 3D view shows what the current camera will see, i.e. how POV will raytrace it. MORAY allows you to: * scale, rotate and translate an object interactively * define cameras with which to view your scene * view the scene in wire frame as POV-Ray will raytrace it * specify the wire-frame complexity of on screen objects * graphically place a bounding box around an object * automatically create bounding boxes of any objects * make nested CSG or composite objects * assign textures from the TEXTURES.INC file to your objects * define a new texture from within MORAY * place imagemaps interactively on objects * manipulate the control points of a bezier patch to create shapes not easily created otherwise * create bezier patch meshes * create rotational, translational and tapering sweeps that are output as smooth triangles * copy complex nested objects * create multiple copies of an object transforming each independently * specify a region of the 3D view to render * call POV-Ray from within MORAY to render scenes Features new with MORAY 2.0 include: * A complete 100% Texture Editor for POV-Ray 2.2 with Preview. * Polyray V1.8 support and output of all scenes. * Faster, more streamlined (and more attractive) interface. * Fewer redraws and they're now interruptible. * Right-Mouse-button support. * New Sweep editors and types. * New Objects (Blobs, RAW triangles, User-defined objects). * Completely new File Handling. * Shallow and deep copies. * CSG evaluation. * Actual Heightfield display (for TGA). * Improved, more efficient output. * Freely definable viewports. * Manipulations in 3D views. * Spotlight views. * Multi-level Undo for major scene operations. MORAY requires at least a 386, a VGA card and a mouse, although this is not recommended. The minimum usable system for larger scenes would be a 486DX/25 and 4MB memory. The shareware version needs 2MB EMS, but this limitation is removed in the registered version, since it runs in protected mode. You need to have POV-Ray 2.0 or greater is needed to render the scene. ------------------------------ Subject 3.4 - GUM GUM is a solid and surface modeller that currently supports POV, Polyray and Rayce and runs in MS-Windows. The author is Lex van der Sluijs . GUM is DemoWare: the demo is yours and you have NO obligation to register whatsoever, but there is a limitation: only 50 objects can be saved. The price of the full program is f 150 (Dutch guilders) or about US$85. GUM stands for 'Grand Unified Modeller' which means two things: * It will never be done. * The fact that its internal data structure can accomodate all major object types, that is solids (implicit, b-rep), surfaces (parametric and polyhedral) and wireframe objects. (and yes, a layout of its C++ class hierarchy takes many pages). The current version is 0.91 (Jan 24th 1995), and can be found at: ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/modellers/gum/ CAD BBS Holland (+31-3402-90287) where it is a free file CompuServe, in the GRAPHDEV forum, thanks to Harry Rowe I won't list the list of supported objects here since that would become a bit long. Instead, some highlights: * CSG evaluation, (wireframe representation of CSG Differences) * 3D direct manipulation: 3D handles on objects like on the SGI * support for trimmed surfaces (trimmed with a solid, that is) Polyray can render these. * real-time pan and zoom (non-real-time also possible) * several renderers can be supported at once * relatively advanced texture- (and other types of declaration) handling, resulting in self-contained scene-files. * heightfield reading for Targa files: see what you're doing * Custom objects for external/not-yet-supported/huge objects * support for 'extra special' features via the Header dialog (timer variables, directional & textured lights, etc) * the ability to find all used files used in the scene * a robust RAW file reader * Object library feature: use objects from other GUM scenes * flexible FastDraw: Full, Skip(variable), Bounding Box. Static, during viewport change/object dragging (multiple-viewport too) * Automatic starting of the specified renderer, automatic starting of your favourite imageviewer when the image is done Some 'lowlights' (all of which will -naturally- be addressed): * cumbersome installation procedure * lack of sweeps * lack of blobs * cylinders, cones and paraboloids must be capped manually by intersecting them with discs System requirements: 386+387 @ 40 MHz with 4 Mb RAM. An 800x600 display is highly recommended, although 640x480 can be used. GUM plus one renderer takes about 6 Mb on your harddisk. Here are some frequently asked questions and their answers about GUM, but first there are two things that should be brought to your attention: * there's already a FAQ in the manual, see the Contents topic. The Q&A's here have popped up after the release of the program. * most questions about usage of the program can be eliminated if you do the Quick Start, also in GUM's help-file. Q: I get a list of warnings every time I try to render or save something, saying that some 'pages' could not be found. However, all these 'pages' are POV/Polyray/Rayce keywords, such as 'marble', 'green' and 'diffuse'. A: You need to move GUM.INI from GUM's directory to your WINDOWS directory. If it's not there, extract a fresh GUM.INI from GUM091EX.ZIP. In it are the keywords that have special meaning to programs like POV, and without the file GUM can't discern between references to other definitions (like using the normal 'Bumpy' in 'BumpyGlass') and keywords (such as 'red' and 'ior'). Q: When I try to start the program I get an error message saying that CTL3DV2.DLL is not correctly installed. A: More than one copy of this DLL could be found by MS-Windows, which is not allowed for this particular file, hence the cryptic error message. You should find the most recent copy of it on your system, move it to WINDOWS\SYSTEM and delete all others. ------------------------------ Subject 3.5 - Other Modellers * Blob Sculptor Blob Sculptor, by Alfonso Hermida, Steve Anger and Truman Brown allows you to model shapes using blob primitives. Output is to RAW, DXF, BLB (internal format), POV, Polyray, Rayshade and CTDS. In addition, the MS-Windows version, ported by Ronal Praver, supports NFF, VideoScape and others. NeXTStep and Open GL ports are expected soon. -- Andreas Dilger University of Calgary \"If a man ate a pound of pasta and (403) 220-8792 Micronet Research Group \ a pound of antipasto, would they Dept of Electrical & Computer Engineering \ cancel out, leaving him still http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/ hungry?" -- Dogbert ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Path: news1.ucsd.edu!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!swrinde!nntp.primenet.com!ddsw1!news.mcs.net!van-bc!unixg.ubc.ca!rover.ucs.ualberta.ca!news.ucalgary.ca!adilger From: adilger@enel.ucalgary.ca (Andreas Dilger) Newsgroups: comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing,comp.answers,news.answers Subject: comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing FAQ (part 1/2) Supersedes: Followup-To: comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing Date: 23 Sep 1996 06:30:29 GMT Organization: ECE Department, U. of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada Lines: 1140 Sender: adilger@enel.ucalgary.ca (Andreas Dilger) Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.EDU Expires: 19 Oct 1996 06:31:23 GMT Message-ID: Reply-To: adilger@enel.ucalgary.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: adilger@munet-d.enel.ucalgary.ca Summary: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about raytracing software on comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing Keywords: FAQ ray tracing rendering Precedence: bulk Xref: news1.ucsd.edu comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing:10051 comp.answers:16362 news.answers:65477 Archive-name: graphics/raytrace-faq/part1 Last-modified: 1996/07/19 Posting-Frequency: every 10 days "But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: 'It's clever but is it art?'" Rudyard Kipling _The_Conundrum_of_the_Workshops_ This is the comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) List. It's not the most definitive ray tracing reference you'll ever come across, but then, it was never meant to be. What it does set out to do is to answer some of the questions which keep cropping up on c.g.r.r and to give pointers to other references. It keeps the noise down on the group and we get to spend an extra 10 minutes in bed. This is a Good Thing. It was originally cobbled together by Andy Wardley, , from answers posted to c.g.r.r (actually from when it was c.g.r), from information people have supplied and from other existing ray tracing lists and references, most notably, Eric Haines' Ray Tracing News and other lists. Since the spring of 1995, I have taken over the maintenance of the FAQ. You may distribute this document to whoever, or wherever you like, as long as you keep the copyright message and give correct attributions for material used. This is just to stop nasty people with a substantial lack of moral fibre from taking the document and fobbing it off as their own. The FAQ belongs to the group, Andy just wrote it (and I update it). Lines with a '+' in the first column have been added recently, while lines with a '|' in the first column have been changed recently. If you think that parts of the FAQ are outdated, or need improvement, please feel free to send me your updates, and I will try to maintain and update it, as time permits. Authors of utilities should definitely send updated descriptions if they feel their tool has improved since this was written. The latest version of this FAQ is available via WWW at: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/bngusenet/top.html under comp->graphics->rendering->raytracing. It is also available via anonymous ftp at: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/raytrace-faq/ If you only have email, you can get it by sending email to: with both "send usenet/news.answers/graphics/raytrace-faq/part1" and "send usenet/news.answers/graphics/raytrace-faq/part2" in the body of the message (without the quotes). And if you're only reading this document because your machine is locked up tracing, remember that all things come to those who wait. Andreas Dilger (C) Copyright 1994 Andy Wardley (C) Copyright 1995, 1996 Andreas Dilger ------------------------------ Subject: Table of Contents What is Ray Tracing? 1 - Ray Tracing Software 1.1 - POV-Ray 1.2 - Rayshade 1.3 - Radiance and ADELINE 1.4 - Blue Moon Rendering Tools (BMRT) 1.5 - Polyray 1.6 - Vivid (including BOB) 1.7 - Others 1.8 - Non-Ray Tracing Software 2 - FTP Sites, Web Sites, Bulletin Boards, etc. 2.1 - FTP Sites 2.2 - Bulletin Board Systems 2.3 - Mailing Lists 2.4 - Others 3 - Modelling Software 3.1 - SCED 3.2 - MORAY 3.3 - GUM 3.4 - Breeze Designer 3.5 - POVLAB 3.6 - Other Modellers 4 - Utilities and Other Software 4.1 - Image Display/Conversion Programs 4.2 - Format Conversion Utilities 4.3 - Creation Creators 4.4 - Texture Editors 4.5 - Animation 4.6 - Miscellaneous Utilities 5 - Further Information and Resources 5.1 - On-line Resources 5.2 - Other Newsgroups 5.3 - Books 5.4 - Image Libraries 5.5 - Texture Libraries 5.6 - Internet Ray Tracing Competition 6 - Frequently Asked Questions 6.1 - "Can I post binaries/images to this group?" 6.2 - "Where can I find model data for..." 6.3 - "How can I view these pictures?" 6.4 - "What is the difference between rendering and ray-tracing?" 6.5 - "This picture doesn't trace." 6.6 - "I traced my picture, but I can't see anything." 6.7 - "I traced my picture, but the output is garbage." 6.8 - "What does this mean..." 6.9 - "Rotating/Scaling this object doesn't work properly." 6.10 - "Who is..." 7 - Roll The Credits... ------------------------------ Subject: What is Ray Tracing? Ray Tracing, in a one-line description, is a method that allows you to create stunning photo-realistic images on a computer. All you need is a computer, some ray tracing software, a little imagination and some patience. The first stage of creating this masterpiece is to "describe" what it is that you want to depict in your picture. You may do this using an interactive modelling system, like a CAD package, or by creating a text file that has a programming language-like syntax to describe the elements. Either way, you will be specifying what objects are in your imaginary world, what shape they are, where they are, what colour and texture they have and where the light sources are to illuminate them. Having done all of this, you feed it into your ray tracer, sit back and wait. And wait... That's the main drawback of ray tracing - it's not fast. The software actually mathematically models the light rays as they bounce around this virtual world, reflecting, refracting and generally having a good time until they end up in the lense of your imaginary camera. This can quite literally involve thousands and millions of floating-point calculations and this takes time. Tracing images can take anything from a few minutes to many days. It's a long process, I know, but the results can make it all worth while. Ray tracing isn't the only method for creating photo-realistic pictures. There are packages like 3D Studio which uses scanline rendering, Radiance, which uses radiosity, and so on. Although these don't count as ray tracing, the methods you use from one system to the next are often sufficiently similar to warrant their discussion in this group. So if you think it's relevant, feel free to bring it up. These systems will be mentioned in a little more detail later on. ------------------------------ Subject: 1 - Ray Tracing Software ------------------------------ Subject 1.1 - POV-Ray The Persistance of Vision Ray Tracer (POV-Ray) is an all-round excellent package, but there are two things that particularly make it stand out above the rest of the crowd. Firstly, it's free, and secondly, the source is distributed so you can compile it on virtually any platform. It's without doubt the most used package among the comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing crowd and well worth checking out if you haven't already. POV-Ray is based on David Buck's original ray tracer, DKB-Trace and has been (and still is) developed and supported by a whole crowd of people on CompuServe Graphics Developers' Forum (GO GRAPHDEV). | After a drought of over two years, a new release of POV-Ray (version | 3.0) is officially available. For those of you who participated in | the public beta testing, you can finally stop downloading new versions | as the beta binaries expire. Even better, the source code is finally | available, so all those people who want to start tinkering and adding | new features can do so. There are now three official distribution sites for POV-Ray. ftp://ftp.povray.org/ [192.216.222.14] the main site in North America. ftp://alfred.ccs.carleton.ca/ [134.117.1.1] an alternare site. ftp://uniwa.uwa.edu.au/ [130.95.128.1] for the Southern Hemisphere. There is also a growing list of sites that mirror all or part of ftp.povray.org (see 2 - FTP Sites, Web Sites, Bulletin Boards, etc.). | The files that make up official 3.0 versions of POV-Ray are: | - povmsdos.zip MS-DOS 32-bit binary, scene files, and documentation | - povmsd_s.zip MS-DOS source code | - povwin3.zip Windows 32-bit binaries, scene files, and documentation | - povlinux.tgz Linux for x86 ELF binaries, scene files, and documentation | - povsunos.tgz SunOS SPARC binaries, scene files, and documentation | - povuni_s.tgz Unix source files | - povuni_d.tgz Unix documentation, include, and sample scene files | - povmac68.sit.hqx Mac 680x0 with FPU binary, scene files, documentation | - povmacnf.sit.hqx Mac 680x0 witout FPU binary, scene files, documentation | - povpmac.sit.hqx Mac PowerPC binary, scene files, documentation | - povmacs.sit.hqx Mac source files | There will also be official executables available for Amiga and OS/2, | as well as unofficial executables for other platforms in the near future. If your system is not in this list, it is recommended that you use the generic Unix sources for compiling POV-Ray. You can also find the above archives packaged in different formats or binaries for other platforms. If you have access to several networked computers and a compiler, it is possible to have POV-Ray 2.2 render using multiple CPUs using the PVM system of distributed computing. More information is at: http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/povray/pvmpov.html There is a large collection of software related to POV-Ray available on the Raytrace! CD-ROM from Walnut Creek. This includes modellers, viewers, utility programs, scene files, and rendered images. For For your browsing pleasure, you can have a look at almost the whole contents of the CD-ROM at http://www.povray.org/pov-cdrom/ There will also be an updated version of the POV-Ray CD-ROM with the new 3.0 version sometime in the future. ------------------------------ Subject 1.2 - Rayshade Rayshade is a free ray tracing package originally developed in 1988 by Craig Kolb , David Dobkin, and David Hoffman for unix/X11, but it has since been ported to several platforms and re-written and improved several times since. Several non-UNIX ports are available, including DOS, Amiga, Mac, and OS/2. This is the program often used by universities for teaching ray-tracing and as a result, it is often also used for research on rendering and object generation. Because of its extensibility, there are a large number of user-contributed additions and modifications to the base renderer. This means that many incredible images and ideas saw first "light" under Rayshade. The image gallery at the Rayshade Homepage can bear witness to this statement. The "official" ftp and WWW sites are located at: ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/Graphics/rayshade/ ftp://graphics.stanford.edu/pub/rayshade/ http://www-graphics.stanford.edu/~cek/rayshade/rayshade.html There are (at least) two programs to distribute rayshade traces over multiple machines. One is called inetray, the other raynet, available at: ftp://maggia.ethz.ch/pub/inetray/ ftp://mars.sapham.debis.de/pub/raynet/ ------------------------------ Subject 1.3 - Radiance and ADELINE Radiance is a free Unix software package that adopts a radiosity-type approach to lighting simluation. A MS-DOS version is now available as part of the ADELINE 1.0 software package for a site license fee from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Greg Ward , discusses Radiance here: "I've spent the past ten or so years developing a ray-tracing program for lighting simulation and rendering called Radiance. Although it doesn't use the typical finite-element/form-factor approach of radiosity programs, it does compute what they compute plus some. Specifically, Radiance computes diffuse, specular and directional- diffuse reflection and transmission in arbitrarily complicated environments. Here is a short description: Radiance is a suite of programs for the analysis and visualization of lighting in design. Input files specify the scene geometry, materials, luminaires, time, date and sky conditions (for daylight calculations). Calculated values include spectral radiance (ie. luminance & color), irradiance (illuminance & color) and glare indices. Simulation results may be displayed as color images, numerical values and contour plots. The primary advantage of Radiance over simpler lighting calculation and rendering tools is that there are no limitations on the geometry or the materials that may be simulated. Radiance is used by architects and engineers to predict illumination, visual quality and appearance of innovative design spaces, and by researchers to evaluate new lighting and daylighting technologies. Radiance has been written up in many technical and non-technical articles in various journals and magazines. Most recently, a Radiance-generated image appeared on the cover of the 1992 Siggraph Proceedings. There are hundreds of happy Radiance users world-wide, including public and private research institutions as well as engineering and architecture firms. I guess that's all I can think of to say about it at the moment..." -Greg The Unix version of the software is free, in source code, runs on most UNIX/X11 platforms (including Linux), and is available in source form: ftp://hobbes.lbl.gov/ [128.3.12.38] in California and ftp://nestor.epfl.ch/ [128.178.139.3] in Switzerland. The Radiance WWW home page can be found at: http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/HOME.html A version of Radiance for MS-DOS is available as part of a software package called ADELINE. ADELINE is being distributed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. For detailed information, please browse: http://radsite.lbl.gov/adeline/HOME.html An ftp site with basic information and an order form is available at: ftp://hobbes.lbl.gov/pub/adeline/ ------------------------------ Subject 1.4 - Blue Moon Rendering Tools (BMRT) + The Blue Moon Rendering Tools (BMRT for short), are a set of + rendering programs and libraries, written by Larry Gritz + for his Ph.D. research work, which adhere to the + RenderMan(R) standard as set forth by Pixar. Pixar's implementation + of the Renderman standard is a program called Photorealistic + RenderMan (PRMan), which uses a method of rendering called REYES, + which is based in scan-line rendering methods. + BMRT, on the other hand, includes a simple wire-frame renderer, an + OpenGL renderer, and most importantly, a renderer which uses some of + the latest techniques of radiosity and ray tracing to produce near + photorealistic images. BMRT also supports RIB files directly, and + can compile Shading Language (.sl) shaders using the included Shading + Language Compiler (although the output is NOT compatible with the + .slo files used by PRMan). + BMRT is avaiable for most popular Unix platforms in binary form. The + BMRT licencing agreement allows unlimited free use for non-commercial + users, but it must be registered for use by or for commercial + applications. Larry asks that people only download BMRT from the + official FTP site: + ftp://ftp.gwu.edu/pub/graphics/BMRT/ [128.164.9.5] ------------------------------ Subject 1.5 - Polyray The program Polyray is a shareware rendering program for producing scenes of 3D shapes and surfaces. The means of description range from standard primitives like box, sphere, etc. to 3 variable polynomial expression, and finally (and slowest of all) surfaces containing transcendental functions like sin, cos, log. Polyray supports rendering in a number of different modes: Raytracing, Zbuffered polygon rendering (fully textures or Gourad shaded), wireframe and hidden line, and raw triangles (as ASCII output, one tri per line). The texturing in Polyray is not limited to a few predefined styles - you can use mathematical expressions to modify any part of the shading. Note that the version available online is the complete thing. Polyray is not crippled in any way, nor are there any annoying nag screens. The extended DOS version of Polyray is available at: ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/polyray/ UNIX versions are available at: http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/~leitner/grafik/polyray.html (binaries for: HP-UX, Linux, FreeBSD, Sun OS 4&5, SGI/IRIX 4&5) ------------------------------ Subject 1.6 - Vivid (including BOB) Vivid is a shareware ray tracer for IBM PC's by Stephen Coy . Version 2, the current publicly available version, is available from several FTP sites as vivid2.zip. Version 3 is expected soon (I expect it is already available [AED]). Compared to POV-Ray, Vivid doesn't have as many features, but in many cases it can run faster. Source code isn't available, so the package is limited to systems which can run DOS executables. Stephen Coy, Christopher Watkins and Mark Finlay co-authored a book on Ray Tracing called "Photorealism and Ray Tracing in C". Distributed free with the book was an example ray tracer called BOB. This was actually a cut down version of Vivid which did include source. (see also 5 - Further Information and Resources). ------------------------------ Subject 1.7 - Others There are many other ray tracing packages available; ART, DKBtrace, RTrace, RAY4, MTV, QRT, and DBW for instance, and some for parallel tracing: XDART, RRLib, prt, and VM_pRAY. Eric Haines' Ray Tracing News (see 5 - Further Information and Resources), or the comp.graphics.misc FAQ for more info. ------------------------------ Subject 1.8 - Non-Ray Tracing Software * Pixar's Photo-Realistic Renderman Because of the excellent and sophisticated techniques used in PRMan, many people think that it is a ray tracer, when in fact PRMan is a scanline based software package. PRMan is the grand-daddy of all high-end rendering packages, and was the source of many of the techniques used in rendering software today. Pixar showcased their skills in short animations such as Tin Toy and Red's Dream. PRMan to animate the Walt-Disney feature film Toy Story. There is a newsgroup news:comp.graphics.rendering.renderman devoted to the discussion of all implementations of the Renderman language. * 3D Studio Autodesk's 3d Studio is an interactive 3d modelling, rendering and animation package for the IBM PC platform. It employs scanline rendering to achieve photo-realistic effects rather than ray-tracing. Because of this, it cannot do true shadows, reflections or refractions, but can, in many cases, simulate them accurately enough for most purposes. The package costs around $3000 or $1200 with the educational discount. There is a newsgroup for discussions on this package. news:comp.graphics.packages.3dstudio * Alias The newsgroup for this software is news:comp.graphics.apps.alias * Lightwave The newsgroup for this software is news:comp.graphics.apps.lightwave Note that there is also a group news:comp.graphics.rendering.misc for the discussion of general rendering issues. ------------------------------ Subject: 2 - FTP Sites, Web Sites, Bulletin Boards, etc. ------------------------------ Subject 2.1 - FTP Sites The following list details some of the main graphics related FTP sites, their maintainers (where known) and any other info. For a more complete list of FTP sites, see the list by Eric Haines and Nick Fotis from which much of the following has been taken. * ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/ [128.252.135.4] George Kyriazis A huge repository of graphics stuff, particulary: - /graphics/graphics - get CONTENTS file. - /graphics/graphics/objects/TDDD - the TDDD objects and converters. - /mirrors/unix-c/graphics - Rayshade, MTV, Vort, FBM, PBMPLUS, etc. - /mirrors/msdos/graphics - DKB ray tracer, FLI RayTracker demos. - /graphics/graphics/mirrors - mirrors many sites. - /pub/rad.tar.Z - SGI_RAD. - /graphics/graphics/radiosity - Radiance and Indian packages. - /systems/ibmpc/msdos/graphics - loads of PC graphics stuff. * ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de/ [134.106.1.9] Frank Neumann Another good site for ray tracing, particulary POV-Ray. - /pub/pov-ray - get INDEX for full details - /pub/pov-ray/conv - format converters - /pub/pov-ray/edit - graphical editors - /pub/pov-ray/ext - source extensions - /pub/pov-ray/gen - data file generators - /pub/pov-ray/misc - other tools, ray tracers, etc. - /pub/pov-ray/new - uploads - /pub/pov-ray/obj - objects - /pub/pov-ray/pack - compression - /pub/pov-ray/pix - pictures - /pub/pov-ray/scen - scenes - /pub/pov-ray/text - text articles - /pub/pov-ray/view - viewers - /pub/pov-ray/pbin - unofficial POV binaries * ftp://ftp.povray.org/ [192.216.222.14] http://www.povray.org/ [192.216.222.14] Christopher Cason This has become the primary site for POV-Ray. It contains a large number of POV-Ray utilities, executables, and scenes. This site has also grown to have a mirror of avalon.vislab.navy.mil (see below), as well as polyray and rayshade. - /pub/povray/Hall-Of-Fame - incredible ray-traced images - /pub/povray/Official - official sources and executables - /pub/povray/Ray-Tracing-News - archive of Eric Haines' newsletter - /pub/povray/animation - animations created with POV-Ray - /pub/povray/ezine - a magazine about POV-Ray - /pub/povray/fonts - font utilities - /pub/povray/modellers - CAD packages for creating scene files - /pub/povray/objects - a collection of POV objects - /pub/povray/scenes - complete POV-Ray scene files - /pub/povray/unofficial - modifications and executables by others - /pub/povray/utilities - tools and programs to make life easier - /pub/competition - images from old monthly ray-tracing competition - /pub/irtc - images from new bi-monthly ray-tracing competition - /pub/mirrors/avalon - mirror of avalon.vislab.navy.mil (See below) - /pub/polyray - Polyray source files - /pub/rayshade - Rayshade source files Due to increasing demand for better access, ftp.povray.org now has several mirror sites around the world. ftp://alfred.ccs.carleton.ca/ (Official) [134.117.1.1] ftp://uniwa.uwa.edu.au/ (Official) [130.95.128.1] ftp://sunsite.wits.ac.za/pub/mirrors/ [146.141.15.214] http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/mirrors/ [128.252.135.4] ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/mirrors/ [128.252.135.4] ftp://plaza.aarnet.edu.au/graphics/graphics/mirrors/ [139.130.23.2] ftp://ftp.shu.ac.uk/pub/computing/packages/raytrace/ [143.52.20.24] http://www.hensa.ac.uk/ftp/mirrors/povray/ [129.12.200.129] ftp://www.hensa.ac.uk/ftp/mirrors/povray/ [129.12.200.129] http://ftp.nectec.or.th/pub/mirrors/ray-tracing/ [192.150.251.33] ftp://ftp.nectec.or.th/pub/mirrors/ray-tracing/ [192.150.251.33] ftp://ftp.etsimo.uniovi.es/pub/raytrace/ [156.35.23.24] ftp://ftp.tu-clausthal.de/pub/mirror/povray/ [139.174.2.10] The POV-Ray CD-ROM from Walnut Creek Raytrace! is now available online. Check it out at: http://www.povray.org/pov-cdrom/ * ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/ [128.112.128.1] Craig Kolb Home of Rayshade, and other graphics tid-bits. - /pub/Graphics/GraphicsGems - source code from Graphics Gems books - /pub/Graphics/URT - Utah Raster Toolkit - /pub/Graphics/SPD - Standard Procedural Database - /pub/Graphics/rayshade - rayshade source code - /pub/Graphics/RTNews - Ray Tracing News - /pub/Graphics/Papaers - ray tracing papers, bibliographies * ftp://avalon.viewpoint.com/ [204.212.34.3] http://www.viewpoint.com/ [204.212.34.10] Webmaster Avalon was created to be a 3D object "repository" for the net. 3D objects (multiple formats), utilities, and file format documents are only part of what is available here. Since July 1995, Avalon has been run by Viewpoint, a commercial 3D model vendor, but they insist that the Avalon models will still be available for free to all. This site is also mirrored by (among others): http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/mirrors/avalon/ ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/mirrors/avalon/ ftp://sunsite.wits.ac.za/pub/mirrors/ftp.povray.org/mirrors/avalon/ * http://cedar.cic.net/~rtilmann/mm/ [192.131.22.3] Webmaster Meshmart is a repository of 3D objects in a variety of formats. Not only does meshmart have objects available, they also have objects on consignment as well as an "objects wanted" area. * ftp://hobbes.lbl.gov/ [128.3.12.38] http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/HOME.html [128.3.12.33] Greg Ward Official distribution site for Radiance ray trace/radiosity package. * ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/ [128.32.35.31] - /pub/graphics/mm/encode - MPEG encoding software - /pub/graphics/mm/play - MPEG decoding/display software * ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/ [18.70.0.209] http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/bngusenet/top.html [164.107.8.52] - /pub/usenet/news.answers - the land of FAQs. ------------------------------ Subject 2.2 - Bulletin Board Systems The following list details some Bulletin Boards Systems dedicated to graphics and, in particular Ray Tracing. At the end of the section there is a list of BBS'es of PCGNet (Professional CAD and Graphics Network) kindly provided by Bjorn-Kare Nilssen This list may be out of date at the time of printing. If you know one of the boards here no longer works please let me know. * The Graphics Alternative TGA is heavily orientated around Ray Tracing, 3D Rendering, Modelling and Animation. It's the official support BBS for Vivid and has an extensive library of utilities, programs, source and images built up by its 1300+ users. Location: El Cerrito, CA, USA. Sysop: Adam Shiffman Data: (510) 524-2780 (PM14400FXSA v.32bis 14.4k, Public) (510) 524-2165 (USR DS v.32bis/HST 14.4k, Subscribers) WWW: http://www.tgax.com/ * Pi Squared On the East Coast of the USA is Pi Squared. Alfonso Hermida is the sysop and he is the creator of POVCAD. All the latest POV files available as well as support for his own products. Location: Maryland, USA. Sysop: Alfonso Hermida (CIS: 72114,2060) Data: (301) 725-9080 (14.4K, 24hrs) * The Tackle Box A huge BBS dedicated to POV-Ray with hundreds of modelling utilities, source, pictures and animations. 2 GIG online, 24 hours a day. Walnut Creek "RayTrace!" CD ROM is now loaded with 200 file areas. The first month is 100% FREE with subscription. Location: Edmond, Oklahoma, USA. Sysop: Neil Clark Data: (405) 359-3301 (14.4K, N/8/1, 24hrs) WWW: http://www.ionet.net/~clark/ (Files available for ftp) * The New Graphics BBS A graphics specific system for those interested in 3D, objects, image processing, animation, MPEG, JPEG, GIF, file formats, etc. Knowledge Media "Graphics 1" CD-ROM available, 645 Mb "MultiMedia" CD online shortly. Location: ? Sysop: Bob Lindabury Data: (908) 469-0049 (14.4K, 24hrs) * The Graphics Emporium BBS A BBS for the graphics professional and hobbyist to exchange ideas, information and creativity. Not dedicated to any one platform. Location: Redondo Beach, CA, USA. Sysop: ? Data: (310) 374-8805 * Windows World BBS Specializing in DOS/MS-Windows based ray tracing, mathematics, stock market technical analysis and also the latest CICA Windows CDs (1 gig). No fees and free access. Requires MS-Windows 3.1 and the Excalibur(tm) client communications program to access the BBS. It is down-loadable on the first call. Location: Dayton, OH, USA Sysop: H. Lawrence Rowe (hrowe@erinet.com) Data: (513) 866-8181 (V.22-V.34, 24hrs) * Boards of the Professional CAD and Graphics Network USA and Canada ------------------------------------------------------------------- SAUG BBS Bellevue WA 206-644-7115 Joes CODE BBS West Bloomfield MI 810-855-0894 Engineering Services Atlanta GA 404-325-0122 Autodesk Global Village Sausalito CA 415-289-2270 The Graphics Alternative El Cerrito CA 510-524-2780 PC-AUG Phoenix AZ 602-952-0638 Convergence Spline BBS Richmond BC 604-275-3462 Graphicly Speaking Langley BC 604-534-2954 Tern Solution BBS Ottawa ON 613-228-0539 Canis Major Nashville TN 615-385-4268 CAD Engineering Services Hendersonville TN 615-822-2539 The Virtual Dimension Oceanside CA 619-722-0746 The Drawing Board BBS Anchorage AL 907-349-5412 The University Shrewsbury Twp NJ 908-544-8193 France ------------------------------------------------------------------- CAD Connection Montesson 33-1-39529854 Zyllius BBS! Saint Paul 33-93320505 United Kingdom ------------------------------------------------------------------- Raytech BBS Tain, UK 44-1862-832020 The Missing Link Surrey, England 44-81-641-8593 CADenza BBS Leicester, UK 44-533-596725 New Zealand ------------------------------------------------------------------- The Graphics Connection Wellington 64-4-566-8450 Australia ------------------------------------------------------------------- The Baud Room Melbourne 61-3-481-6873 Sydney PCUG Compaq New South Wales 61-2-540-1842 My Computer Company Erskineville 61-2-557-1489 Slovenia ------------------------------------------------------------------- MicroArt Koper 386-66-34986 Germany ------------------------------------------------------------------- NEWS BBS Duesseldorf 49-211-680-1458 The Netherlands old number new number ------------------------------------------------------------------- BBS_Bennekom: Fractal Board Bennekom 31-8389-15331 31-318-415331 CAD-BBS Amsterdam 31-3402-90287 31-30-6090287 Foundation One Baarn 31-2154-22143 31-35-5422143 Some of the above may require additional country or long-distance codes. ------------------------------ Subject 2.3 - Mailing Lists Listed below is a selection of mailing lists related to graphics and/or ray tracing. If I haven't included specific details on subscription, it's because I don't know. Best bet is to send a "help" message. * POV-Ray Called the dkb-list for historical reasons (POV-Ray was based on David Buck's "DKBTrace"), the list exists for users of POV-Ray and associated products, on all platforms. Subscription: listserv%TREARN.BITNET@vm.gmd.de Body Text: subscribe dkb-l Posting: DKB-L%TREARN.BITNET@listserv.gmd.de * Rayshade Mailing list for Rayshade users, mainly on UNIX platforms. Subscription: rayshade-users-request@cs.princeton.edu Posting: rayshade-users@cs.princeton.edu Archive: ftp://graphics.stanford.edu/pub/rayshade/rayshade-users/ * Radiance Greg Ward, the author of Radiance has a distribution list of all users. Register with him: greg@pink.lbl.gov * Imagine For users of the Imagine 3d rendering and animation package for the Amiga and, more recently, the IBM PC. Subscription: listserv@sjuvm.stjohns.edu Body Text: subscribe imagine Posting: imagine@sjuvm.stjohns.edu * Toaster This mailing list deals with the Video Toaster system for the Amiga. Subscription: toaster-request@bobsbox.rent.com Body Text: subscribe
toaster Posting: toaster@bobsbox.rent.com * Lightwave Lightwave is part of the suite of programs that come with the Video Toaster system for the Amiga. Subscription: lightwave-request@bobsbox.rent.com Body Text: subscribe
lightwave Posting: lightwave@bobsbox.rent.com * TrueSpace This is a mailing list for users of trueSpace, maintained by Shane Davison . Subscription: truespace-request@caligari.com Body Text: subscribe
truespace Posting: truespace@caligari.com * 3D Studio Autodesk's 3d modelling and rendering system for the IBM PC. Subscription: 3dstudio-request@bobsbox.rent.com Body Text: subscribe
3dstudio Posting: 3dstudio@bobsbox.rent.com ------------------------------ Subject 2.4 - Others * CompuServe The CompuServe Graphics Developers' Forum (GO GRAPHDEV) is the home of POV-Ray (multiple sections devoted to POV and POV images) as well as other development projects including fractals, animation and morphing. You can get information of joining CompuServe (in the US) by calling (800) 848-8990. CompuServe access is now available in other countries, including Japan and Europe. * America On-Line AOL also has a section (PCGRAPHICS) dedicated to POV-Ray support. ------------------------------ Subject: 3 - Modelling Software ------------------------------ Subject 3.1 - SCED SCED is a constraint based scene editor written by Stephen Chenney . Stephen also maintains a mailing list for bug reports, patches, and early notification of new releases. Sced is a scene modeller for UNIX and X. It runs on many UNIX platforms, including Linux. It is being distributed as source code. The latest version is always available at: http://http.cs.berkeley.edu/~schenney/sced/sced.html ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/modellers/sced/ ftp://ftp.cs.su.oz.au/stephen/sced/ An enhancement to SCED by Denis McLaughlin, called SCEDA, has all the features of SCED, but also adds support for keyframed animation. Animated objects have their position, rotation, and scale interpolated smoothly across multiple keyframes via a (modified) spline function. SCEDA is available at: ftp://ftp.cyberus.ca/pub/sceda/ You can find out more about SCEDA at: http://www.cyberus.ca/~denism/sceda/sceda.html. Feature List: * Cube, Cylinder, Cone, Plane, Sphere primitives. * Full support for CSG, including CSG wireframes that look like CSG objects. * A constraint based editing interface, which supports the accurate placement of object relative to other objects, and dynamic constraint maintenance. * Previewing using your favorite renderer. * Arbitrary, dynamic view of the scene. * Support for Radiance, RenderMan, POV-Ray, Rayshade, and VRML. * Target renderer specific attributes - allowing the full range of POV textures to be accessed, including the declaration of new textures and the inclusion of files. * Arbitrarily dense wireframes. * A simple input file format. * Support for arbitrary OFF format polygonal objects. * Automatic compression and decompression of files. * Spotlight and Area light sources. * Removal of many restrictions on the editing of CSG objects, including the ability to change the basic type of an object. * Lots of bug fixes. This version is now very stable under Linux and Solaris at least. The last very was regretably unstable. * Lots of small improvements to things like previewing, selection, handling of objects behind the eye and so on. Tutorials are provided to introduce use of the interface. The system has been tested on several platforms, and appears to be easy to port to different systems. It REQUIRES X11 Release 5. Note that POV 2.2 NEEDS TO BE PATCHED to use files created by SCED. Binaries will soon be available for Linux and Solaris. Binaries for other platforms are also desired. Planned in the future: * POV->Sced conversion program, for editing an old POV file. * Bezier patch and arbitrary wireframe support. ------------------------------ Subject 3.2 - MORAY MORAY, by Lutz and Kretzschmar [CIS: 100023, 2006], is a shareware modeller for PC's that directly supports POV-Ray 2.x primitives and more. Registration is required to get you a protected mode version, allowing full memory usage, plus the usual support and upgrade info. MORAY is a program with which you can design scenes for the POV-Ray raytracer to render. Contrary to normal scene design, with MORAY you design the scenes graphically. Up to now it was pretty difficult to imagine what the scene looked like, without laying it out on graph paper, or doing many test renders. MORAY is like a graph paper, it lets you place and change objects in wireframe while you see them. MORAY then generates the text file that POV needs to read. MORAY can thus also be used as a rapid prototype tool, to place objects quickly and write the scene file. You can then edit scene files to suit your needs, just like you have been doing up to now. MORAY stores and works with POV-Ray primitives, as opposed to normal CAD systems, which mostly convert all objects to triangle meshes or similar polygon based formats when outputting. This ensures optimum performance and image quality from the raytracer. If you're a POV enthusiast and have access to CompuServe you should check out the GRAPHDEV forum for the latest news and tips on using POV. The RayTracing conference on PCGnet also carries lots of tips for POV. The emphasis in designing MORAY was to be able to work as easily and as graphically as possible. Most of the work can be done with the mouse. Three 2D views and a 3D view of your scene are visible on screen. You can perform all transformations of the objects in the 2D views with the mouse. The 3D view shows what the current camera will see, i.e. how POV will raytrace it. MORAY allows you to: * scale, rotate and translate an object interactively * define cameras with which to view your scene * view the scene in wire frame as POV-Ray will raytrace it * specify the wire-frame complexity of on screen objects * graphically place a bounding box around an object * automatically create bounding boxes of any objects * make nested CSG or composite objects * assign textures from the TEXTURES.INC file to your objects * define a new texture from within MORAY * place imagemaps interactively on objects * manipulate the control points of a bezier patch to create shapes not easily created otherwise * create bezier patch meshes * create rotational, translational and tapering sweeps that are output as smooth triangles * copy complex nested objects * create multiple copies of an object transforming each independently * specify a region of the 3D view to render * call POV-Ray from within MORAY to render scenes Features new with MORAY 2.0 include: * A complete 100% Texture Editor for POV-Ray 2.2 with Preview. * Polyray V1.8 support and output of all scenes. * Faster, more streamlined (and more attractive) interface. * Fewer redraws and they're now interruptible. * Right-Mouse-button support. * New Sweep editors and types. * New Objects (Blobs, RAW triangles, User-defined objects). * Completely new File Handling. * Shallow and deep copies. * CSG evaluation. * Actual Heightfield display (for TGA). * Improved, more efficient output. * Freely definable viewports. * Manipulations in 3D views. * Spotlight views. * Multi-level Undo for major scene operations. MORAY requires at least a 386, a VGA card and a mouse, although this is not recommended. The minimum usable system for larger scenes would be a 486DX/25 and 4MB memory. The shareware version needs 2MB EMS, but this limitation is removed in the registered version, since it runs in protected mode. You need to have POV-Ray 2.0 or greater is needed to render the scene. ------------------------------ Subject 3.3 - GUM GUM is a solid and surface modeller that currently supports POV, Polyray and Rayce and runs in MS-Windows. The author is Lex van der Sluijs . GUM is DemoWare: the demo is yours and you have NO obligation to register whatsoever, but there is a limitation: only 50 objects can be saved. The registered version naturally has no such limitation. GUM stands for 'Grand Unified Modeller' which means two things: * It will never be done. * The fact that its internal data structure can accomodate all major object types, that is solids (implicit, b-rep), surfaces (parametric and polyhedral) and wireframe objects. (and yes, a layout of its C++ class hierarchy takes many pages). The current version can be found at: ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/modellers/gum/ CAD BBS Holland (+31-3402-90287) where it is a free file CompuServe, in the GRAPHDEV forum, thanks to Harry Rowe I won't list the list of supported objects here since that would become a bit long. Instead, some highlights: * CSG evaluation, (wireframe representation of CSG Differences) * 3D direct manipulation: 3D handles on objects like on the SGI * support for trimmed surfaces (trimmed with a solid, that is) Polyray can render these. * real-time pan and zoom (non-real-time also possible) * several renderers can be supported at once * relatively advanced texture- (and other types of declaration) handling, resulting in self-contained scene-files. * heightfield reading for Targa files: see what you're doing * Custom objects for external/not-yet-supported/huge objects * support for 'extra special' features via the Header dialog (timer variables, directional & textured lights, etc) * the ability to find all used files used in the scene * a robust RAW file reader * Object library feature: use objects from other GUM scenes * flexible FastDraw: Full, Skip(variable), Bounding Box. Static, during viewport change/object dragging (multiple-viewport too) * Automatic starting of the specified renderer, automatic starting of your favourite imageviewer when the image is done Some 'lowlights' (all of which will -naturally- be addressed): * cumbersome installation procedure * lack of sweeps * lack of blobs * cylinders, cones and paraboloids must be capped manually by intersecting them with discs System requirements: 386+387 @ 40 MHz with 4 Mb RAM. An 800x600 display is highly recommended, although 640x480 can be used. GUM plus one renderer takes about 6 Mb on your harddisk. Here are some frequently asked questions and their answers about GUM, but first there are two things that should be brought to your attention: * there's already a FAQ in the manual, see the Contents topic. The Q&A's here have popped up after the release of the program. * most questions about usage of the program can be eliminated if you do the Quick Start, also in GUM's help-file. Q: I get a list of warnings every time I try to render or save something, saying that some 'pages' could not be found. However, all these 'pages' are POV/Polyray/Rayce keywords, such as 'marble', 'green' and 'diffuse'. A: You need to move GUM.INI from GUM's directory to your WINDOWS directory. If it's not there, extract a fresh GUM.INI from GUM091EX.ZIP. In it are the keywords that have special meaning to programs like POV, and without the file GUM can't discern between references to other definitions (like using the normal 'Bumpy' in 'BumpyGlass') and keywords (such as 'red' and 'ior'). Q: When I try to start the program I get an error message saying that CTL3DV2.DLL is not correctly installed. A: More than one copy of this DLL could be found by MS-Windows, which is not allowed for this particular file, hence the cryptic error message. You should find the most recent copy of it on your system, move it to WINDOWS\SYSTEM and delete all others. ------------------------------ Subject 3.4 - Breeze Designer Breeze Designer is a freeware 32-bit 3D modelling and design tool written by John Neville for MS-Windows (NT, 95, Win32s). It has been written to primarily interface with the Persistance of Vision raytracer (POV-Ray version 2.0 & 3.0), there is also support to export to a number of other popular renderers including Pixars's RenderMan. Some of its features include: * Modelling primitives; cube, sphere, cone, cylinder, torus, bicubic "Bezier" patches * Text objects using TrueType fonts * Heightfields, spline paths and extruded shapes * Iso-surfaces; blobs (metaballs). * Surfaces of revolution (sweeps). * Built-in texture builder and shaded preview. * Object grouping with CSG support. * Keyframe animation support, with tween function and spline paths. * Import Autodesk 3D-Studio(TM) 3DS and AutoCAD DXF format models. * Export POV Raytracer, RenderMan RIB, VRML scene, Polyray, AutoCAD DXF. * Built-in macro language and third party plug-in module support. * Support for OpenGL with texture mapping for Windows NT & Windows 95 * Support for the Intel(R) 3DR rendering library. * On-line help & tool tips support. Breeze is available for download at: ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/modellers/breeze/ ftp://blitzen.canberra.edu.au/pub/povray/breeze/ ------------------------------ Subject 3.5 - POVLAB POVLAB is a shareware DOS based 3D graphic modeller for POV-Ray 3.0 written by Denis Olivier . Here's are some of its features: * Very very friendly to use (new style interface, never seen before !). * Plug-ins allow you to program you own object generators/animators. * Support for a lot of the new options in POV-Ray 3.0. * 4 viewports (left, front, top and camera), full viewport allowed. * Material & texture preview/editing, library management, add your own. * Real time camera, like 3D Studio does. * Use a real camera, based on the FOV in POV-Ray, including focal blur. * Normal/fast/boxed display, freezed/ignored objects, polygon heightfield. * Raw objects - sphere, box, cone, blobs, tube, torus, plane, ... * CSG (copy, merge, difference, union). * 3D TrueType fonts (thanks to Jean Arnaud). * Selection (rotation, scale, translate, copy, ...). * Deformation (matrix scale, translate and rotate based). * Lights : omni, spot, area light (color, shadows, on/off). * Atmospheric effects (fog, distance attenuation, atmosphere) * Built-in or external image viewers can be used. System requirements for POVLAB are floating point accelerator (387/487SX or 486/P5/P6), 8MB RAM (up to 32 MB virtual memory), 30MB disk space, mouse, and 16/256 color SVGA/VESA 1.2. It also works under OS/2 and Win95, and supports rendering with WinPOV. POVLAB images, tips, faq, plug-ins and more are available at: http://www.cyberstation.fr/~dolivier/povlab.html ------------------------------ Subject 3.6 - Other Modellers * Blob Sculptor Blob Sculptor, by Alfonso Hermida, Steve Anger and Truman Brown allows you to model shapes using blob primitives. Output is to RAW, DXF, BLB (internal format), POV, Polyray, Rayshade and CTDS. In addition, the MS-Windows version, ported by Ronal Praver, supports NFF, VideoScape and others. NeXTStep and Open GL ports are expected soon. -- Andreas Dilger University of Calgary \"If a man ate a pound of pasta and (403) 220-8792 Micronet Research Group \ a pound of antipasto, would they Dept of Electrical & Computer Engineering \ cancel out, leaving him still http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/ hungry?" -- Dogbert ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Path: news1.ucsd.edu!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!swrinde!news.sgi.com!enews.sgi.com!decwrl!tribune.usask.ca!rover.ucs.ualberta.ca!news.ucalgary.ca!adilger From: adilger@enel.ucalgary.ca (Andreas Dilger) Newsgroups: comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing,comp.answers,news.answers Subject: comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing FAQ (part 2/2) Supersedes: Followup-To: comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing Date: 2 Sep 1996 05:25:55 GMT Organization: ECE Department, U. of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada Lines: 1073 Sender: adilger@enel.ucalgary.ca (Andreas Dilger) Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.EDU Expires: 28 Sep 1996 05:27:34 GMT Message-ID: References: Reply-To: adilger@enel.ucalgary.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: adilger@munet-d.enel.ucalgary.ca Summary: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about raytracing software on comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing Keywords: FAQ ray tracing POV Precedence: bulk Xref: news1.ucsd.edu comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing:9705 comp.answers:16139 news.answers:64598 Archive-name: graphics/raytrace-faq/part2 Last-modified: 1996/06/05 Posting-Frequency: every 10 days This is part 2 of the comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing Frequently Asked Questions list. The latest version of the FAQ is available via anonymous WWW at: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/bngusenet/top.html under comp->graphics->rendering->raytracing. It is also available via anonymous ftp at: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/raytrace-faq/ If you only have email, you can get it by sending email to: with both "send usenet/news.answers/graphics/raytrace-faq/part1" and "send usenet/news.answers/graphics/raytrace-faq/part2" in the body of the message (without the quotes). (C) Copyright 1994 Andy Wardley (C) Copyright 1995, 1996 Andreas Dilger ------------------------------ Subject: 4 - Utilities and Other Software ------------------------------ Subject 4.1 - Image Display/Conversion Programs * DISP - an excellent viewing and post-processing utility for DOS. Available on simtel and mirrors. * IMAGEMAGICK - An X-Windows based image display program (source distribution), that also allows simple editing of images, such as color modification, scaling, rotating, text annotation, etc. PNG format images are now supported by ImageMagick. Available at: ftp://harbor.ecn.purdue.edu/pub/imagemagick.tar.gz http://www.wizards.dupont.com/cristy/ImageMagick.html (Cristy, 1995) * NEOPAINT - A useful DOS shareware paint package (registration US $45) for creating images, height fields, etc, or just touching up finished artwork. Available from wuarchive and mirrors. * NETPBM - A collection of command-line utilities for most platforms (source distribution). Executables available for most other platforms like DOS, OS/2, Linux, and others. NetPBM utilities convert practically any format to any other by using a common intermediate file format, as well as allowing quantization, cropping, combining, blur, and many other effects. Available at: ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/packages/NetPBM/ (Poskanzer et al., 1991-1994) * PICLAB - An excellent package for converting and post-processing images for DOS. (Crocker, 1990) * QPV - The Quick Picture Viewer. A great utility for displaying and converting images for DOS/Win systems. Formerly QPEG, QPV has been improved, and has new features, such as the ability to read and write PNG format images. (Fromme, 1995) * XV - An X-Windows based image display program (source distribution), with simple image editing facilities, such as color editing, scaling, rotation, and also filter effects for blurring, edge detection, and others. A patch is available for XV 3.10 to support PNG images via libpng and libgz. (Bradley, 1995) ------------------------------ Subject 4.2 - Format Conversion Utilities Much of the following sections area taken from Amanda Osbourne's "Raytrace Utilities for DOS (and Windows)" list. All are IBM PC based unless otherwise specified. Various utilities for converting from one 3D file format to another: * 3DSPOV - Reads 3d studio mesh files. Writes out to Raw, POV-Ray (1 & 2), Vivid and Polyray. (Anger & Bowermaster, 1993) * DEM2POV - This program (source distribution) converts US Geological Survey (USGS) Digital Elevation Maps (DEM) to the TGA format heightfields used by POV-Ray 2.2. Includes a large DEM file of the region around the Grand Canyon. (Kirby, 1995) * DXF2POV - DXF to POV-Ray 1 conversion program. (Collins, Wells, Farmer & Gibeson, 1992) * DXF2RAW - DXF to Raw conversion program. (Coy, Barber, Daigle & Shiffman, 1992) * DXF2V - DXF to Vivid conversion program. (Coy, Barber, Daigle & Shiffman, 1992) * DXF3DS - DXF to 3DS conversion program. (Yost/Autodesk, 1991) * HUTIL101c - A set of utilities (source) for converting between various POV-Ray heightfield formats (16-bit TGA, GIF, POT) as well as OCT and Matlab 32-bit MAT files. In addition, it can combine heightfields using arithmetic operators, join them together, scale, and create spherical and cylindrical heightfields with triangle meshes. See also HF-Lab. (Beale, 1995) * MRYPLY - Converts Moray files to PolyRay files. * OBJ2ASC2 - Wavefront object to 3d studio ascii converter. (Knight, 1993) * RAW2PV - Excellent utility that allows the user to adjust the level of smoothing to apply to raw data as it is translated to POV-Ray (1 & 2.x), Polyray or Vivid 2. It can also add a camera and light to the scene, making things fairly easy for the novice user. (Anger, 1993) * RAYL210 - Helpful utility to convert uLathe (an object creator program for windows) files to RAW, POV-Ray 1 & 2.x or Vivid 2 format. (Koehler, 1993) * TDDD2ASC - TDDD (Imagine) to 3D studio ascii file converter. (Knight, 1993) * WC2POV - Although wcvt2pov (MS-Windows) started out converting 3D file formats to POV-Ray, wcvt2pov has become a generic 3D file format conversion utility, with support for importing 3d studio, Wavefront, NFF, DXF, TrueType Fonts, RAW triangles and some other formats, and exporting 3ds, asc, POV-Ray, NFF, DXF, VRML, Wavefront, Open GL 'C' code fragments, RAW triangles, and some other formats. (Rule, 1995) ------------------------------ Subject 4.3 - Creation Creators Utilities to aid in the creation of ray tacing objects: * BOXER - Object generator for POV-Ray 1 (makes things like bathroom tiles and such based upon user input). (Miller, 1993) * BRANCH - Tree creator for POV-Ray 1. (Weller, 1992) * CHAIN - Generates interlocking chain links for POV-Ray 1.0. (Koehler, 1992) * CM - CircleMaster utility for working with quadric spheres and ellipsoids; writes output to POV-Ray 1.0. (Brown, 1992) * COIL - Creates coiled objects for POV-Ray 1.0. (Kirby, 1992) * COILV - Creates coiled objects for Vivid 2. (Kirby & Cox, 1992) * CTDS - Connects a series of xyz dot coordinates. Though this may not sound like much, this is an extremely helpful utility. Supports POV-Ray, Vivid and Polyray. (Brown, 1993) * FORM - All sorts of shapes can be generated with this program. Form files consist of both shapes and commands (like twistx and bend) and output may be POV-Ray 1, 2 or .plg. Interesting program, complementary to LPARSER. (Rowbottom, 1993) * FRACTINT - The ultimate fractals generator for DOS, X-windows source code, and distributed with the Linux Slackware games disks. Great for creating height fields, colour maps, viewing gifs or just creating fractals. (The Stone Soup Group, 1990-95) * FRGEN - Fractal Landscape (and other shapes too) Generator. Though the program supports Vivid and POV-Ray 1 & 2 directly, by selecting raw output you can smooth triangles out with RAW2POV to create nice hills and dales. (Anger, 1993) * GEODOME - Utility for generating geodesic domes. Output to POV-Ray 2.x format as either facets or a mesh of pipes and joints. IBM PC executable, with source included. (Wardley, 1994) * GFORGE - Graphical Fractal Forgery (source, DOS exe). Generates 16-bit heightfields for POV-Ray, using a high-quality algorithm: the IFFT of 1/f noise. File formats include PGM, PNG, POV TGA heightfield, and Matlab bin. Several parameters give you control over the appearance of the output, which can range from sand to hills to mountains. Useful also for 2D textures; the image always tiles perfectly. Now also supports craters. (Beale, 1995) * HFLAB - Heightfield Lab (DOS/UNIX source, DOS exe). Generates and manipulates 16-bit heightfields for POV-Ray, using a variety of mathematical and procedural algorithms. Has a graphical interface for both DOS and X Windows. Allows the combination of two or more heightfields by addition, multiplication, or side-by-side joining, and many other operators. File formats include PGM, PNG, POV TGA heightfield, and Matlab 32-bit floating point. (Beale, 1996). * LPARSER - L-system creator and mutator. This program is particularly strong in the creation of organic looking forms. Many example data files are included with the program. The language of l-systems is not intuitive but the results can be truly stunning. Outputs to DXF (both R12 and 3D faces), POV-Ray 2.x, RAW and Renderstar VOL. A wire-frame viewer that reads .3DS, .RAW, Fractint .RAY, ARE-24 .POL and Lparser/Renderstar .VOL files is included. (Lapre, 1993) * LV20POVID - Newer and more powerful than LV2POV, this program reads an lviewer info file and generates data files in POV-Ray (1 & 2.x) and Vivid formats. The program's main strength lies in landscape generation. (van der Mark, 1993) * TRMK - Terrain Maker (DOS) uses a triangle midpoint subdivision algorithm to generate a variety of GIF heightfields. (Jorgensen, 1995) * PLANT - Fractal plant generator. Outputs supported are POV-Ray (1 & 2), Polyray and CTDS (Connect the dots smoother). (Bryerton, 1993) * SUDS - Random positioning of lots of spheres (or other objects) based on a variety of selections. (Farmer, Wegner & Schwan, 1994) * TORPATCH - This program creates a rope/wire object that passes smoothly through supplied points out of a series of clipped tori. Available as DOS EXE, and Turbo Pascal or C source. Can also create a random tangle of wires. (Mackey & Beddes, 1996) * TWISTER - Utility that will create spirals, coils, etc., of blobs, cubes or sphere. IBM PC executable with source, output to POV 2.x format. (Wardley, 1994) ------------------------------ Subject 4.4 - Texture Editors * CMAP - Interactive color map creator for POV-Ray. (Lutz & Kretzschmar, 1993) * TCE - The color editor for POV-Ray 1. (Farmer, 1991) * TCEV - The color editor for Vivid. (Farmer, 1991) * TEXMAKE - Early version of a utility to assist in texture creation in POV-Ray 2.x. (Sigler, 1993) * TXMAG - Texture Magic is an interactive, 32-bit MS-Windows based texture editor for POV-Ray 2.x, Assymetrix 3D F/X, and Autodesk 3D-Studio. ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/texture-editors/texture-magic/ http://www.eskimo.com/~scott/povtext.html (Pultz, 1996) ------------------------------ Subject 4.5 - Animation * AERO - AERO is a X-Windows based physical simulation environment suitable for making complex, realistic animations. Objects (including the camera) can be given properties like mass, velocity, and acceleration, constraints like springs and dampers can be specified between objects, and then AERO performs collision detection, position, and orientation calculations. Output is to POV-Ray 1.0 or 2.x scene files. (Keller, Stolz, Ziegler, Braunl, 1995) * AWKANI - AWK script to output POV-Ray animation data. (Farmer, 1992) * DTA - Dave's Targa Animator (DOS) converts .TGA and many other single image format frames into .FLI's and .FLC's. (Mason, 1995) * MPEG_ENCODE - MPEG_ENCODE (source distribution, also many executables) can take images in PPM and JPEG formats (as well as other formats, if a ...toppm converter exists) to produce a fully compliant MPEG 1 animation. It is possible to run the encoding on multiple processors. It is available in many locations (see 2 - FTP Sites, Bulletin Boards, etc.) (Rowe, et al, 1995) * MPEG_PLAY - MPEG_PLAY (source distribution, also many executables) displays MPEG 1 encoded animations on a large variety of systems. (Rowe, et al, 1995) * PPP - The POV and PolyRay Preprocessor allows scene files to be created with conditional statements, loops, math functions, vector math, and more to generate one or more scene files for animation and complex object creation. (Wind, 1995) * PVQUAN - PVQUAN (source) is a set of tools that allow you to create .FLI creations on many platforms including UNIX and DOS. Source code is provided and includes a hosts of useful functions like quantisation, .GIF read, display, etc. * RAYSCENE - Set of animation utilities, not raytracer specific. (Jarik & Hassi, 1991) * RTAG - Ray Tracing Animation Generator (not raytracer specific). A powerful program with its own language which supports, amongst other things, spline path generation. (Sherrod, 1993) * SCEDA - SCEDA is a descendant of the SCED X-Windows modeller, with enhancements to allow generation of multiple scene files for an animation. (See also 3 - Modelling Software) (McLaughlin & Chenney, 1996) * SP - Spline paths for animations. Many output formats (POV-Ray, Vivid, Polyray, 3DV, Wire 3D) and acceleration and deceleration are supported as well. (Mason, 1992) * ZOOM - Interpolates steps between two positions for POV-Ray 1.0. (Brown, 1993) ------------------------------ Subject 4.6 - Miscellaneous Utilities * POVMODE.EL - A mode for emacs to handle POV-Ray syntax. Available at: ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/old-incoming/misc/pov-mode.el * POVRAY TUTORIAL - The POV-Ray tutorial is a 100 page text tutorial that you can print out and read in the comfort of your own home. It covers almost all of POV-Ray's features, including height fields, realistic spotlights, and image maps. You can either jump to the section that interests you or follow through from the beginning to see the complete complex scene through to completion. The tutorial is designed for beginners and more advanced artists alike. It is distributed free in MS-Windows, Mac and postscript formats currently at: ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/old-incoming/utilities/pvt100.zip ------------------------------ Subject: 5 - Further Information and Resources ------------------------------ Subject 5.1 - On-line Resources * FAQs All of the FAQs in the USENET heirarchy that are posted to the news.answers newsgroup (as all FAQs should be) are archived at: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/ They are also converted to HTML format and made available at: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/bngusenet/top.html For those people that are interested in learning about the internal workings of a ray tracer, you should take a look at the newsgroup comp.graphics.algorithms Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). This document describes rotations, intersections, texture mapping, etc. * Ray Tracing News Eric Haines has put together a phenomenal amount of information on ray tracing. This he combines into his Ray Tracing News (RTNews). They are a wealth of information and contain articles, sofware reviews and comparisons, book reviews and lists of everything and anything to do with ray tracing. They are available from many sites in text and/or HTML format, including: ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/Graphics/RTNews/ http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/ray/RTNews/html/ http://www.povray.org/rtn/ Eric's ray tracing and radiosity bibliographies as well as an FTP list are available at: ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/Graphics/Papers/ * Ray Tracing Bibliogaphy Rick Speer has also done a lot of work in bringing together articles on ray tracing. He maintains a cross-indexed ray tracing bibliography of over 500 articles from 1968 to the present. These include papers from all Siggraph, Graphics Interface, Eurographics, CG International and Ausgraph proceedings. All citations are keyworded and cross-indices are supplied by author and keyword. The bibliography is in the form of a 41 page postscript file which is held at many ftp sites as "speer.raytrace.bib.ps.Z": ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/bib/RT.BIB.Speer/ ftp://karazm.math.uh.edu/pub/Graphics/ ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/sci/papers/graphics/ Ian Grimstead has also collected together a large collection of over 360 pages on-line of ray tracing papers. It is accessible via the World-Wide Web and has links to other on-line papers and documentation at: http://www.cm.cf.ac.uk/Ray.Tracing/RT.Bibliography.html Ian also maintains a web page of links to other WWW ray tracing pages. You can also add your own links to ray tracing pages that you maintain at: http://www.cm.cf.ac.uk/Ray.Tracing/ * Ray Tracing Abstracts Tom Wilson has collected over 300 abstracts from ray tracing related papers and books. The collections is available as plain ascii, with Latex and troff formatting programs included. It is available as "rtabs.*" from many sites. * Graphics Resources List The Graphics Resources List contains a wealth of information on all sorts of computer graphics and visualization information. It has info on mailing lists, plotting packages, ray-tracers, other rendering methods, etc. It is available on comp.graphics, comp.answers or archived at various sites. The official archive is ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/resources-list/part1 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/resources-list/part2 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/resources-list/part3 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/resources-list/part4 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/resources-list/part5 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/resources-list/part6 * Paper Bank Project Juhana Kouhia has collected together various technical papers in electronic form. Contact him for more information. ------------------------------ Subject 5.2 - Other Newsgroups Some other newsgroups that may be of interest to you are listed below. - comp.graphics.algorithms - comp.graphics.animation - comp.graphics.misc - comp.graphics.apps.alias - comp.graphics.apps.lightwave - comp.graphics.apps.softimage - comp.graphics.apps.wavefront - comp.graphics.packages.3dstudio - comp.graphics.rendering.misc - comp.graphics.rendering.renderman - comp.graphics.visualization ------------------------------ Subject 5.3 - Books Title: Ray Tracing Creations Authors: Drew Wells and Chris Young Publisher: The Waite Group Year: 1993 ISBN: 1-878739-27-1 This book has been written by Drew Wells and Chris Young, two of the original developers of POV-Ray, as a user and reference manual for POV-Ray. Coming in at 573 pages, it's an excellent publication with literally hundreds of stunning colour and monochrome pictures. The only drawback with the book is that it deals with POV-Ray version 1.0 which is a little dated now that version 2.2 is out, but it is still a very worthwhile investment for any POV-Ray user. Title: Ray Tracing Worlds with POV-Ray Authors: Alexander Enzmann, Lutz Kretzschmar, and Chris Young Publisher: The Waite Group Year: 1994 ISBN: 1-878739-64-6 Raytracing Worlds with POV-Ray is written with the intermediate to advanced POV-Ray user in mind. This book comes with POVRay V2.2, Moray, and several additional tools for MS-DOS on diskette. It assumes you have a basic knowledge of POVRay, which you can easily get by reading the POVRay documentation. An review of the book is available at: http://www.povray.org/povzine/povzine1/raytrace.html Title: Adventures in Ray Tracing Author: Alfonso Hermida Publisher: Que Corp. Year: 1993 ISBN: 1-56529-555-2 This book looks at Alexander Enzmann's ray tracer, Polyray (see 1 - Ray Tracing Software), and the author's own modelling system, POVCAD which runs under MS Windows. The two work well together. The content of the book is good and, as in the previous book, there are many excellent illustrations and pictures. There are a few errors in the book, but Alfonso has produced an errata list which is available from: ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/books/erratas/ Title: Photorealism and Ray Tracing in C Authors: Christopher Watkins, Stephen Coy, Mark Finlay Publisher: M&T Books Year: 1993 ISBN: ???? Provided with this book is source code for a ray tracer called Bob which is a subset of Stephen Coy's full-blown ray tracer, Vivid (see 1 - Ray Tracing Software). Title: Making Movies on Your PC Authors: David K. Mason and Alexander Enzmann Publisher: The Waite Group Year: 1993 ISBN: 1-878739-41-7 Focusing on animation, this book is by David K. Mason, author of many utilities including DTA - Dave's Targa Animator, and Alexander Enzmann, author of Polyray. These tools, and others, are used to show how animations can be created on a PC. It's a 210 page book that is laid out well with ample illustrations. Title: An Introduction to Ray Tracing Authors: Andrew Glassner (ed) Publisher: Academic Press Year: 1989 ISBN: 1-12-286160-4 An Introduction to Ray Tracing has its main focus on the programming techniques, implementation, and theoretical concepts in writing a ray tracer. It has been described as one of the two required books for ray tracing programmers (the other being Object-Oriented Ray Tracing in C++ by Nicholas Wilt) . It contains chapters from many of the pioneers of ray tracing. Eratta is available at: http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/books/erratas/IntroToRT Title: Object-Oriented Ray Tracing in C++ Author: Nicholas Wilt Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Year: 1993 ISBN: 0471-304-158 US Price: $36.95 This book takes the reader through many issues involved with the development of a ray tracer in C++. The last section of the book deals with OORT, a class library for ray tracing. It does not implement any input language or user interface but uses C++ calls to the library. This is intuitive, due to the nature of C++, and extremely powerful as all the normal constructs of C/C++ such as loops, conditionals, etc., are available. It's definately a programmer's book and some knowledge of graphics programming is assumed. Because of this, the nature of the book is quite technical and can be hard going. Eric Haines sums it up well: "If you want to make pretty pictures, get POV, Polyray, Rayshade, etc. If you want to look at some nice C++ code for a vector & matrix library, etc, check this code out." The code is available from: ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphic/graphics/ray/ ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/graphics/packages/ray-tracing/oort/ ------------------------------ Subject 5.4 - Image Libraries The POV-Ray home site has a good collection of ray traced images. The site maintains a "Hall of Fame" for outstanding images created with POV-Ray: ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/Hall-Of-Fame/ http://www.povray.org/hof/ The Rayshade home page also has an amazing collection of images made with this renderer and some custom additions at: http://www-graphics.stanford.edu/~cek/rayshade/gallery/gallery.html ------------------------------ Subject 5.5 - Texture Libraries There are a couple of initiatives under way to create a database of POV-Ray textures. People who have any textures at all from POV-Ray are encouraged to send textures to the maintainers of the archives so that everyone can benefit from the time you spent on creating the textures. http://www.informatik.tu-cottbus.de/~rs/povray/tex_lib_eng.html http://www.informatik.tu-cottbus.de/~rs/povray/tex_lib.html [German] | The library maintained by Jon Peterson is not currently available. There is a library of building related textures (bricks, stone, etc.), for use as image maps at: ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/packages/architec/Textures/ ------------------------------ Subject 5.6 - Internet Ray Tracing Competition Starting in November 1994, Matt Kruse started a raytracing competition for the readers of c.g.r.r, and the internet in general. What started out small grew into a great forum for incredible raytraced images on the net. Open to all artists using raytracing as their medium, the competition attracted artists of all skill levels, but more importantly served as a showcase of what is possible, and allowed everyone to learn a few tricks and techniques. Winners invariably pushed the envelope of what people thought possible, and winning was important as much for the admiration of the other artists as it was for the prizes. All of the submitted images from each month, along with the winners ones are available at: http://www.povray.org/competition/ ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/competition/ Because of its popularity, Matt could not keep up with the work needed to run the competition to his satisfaction, and the contest closed one year after it started. Fortunately, a new group of people, Bill Marrs, Chip Richards, and Jon Peterson, collectively known as the IRTC Admin Team, have picked up the flame with the blessing of Matt, and the new Internet Ray Tracing Competition has begun. You can find out more about the competition, and see the images as each competition finishes at: http://www.povray.org/irtc/ ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/irtc/ ------------------------------ Subject: 6 - Frequently Asked Questions Now that you've been blasted with lists of FTP sites, utilitites, software, books, etc., etc., the only questions you could possibly have left to ask are those that...erm...aren't about FTP sites, utilities, software or books, I suppose. So this section attempts to answer all the other questions that don't fit in above. ------------------------------ Subject 6.1 - "Who is..." This section looks at some of the ray tracing artists and people who are particularly well known for their work, be it images or software. The list is in strict alphabetical order as I don't fancy the task of trying be subjective about who's pictures are better than who's. A VERY IMPORTANT POINT: A lot of these people have to pay for their Email and 'net access. DO NOT send them large images or other posts without checking with them first. Certain members of the POV team have recently had some pretty hideous costs (like $30 for 1 mail item) because of this. (Was that OK, Dan?) * Truman Brown Truman Brown <71477.221@compuserve.com> is particularly well known for his "woild" series of images. He is a self-confessed "Obsessed Programmer / Trace-aholic" and has written a range of very useful utilities, including Connect The Dots Smoother (CTDS), Circle Master (CM) and its companion, HYPE. He has an understanding wife but his kids wish he didn't hog the PC so much. His utilities are available from most FTP sites and you can check out some of his images at: ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/Hall-Of-Fame/ http://www.povray.org/hof/ * Dan Farmer One of the original POV-Ray development team, Dan Farmer has created a large portion of the POV-Ray demo scenes, as well as other amazing images including the stunning "frosty.gif". Dan explains how he did it: "The image was done in POV-Ray. It's really quite simple. The face is a freely available dataset produced by Mira Imaging... I'm sure it exists on the net somewhere. The fractal shape is done with Fractint, using the 16 bit continuous potential features. It's an inverted Mandelbrot set. The silver texture is Silver1 in textures.inc. The sky is the usual bozo, but it's mapped onto a plane, not a sphere. Floor is an imagemapped plane. That's all there is to it!" Frosty's at ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/Hall-Of-Fame/frosty.gif The Mira dataset ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/scenes/mirpov.zip Unfortunately, Dan rarely releases his source code any more due to certain unscrupulous sorts using his images for commercial purposes without payment or even permission. Luckily, he has made the scene file for this image available on the POV-Ray CD-ROM which is also available online (see 1 - Ray Tracing Software). Dan has taken a leave of absence from the POV Team because he wants to spend more time with his real life than answering questions. He asks that people not contact him with questions about POV-Ray. * Eric Haines Eric A. Haines has probably done as much as anyone to make ray-tracing as understandable and accessible as it currently is. His many, many hours compiling the Ray Tracing News helped lots of people understand and develop ray tracing software, as well as serve as a forum for discussion between those interested in the art. (See 5 - Further Information and Resources). * Mike Miller If you ever need inspiration to see what can be done using POV-Ray, a piece of graph paper and a pencil, then look at some of Mike Miller's <70353.100@compuserve.com> images. His pictures never fail to impress and he has undoubtedly produced some of the best pictures ever created with POV-Ray. Mike created many of the demo scenes that come with POV-Ray and he is responsible for the excellent textures in "stones.inc". The cover story of the January 1994 IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications is entitled "Mike Miller's Many Hats" and looks at his work and includes many of his pictures. You can find his images and scene files on many sites. A good one to start with is ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/Hall-Of-Fame/ or ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/images/. Particular ones to look out for are benz9.jpg (model of a 1928 Mercedes Benz), camera.jpg, bug1.gif, etc., etc., the list goes on. * Ken Musgrave Ken Musgrave was called "the first true fractal-based artist" by Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractals. His work shows the artistic side of what can be done with mathematics and inspiration. Many have seen his image "Blessed State" inside the cover of "Computer Graphics, Principles and Practice" by Foley & van Dam, the authoratative computer graphics book. He has an excellent exhibit of his works available on the WWW at: http://www.seas.gwu.edu/faculty/musgrave/art_gallery.html Ken is currently applying his skills to creating an entire world | model with algorithmic principles. This project is named + Slartibartfast, after the designer of worlds in the "Hitchiker's + Guide to the Galaxy" series. ------------------------------ Subject 6.2 - "This picture doesn't trace." I know it might sound a bit obvious, but have you read the error message and tried to understand it? Did you look in the manual? Still nothing? I know I sound cynical, but it's not uncommon for people to have something go wrong and then post straight to the 'net without even *trying* to figure out what went wrong. A little patience and thought will solve the problem a lot quicker. Here's some common problems: * POV-Ray versions A lot of people get fooled when trying to trace old POV-Ray code with a new version. Use the -MV1.0 option or use #version in the code to get the parser to treat it as old code. You may find that you have to change any references to "shapes.inc" to "shapes.old". The POV-Ray docs can help you out here. What do you mean "I haven't got the docs"? Go get them. (See 1 - Ray Tracing Software) * Include files Have you checked that you've #included any include files that your scene requires? Include files tend to define colours, textures or objects that your scene may use. Make sure you've told the ray tracer where to look for include files. For example, POV-Ray uses the -L option to specify the directory where include files are, eg. -L/home/adilger/povray/include The POV-Ray docs can help you out here. What do you mean "I haven't got the docs"? Go get them. The same applies if you haven't actually got the files (see 2 - FTP Sites, Web Sites, Bulletin Boards, etc.) ------------------------------ Subject 6.3 - "I traced my picture, but I can't see anything." If the picture is completely dark, there are several things you can check: * Have you added any light sources? * Are the light sources blocked by anything? (This is a favourite of mine - I put in a large sphere for the sky and then add or move lights *outside* the sky sphere. Where did the lights go?) * Where are you looking? Are you sure your camera isn't inside an object? * Have you applied textures to your objects. If you haven't, you might find that your ray tracer defaults your object to be black. Have you actually put anything into the picture? This isn't as silly as it sounds. If you #declare on object (POV-Ray, again) like this: #declare my_object= union { sphere { <0, 0, 0> 1 } cylinder { <-2, 0, 0> <2, 0, 0> 0.5 } } Then you have just told the ray tracer that when you refer to "my_object", you actually mean a union of a sphere and a cylinder as shown. To use the object, you must explicitly put it in: object { my_object } ------------------------------ Subject 6.4 - "I traced my picture, but the output is garbage." Did you specify the correct output file format? Most ray-tracers have several options for output file formats. If you haven't explicitly specified the output format, there's a good chance it's not what you want it to be. Also note that using a file name with an extension (like .TGA) does not necessarily mean this is the format of image. This is a common mistake with POV-Ray 2.2 for UNIX which uses an obscure output format by default. Also, if you don't compile in the URT support for Rayshade, you will get MTV format output files. What is MTV you ask? It's one of the very early publicly available ray tracers, written by Mark Terrence VandeWettering, now with Pixar. Some image display programs use the file extension to determineand the file contents, so if you call the file output.tga, and it's actually a PNG image, your display program may complain that the TGA file is corrupted. This is especially a problem with TGA files, since they do not start with a "magic number", and this makes file identification difficult. ------------------------------ Subject 6.5 - "How can I view these pictures?" If you're using UNIX, you can use XV which is available as a source distribution from many sites, or ImageMagick, again available on many sites. It should be noted that XV v3.00, which is installed at some sites, does not display TGA files, although XV v3.10 and ImageMagick do. If XV and/or ImageMagick do not support a particular image format you have, it probably doesn't actually exist :-). However, if you need to handle large numbers of images in batch form, or if you don't have an X windows display and you want to manipulate images (but not necessarily view them), chances are that the netpbm package is what you need. Netpbm is a command line utility, and can converting images from practically any format to any other, but it does not display the images themselves. If you're on a PC and using DOS, you'll probably want to get either QPV or PICLAB to do the displaying. For MS-Windows users, lview seems to be a popular display/editing program, and for OS/2 there is PMJpeg, which is an OS/2 port of lview. There are kegs-o-megs of PC image viewers at most ftp sites, so take your time and find one you like. These packages are available in countless locations on the Internet (see 4 - Utilities and Other Software). ------------------------------ Subject 6.6 - "Rotating/scaling this object doesn't work properly." With most ray tracers, rotating on object in a given direction rotates it around the axis *not* around its own centre. If your object is centred on the X axis and you rotate it in the X direction, it will spin. However, if it is some distance from the axis and you rotate it, it will "orbit" the X axis, tracing a circle with a radius equal to the distance of the object from the axis. Confused? Think of the Earth spinning on it's axis. It doesn't go anywhere because it is centred on its axis (ignoring rotation around the Sun). The moon, however is some distance from the Earth's axis and as it rotates around that axis, it travels through space, orbiting the Earth. To work out which way something will move, you need to know if your ray tracer uses a left or a right handed co-ordinate system. POV-Ray, for example, uses a left handed system. To work out which way an object will turn, point your thumb in the positive direction of the axis you're rotating in and the way you fingers curl indicate the direction of positive rotation. The hand you use to do this depends on your ray tracer; left-handed, use left hand, right handed, use right. The same thing goes for scaling. If your object is already some distance away from the origin, that distance will also get scaled. For example, if you have a sphere 2 units away from the origin, with a radius of 1 and you scale it by 2, the radius will now be 2 *and* the distance from the origin will be 4. ------------------------------ Subject 6.7 - "Where can I find model data for..." The former Avalon site has been closed down, and the Avalon model site has been moved to Viewpoint, a commercial model vendor, as of 07/95. It is the promise of Viewpoint that the Avalon data remain freely available to all. Avalon is now located at: ftp://avalon.viewpoint.com/avalon/ or http://www.viewpoint.com/avalon.html or ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/mirrors/avalon/ is a mirror. Avalon is probably the best site you'll find for free 3D model data. However, the home page at Viewpoint also has pointers to their free and commercial models if you can't find what you need at Avalon. Another commercial model vendor on the net is MeshMart at: http://cedar.cic.net/~rtilmann/mm/ (See also 2 - FTP Sites, Web Sites, Bulletin Boards, etc.) ------------------------------ Subject 6.8 - "Can I post binaries/images to this group?" In a word, NO. The group is part of the comp.graphics hierarchy which should be, and is, strictly non-binary. The reason for this is that uuencoded binaries tend to be very large. By restricting binary postings to the comp.binaries and alt.binaries hierachies, those sites who do not want to carry large volume groups can easily ignore anything under these two streams. Remember that most sites pay to transfer and store news and if they find that comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing is getting too expensive, they can just stop carrying it. That is their right and priviledge. Also remember that many individuals download this group via modems and pay for every byte. They tend to get a bit annoyed when they have to fork out lots of money to download stuff they might not even want. But what if you're really desperate to share with us your latest ray tracing you've done depicting a mutant star camel exploding in a super nova while naked dancers melt into a checkered floor? (the checkered floor always turns up sooner or later). Great! I'm sure we'd love to see it, you should post it to news:alt.binaries.pictures.misc or upload it to ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/incoming/images/. If you're posting it you should remember to uuencode it and split it into small (less than 64k) parts. Make sure to use an informative title like: RAY TRACING: MUTANT.GIF: mutant star camel scene, part 1 of 6 and include a text posting (part 0 of n) that describes the picture, states what format it's in (.gif, .jpg, etc.), what size it is, how many colours, and anything else you want to mention. The more you put, the better. You can then post a message to news:comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing, along with a few lines saying "I've just posted this image to alt.binaries.pictures.misc". BTW, ray tracing pictures generally get a good response over in a.b.p.m and you'll often see request for them in news:alt.binaries.pictures.d (the discussion group). If it's a utility you're posting, it should go to alt.binaries.misc instead of news:alt.binaries.pictures.misc, but the same process applies. The other alternative is to upload the picture or utility to an ftp site and use news:comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing to announce it in the same way. ------------------------------ Subject 6.9 - "What does this mean..." Some ray tracing and related terms you might come across: * CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry) - A term describing ways in which you can build up complex shapes from simple primitives like cubes, speres, and cylinders. By combining the primitives in different ways, namely adding them together (union), taking one away from the other (difference) or getting the part where they intersect (intersection) you can make small building blocks, which can in turn be used to make more complex CSG objects. * Height Field - A height field can be thought of as a 3 dimensional bar graph. It is a grid of data where the value at any point corresponds to the "altitude" of that point. Height fields are typically stored as images with the lighter areas being higher, and the darker areas lower. Heightfields are usually used for flat surfaces, but can also be wrapped around cylinders and spheres in some software packages. * Radiosity - Most ray-tracers use an empirical lighting model - that is the parameters specified for lights and objects do not really correspond to physical properties, but are selected to make things look good. Radiosity calculates the reflections and lighting between all objects in the scene, and gives a more realistic rendering of the scene. This method is very good at representing the diffuse lighting in a scene, while ray-tracing is better at handling the reflection. In some renderers, both techniques are used to give spectacular results. Needless to say, radiosity is even more computationally complex than ray-tracing. ------------------------------ Subject 6.10 - "What is the difference between rendering and ray-tracing?" Ray tracing *is* rendering. But then so is z-buffer rendering, scanline rendering, etc. Ray tracing is just another algorithm used to render (i.e. "paint") pictures. ------------------------------ Subject 6.11 - "When will POV-Ray 3.0 come out?" At long last, POV 3.0 is nearly with us. There is currently a public beta test program underway. The POV-Team have made binaries available | for the MS-DOS, Macintosh, Amiga, MS-Windows, Linux, and SunOS platforms. These beta versions contain expiration timers, but newer beta binaries will be released until the Team releases the source code. It is unlikely that there will be beta binaries for other platforms. The POV-Team asks that you do not ask them questions about how to use POV-Ray. If you have a SPECIFIC BUG REPORT, you are asked to contact the POV-Team leader, Chris Young. For more information, see: http://www.povray.org/cc/beta-announce/povindex.htm ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/Official/3.0-beta/ ------------------------------ Subject 6.12 - "Where are the .inc files for POV-Ray?" The .inc files in question (textures.inc and colors.inc) are included in the documentation files, which should be at the same location as the POV-Ray source or executable files. These files were deliberately left out of the other packages so you would HAVE to get the documentation. This will save everybody from answering a lot of questions later. Read the documentation. It is good. How do you think you will create anything without the documentation? (See 2 - FTP Sites, Web Sites, Bulletin Boards, etc.) ------------------------------ Subject: 7 - Roll the Credits Special thanks go to Eric Haines for his help and the wealth of information he has provided both directly and in Ray Tracing News, FTP lists, etc. Thanks also to all those people who maintain other lists, bibliographies, FTP sites, or have provided me with specific information, told me where to look, produced mini-faqs (thanks John) or have just posted answers to the group: John Beale Nick Fotis Jim Grimes Ian Grimstead Eric Haines Laszlo Herczeg Chris W. Morris Bjorn-Kare Nilssen George Kyriazis Daniel Palermo Harry Rowe Heinz Schuller Rick Speer Greg Ward Andy Wardley Oliver Weyand Marius Watz Finally, some king-size thanks to all those people out there who have developed, and continue to do so, all the ray tracing software and utilities that keep us so occupied. Wives, girlfriends and children may disagree on this point, but thanks anyway. Special awards in this category go to Dan Farmer <70703.1632@compuserve.com> who wins the Award for "Not-Only-Doing-All- His-POV-Team-Stuff-But-Also-Answering-Lots-of-Questions-And-Being-An-All- Round-Mr.-Nice-Guy", and Chris Cason who gets the coveted "Also-Does-His-POV-Bit-Especially-Being-Admin-of-the-POV-Site- And-Answering-Questions-As- Well-And-Making-the-POV-Ray-CD-Too". Sorry if I've forgotten anyone. Thanks anyway. ------------------------------ Subject: Epilogue You may have noticed one or two gaps in the FAQ or spotted a glaring error, or just thought of something that I really should have mentioned. If that's the case and you can provide some info or corrections, then let me know and sort it out. Well here you are at the end of the document, and your trace is still only half done. You've probably got time to walk the dog before it's finished... Happy Tracing. -- Andreas Dilger University of Calgary \"If a man ate a pound of pasta and (403) 220-8792 Micronet Research Group \ a pound of antipasto, would they Dept of Electrical & Computer Engineering \ cancel out, leaving him still http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/ hungry?" -- Dogbert ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Path: news1.ucsd.edu!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!munnari.OZ.AU!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mira.net.au!Germany.EU.net!main.Germany.EU.net!Frankfurt.Germany.EU.net!howland.erols.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!news.sgi.com!csulb.edu!info.ucla.edu!unixg.ubc.ca!rover.ucs.ualberta.ca!news.ucalgary.ca!adilger From: adilger@enel.ucalgary.ca (Andreas Dilger) Newsgroups: comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing,comp.answers,news.answers Subject: comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing FAQ (part 2/2) Supersedes: Followup-To: comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing Date: 12 Sep 1996 10:16:58 GMT Organization: ECE Department, U. of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada Lines: 1053 Sender: adilger@enel.ucalgary.ca (Andreas Dilger) Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.EDU Expires: 8 Oct 1996 10:17:18 GMT Message-ID: References: Reply-To: adilger@enel.ucalgary.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: adilger@munet-d.enel.ucalgary.ca Summary: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about raytracing software on comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing Keywords: FAQ ray tracing POV Precedence: bulk Xref: news1.ucsd.edu comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing:9857 comp.answers:16247 news.answers:65039 Archive-name: graphics/raytrace-faq/part2 Last-modified: 1996/07/19 Posting-Frequency: every 10 days This is part 2 of the comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing Frequently Asked Questions list. The latest version of the FAQ is available via anonymous WWW at: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/bngusenet/top.html under comp->graphics->rendering->raytracing. It is also available via anonymous ftp at: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/raytrace-faq/ If you only have email, you can get it by sending email to: with both "send usenet/news.answers/graphics/raytrace-faq/part1" and "send usenet/news.answers/graphics/raytrace-faq/part2" in the body of the message (without the quotes). (C) Copyright 1994 Andy Wardley (C) Copyright 1995, 1996 Andreas Dilger ------------------------------ Subject: 4 - Utilities and Other Software ------------------------------ Subject 4.1 - Image Display/Conversion Programs * DISP - an excellent viewing and post-processing utility for DOS. Available on simtel and mirrors. * IMAGEMAGICK - An X-Windows based image display program (source distribution), that also allows simple editing of images, such as color modification, scaling, rotating, text annotation, etc. PNG format images are now supported by ImageMagick. Available at: ftp://harbor.ecn.purdue.edu/pub/imagemagick.tar.gz http://www.wizards.dupont.com/cristy/ImageMagick.html (Cristy, 1995) * NEOPAINT - A useful DOS shareware paint package (registration US $45) for creating images, height fields, etc, or just touching up finished artwork. Available from wuarchive and mirrors. * NETPBM - A collection of command-line utilities for most platforms (source distribution). Executables available for most other platforms like DOS, OS/2, Linux, and others. NetPBM utilities convert practically any format to any other by using a common intermediate file format, as well as allowing quantization, cropping, combining, blur, and many other effects. Available at: ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/packages/NetPBM/ (Poskanzer et al., 1991-1994) * PICLAB - An excellent package for converting and post-processing images for DOS. (Crocker, 1990) * QPV - The Quick Picture Viewer. A great utility for displaying and converting images for DOS/Win systems. Formerly QPEG, QPV has been improved, and has new features, such as the ability to read and write PNG format images. (Fromme, 1995) * XV - An X-Windows based image display program (source distribution), with simple image editing facilities, such as color editing, scaling, rotation, and also filter effects for blurring, edge detection, and others. A patch is available for XV 3.10 to support PNG images via libpng and libgz. (Bradley, 1995) ------------------------------ Subject 4.2 - Format Conversion Utilities Much of the following sections area taken from Amanda Osbourne's "Raytrace Utilities for DOS (and Windows)" list. All are IBM PC based unless otherwise specified. Various utilities for converting from one 3D file format to another: * 3DSPOV - Reads 3d studio mesh files. Writes out to Raw, POV-Ray (1 & 2), Vivid and Polyray. (Anger & Bowermaster, 1993) * DEM2POV - This program (source distribution) converts US Geological Survey (USGS) Digital Elevation Maps (DEM) to the TGA format heightfields used by POV-Ray 2.2. Includes a large DEM file of the region around the Grand Canyon. (Kirby, 1995) * DXF2POV - DXF to POV-Ray 1 conversion program. (Collins, Wells, Farmer & Gibeson, 1992) * DXF2RAW - DXF to Raw conversion program. (Coy, Barber, Daigle & Shiffman, 1992) * DXF2V - DXF to Vivid conversion program. (Coy, Barber, Daigle & Shiffman, 1992) * DXF3DS - DXF to 3DS conversion program. (Yost/Autodesk, 1991) * HUTIL101c - A set of utilities (source) for converting between various POV-Ray heightfield formats (16-bit TGA, GIF, POT) as well as OCT and Matlab 32-bit MAT files. In addition, it can combine heightfields using arithmetic operators, join them together, scale, and create spherical and cylindrical heightfields with triangle meshes. See also HF-Lab. (Beale, 1995) * MRYPLY - Converts Moray files to PolyRay files. * OBJ2ASC2 - Wavefront object to 3d studio ascii converter. (Knight, 1993) * RAW2PV - Excellent utility that allows the user to adjust the level of smoothing to apply to raw data as it is translated to POV-Ray (1 & 2.x), Polyray or Vivid 2. It can also add a camera and light to the scene, making things fairly easy for the novice user. (Anger, 1993) * RAYL210 - Helpful utility to convert uLathe (an object creator program for windows) files to RAW, POV-Ray 1 & 2.x or Vivid 2 format. (Koehler, 1993) * TDDD2ASC - TDDD (Imagine) to 3D studio ascii file converter. (Knight, 1993) * WC2POV - Although wcvt2pov (MS-Windows) started out converting 3D file formats to POV-Ray, wcvt2pov has become a generic 3D file format conversion utility, with support for importing 3d studio, Wavefront, NFF, DXF, TrueType Fonts, RAW triangles and some other formats, and exporting 3ds, asc, POV-Ray, NFF, DXF, VRML, Wavefront, Open GL 'C' code fragments, RAW triangles, and some other formats. (Rule, 1995) ------------------------------ Subject 4.3 - Creation Creators Utilities to aid in the creation of ray tacing objects: * BOXER - Object generator for POV-Ray 1 (makes things like bathroom tiles and such based upon user input). (Miller, 1993) * BRANCH - Tree creator for POV-Ray 1. (Weller, 1992) * CHAIN - Generates interlocking chain links for POV-Ray 1.0. (Koehler, 1992) * CM - CircleMaster utility for working with quadric spheres and ellipsoids; writes output to POV-Ray 1.0. (Brown, 1992) * COIL - Creates coiled objects for POV-Ray 1.0. (Kirby, 1992) * COILV - Creates coiled objects for Vivid 2. (Kirby & Cox, 1992) * CTDS - Connects a series of xyz dot coordinates. Though this may not sound like much, this is an extremely helpful utility. Supports POV-Ray, Vivid and Polyray. (Brown, 1993) * FORM - All sorts of shapes can be generated with this program. Form files consist of both shapes and commands (like twistx and bend) and output may be POV-Ray 1, 2 or .plg. Interesting program, complementary to LPARSER. (Rowbottom, 1993) * FRACTINT - The ultimate fractals generator for DOS, X-windows source code, and distributed with the Linux Slackware games disks. Great for creating height fields, colour maps, viewing gifs or just creating fractals. (The Stone Soup Group, 1990-95) * FRGEN - Fractal Landscape (and other shapes too) Generator. Though the program supports Vivid and POV-Ray 1 & 2 directly, by selecting raw output you can smooth triangles out with RAW2POV to create nice hills and dales. (Anger, 1993) * GEODOME - Utility for generating geodesic domes. Output to POV-Ray 2.x format as either facets or a mesh of pipes and joints. IBM PC executable, with source included. (Wardley, 1994) * GFORGE - Graphical Fractal Forgery (source, DOS exe). Generates 16-bit heightfields for POV-Ray, using a high-quality algorithm: the IFFT of 1/f noise. File formats include PGM, PNG, POV TGA heightfield, and Matlab bin. Several parameters give you control over the appearance of the output, which can range from sand to hills to mountains. Useful also for 2D textures; the image always tiles perfectly. Now also supports craters. (Beale, 1995) * HFLAB - Heightfield Lab (DOS/UNIX source, DOS exe). Generates and manipulates 16-bit heightfields for POV-Ray, using a variety of mathematical and procedural algorithms. Has a graphical interface for both DOS and X Windows. Allows the combination of two or more heightfields by addition, multiplication, or side-by-side joining, and many other operators. File formats include PGM, PNG, POV TGA heightfield, and Matlab 32-bit floating point. (Beale, 1996). * LPARSER - L-system creator and mutator. This program is particularly strong in the creation of organic looking forms. Many example data files are included with the program. The language of l-systems is not intuitive but the results can be truly stunning. Outputs to DXF (both R12 and 3D faces), POV-Ray 2.x, RAW and Renderstar VOL. A wire-frame viewer that reads .3DS, .RAW, Fractint .RAY, ARE-24 .POL and Lparser/Renderstar .VOL files is included. (Lapre, 1993) * LV20POVID - Newer and more powerful than LV2POV, this program reads an lviewer info file and generates data files in POV-Ray (1 & 2.x) and Vivid formats. The program's main strength lies in landscape generation. (van der Mark, 1993) * TRMK - Terrain Maker (DOS) uses a triangle midpoint subdivision algorithm to generate a variety of GIF heightfields. (Jorgensen, 1995) * PLANT - Fractal plant generator. Outputs supported are POV-Ray (1 & 2), Polyray and CTDS (Connect the dots smoother). (Bryerton, 1993) * SUDS - Random positioning of lots of spheres (or other objects) based on a variety of selections. (Farmer, Wegner & Schwan, 1994) * TORPATCH - This program creates a rope/wire object that passes smoothly through supplied points out of a series of clipped tori. Available as DOS EXE, and Turbo Pascal or C source. Can also create a random tangle of wires. (Mackey & Beddes, 1996) * TWISTER - Utility that will create spirals, coils, etc., of blobs, cubes or sphere. IBM PC executable with source, output to POV 2.x format. (Wardley, 1994) ------------------------------ Subject 4.4 - Texture Editors * CMAP - Interactive color map creator for POV-Ray. (Lutz & Kretzschmar, 1993) * TCE - The color editor for POV-Ray 1. (Farmer, 1991) * TCEV - The color editor for Vivid. (Farmer, 1991) * TEXMAKE - Early version of a utility to assist in texture creation in POV-Ray 2.x. (Sigler, 1993) * TXMAG - Texture Magic is an interactive, 32-bit MS-Windows based texture editor for POV-Ray 2.x, Assymetrix 3D F/X, and Autodesk 3D-Studio. ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/texture-editors/texture-magic/ http://www.eskimo.com/~scott/povtext.html (Pultz, 1996) ------------------------------ Subject 4.5 - Animation * AERO - AERO is a X-Windows based physical simulation environment suitable for making complex, realistic animations. Objects (including the camera) can be given properties like mass, velocity, and acceleration, constraints like springs and dampers can be specified between objects, and then AERO performs collision detection, position, and orientation calculations. Output is to POV-Ray 1.0 or 2.x scene files. (Keller, Stolz, Ziegler, Braunl, 1995) * AWKANI - AWK script to output POV-Ray animation data. (Farmer, 1992) * DTA - Dave's Targa Animator (DOS) converts .TGA and many other single image format frames into .FLI's and .FLC's. (Mason, 1995) * MPEG_ENCODE - MPEG_ENCODE (source distribution, also many executables) can take images in PPM and JPEG formats (as well as other formats, if a ...toppm converter exists) to produce a fully compliant MPEG 1 animation. It is possible to run the encoding on multiple processors. It is available in many locations (see 2 - FTP Sites, Bulletin Boards, etc.) (Rowe, et al, 1995) * MPEG_PLAY - MPEG_PLAY (source distribution, also many executables) displays MPEG 1 encoded animations on a large variety of systems. (Rowe, et al, 1995) * PPP - The POV and PolyRay Preprocessor allows scene files to be created with conditional statements, loops, math functions, vector math, and more to generate one or more scene files for animation and complex object creation. (Wind, 1995) * PVQUAN - PVQUAN (source) is a set of tools that allow you to create .FLI creations on many platforms including UNIX and DOS. Source code is provided and includes a hosts of useful functions like quantisation, .GIF read, display, etc. * RAYSCENE - Set of animation utilities, not raytracer specific. (Jarik & Hassi, 1991) * RTAG - Ray Tracing Animation Generator (not raytracer specific). A powerful program with its own language which supports, amongst other things, spline path generation. (Sherrod, 1993) * SCEDA - SCEDA is a descendant of the SCED X-Windows modeller, with enhancements to allow generation of multiple scene files for an animation. (See also 3 - Modelling Software) (McLaughlin & Chenney, 1996) * SP - Spline paths for animations. Many output formats (POV-Ray, Vivid, Polyray, 3DV, Wire 3D) and acceleration and deceleration are supported as well. (Mason, 1992) * ZOOM - Interpolates steps between two positions for POV-Ray 1.0. (Brown, 1993) ------------------------------ Subject 4.6 - Miscellaneous Utilities * POVMODE.EL - A mode for emacs to handle POV-Ray syntax. Available at: ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/old-incoming/misc/pov-mode.el * POVRAY TUTORIAL - The POV-Ray tutorial is a 100 page text tutorial that you can print out and read in the comfort of your own home. It covers almost all of POV-Ray's features, including height fields, realistic spotlights, and image maps. You can either jump to the section that interests you or follow through from the beginning to see the complete complex scene through to completion. The tutorial is designed for beginners and more advanced artists alike. It is distributed free in MS-Windows, Mac and postscript formats currently at: ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/old-incoming/utilities/pvt100.zip ------------------------------ Subject: 5 - Further Information and Resources ------------------------------ Subject 5.1 - On-line Resources * FAQs All of the FAQs in the USENET heirarchy that are posted to the news.answers newsgroup (as all FAQs should be) are archived at: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/ They are also converted to HTML format and made available at: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/bngusenet/top.html For those people that are interested in learning about the internal workings of a ray tracer, you should take a look at the newsgroup comp.graphics.algorithms Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). This document describes rotations, intersections, texture mapping, etc. * Ray Tracing News Eric Haines has put together a phenomenal amount of information on ray tracing. This he combines into his Ray Tracing News (RTNews). They are a wealth of information and contain articles, sofware reviews and comparisons, book reviews and lists of everything and anything to do with ray tracing. They are available from many sites in text and/or HTML format, including: ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/Graphics/RTNews/ http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/ray/RTNews/html/ http://www.povray.org/rtn/ Eric's ray tracing and radiosity bibliographies as well as an FTP list are available at: ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/Graphics/Papers/ * Ray Tracing Bibliogaphy Rick Speer has also done a lot of work in bringing together articles on ray tracing. He maintains a cross-indexed ray tracing bibliography of over 500 articles from 1968 to the present. These include papers from all Siggraph, Graphics Interface, Eurographics, CG International and Ausgraph proceedings. All citations are keyworded and cross-indices are supplied by author and keyword. The bibliography is in the form of a 41 page postscript file which is held at many ftp sites as "speer.raytrace.bib.ps.Z": ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/bib/RT.BIB.Speer/ ftp://karazm.math.uh.edu/pub/Graphics/ ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/sci/papers/graphics/ Ian Grimstead has also collected together a large collection of over 360 pages on-line of ray tracing papers. It is accessible via the World-Wide Web and has links to other on-line papers and documentation at: http://www.cm.cf.ac.uk/Ray.Tracing/RT.Bibliography.html Ian also maintains a web page of links to other WWW ray tracing pages. You can also add your own links to ray tracing pages that you maintain at: http://www.cm.cf.ac.uk/Ray.Tracing/ * Ray Tracing Abstracts Tom Wilson has collected over 300 abstracts from ray tracing related papers and books. The collections is available as plain ascii, with Latex and troff formatting programs included. It is available as "rtabs.*" from many sites. * Graphics Resources List The Graphics Resources List contains a wealth of information on all sorts of computer graphics and visualization information. It has info on mailing lists, plotting packages, ray-tracers, other rendering methods, etc. It is available on comp.graphics, comp.answers or archived at various sites. The official archive is ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/resources-list/part1 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/resources-list/part2 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/resources-list/part3 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/resources-list/part4 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/resources-list/part5 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/resources-list/part6 * Paper Bank Project Juhana Kouhia has collected together various technical papers in electronic form. Contact him for more information. ------------------------------ Subject 5.2 - Other Newsgroups Some other newsgroups that may be of interest to you are listed below. - comp.graphics.algorithms - comp.graphics.animation - comp.graphics.misc - comp.graphics.apps.alias - comp.graphics.apps.lightwave - comp.graphics.apps.softimage - comp.graphics.apps.wavefront - comp.graphics.packages.3dstudio - comp.graphics.rendering.misc - comp.graphics.rendering.renderman - comp.graphics.visualization ------------------------------ Subject 5.3 - Books Title: Ray Tracing Creations Authors: Drew Wells and Chris Young Publisher: The Waite Group Year: 1993 ISBN: 1-878739-27-1 This book has been written by Drew Wells and Chris Young, two of the original developers of POV-Ray, as a user and reference manual for POV-Ray. Coming in at 573 pages, it's an excellent publication with literally hundreds of stunning colour and monochrome pictures. The only drawback with the book is that it deals with POV-Ray version 1.0 which is a little dated now that version 2.2 is out, but it is still a very worthwhile investment for any POV-Ray user. Title: Ray Tracing Worlds with POV-Ray Authors: Alexander Enzmann, Lutz Kretzschmar, and Chris Young Publisher: The Waite Group Year: 1994 ISBN: 1-878739-64-6 Raytracing Worlds with POV-Ray is written with the intermediate to advanced POV-Ray user in mind. This book comes with POVRay V2.2, Moray, and several additional tools for MS-DOS on diskette. It assumes you have a basic knowledge of POVRay, which you can easily get by reading the POVRay documentation. An review of the book is available at: http://www.povray.org/povzine/povzine1/raytrace.html Title: Adventures in Ray Tracing Author: Alfonso Hermida Publisher: Que Corp. Year: 1993 ISBN: 1-56529-555-2 This book looks at Alexander Enzmann's ray tracer, Polyray (see 1 - Ray Tracing Software), and the author's own modelling system, POVCAD which runs under MS Windows. The two work well together. The content of the book is good and, as in the previous book, there are many excellent illustrations and pictures. There are a few errors in the book, but Alfonso has produced an errata list which is available from: ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/books/erratas/ Title: Photorealism and Ray Tracing in C Authors: Christopher Watkins, Stephen Coy, Mark Finlay Publisher: M&T Books Year: 1993 ISBN: ???? Provided with this book is source code for a ray tracer called Bob which is a subset of Stephen Coy's full-blown ray tracer, Vivid (see 1 - Ray Tracing Software). Title: Making Movies on Your PC Authors: David K. Mason and Alexander Enzmann Publisher: The Waite Group Year: 1993 ISBN: 1-878739-41-7 Focusing on animation, this book is by David K. Mason, author of many utilities including DTA - Dave's Targa Animator, and Alexander Enzmann, author of Polyray. These tools, and others, are used to show how animations can be created on a PC. It's a 210 page book that is laid out well with ample illustrations. Title: An Introduction to Ray Tracing Authors: Andrew Glassner (ed) Publisher: Academic Press Year: 1989 ISBN: 1-12-286160-4 An Introduction to Ray Tracing has its main focus on the programming techniques, implementation, and theoretical concepts in writing a ray tracer. It has been described as one of the two required books for ray tracing programmers (the other being Object-Oriented Ray Tracing in C++ by Nicholas Wilt) . It contains chapters from many of the pioneers of ray tracing. Eratta is available at: http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/books/erratas/IntroToRT Title: Object-Oriented Ray Tracing in C++ Author: Nicholas Wilt Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Year: 1993 ISBN: 0471-304-158 US Price: $36.95 This book takes the reader through many issues involved with the development of a ray tracer in C++. The last section of the book deals with OORT, a class library for ray tracing. It does not implement any input language or user interface but uses C++ calls to the library. This is intuitive, due to the nature of C++, and extremely powerful as all the normal constructs of C/C++ such as loops, conditionals, etc., are available. It's definately a programmer's book and some knowledge of graphics programming is assumed. Because of this, the nature of the book is quite technical and can be hard going. Eric Haines sums it up well: "If you want to make pretty pictures, get POV, Polyray, Rayshade, etc. If you want to look at some nice C++ code for a vector & matrix library, etc, check this code out." The code is available from: ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphic/graphics/ray/ ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/graphics/packages/ray-tracing/oort/ ------------------------------ Subject 5.4 - Image Libraries The POV-Ray home site has a good collection of ray traced images. The site maintains a "Hall of Fame" for outstanding images created with POV-Ray: ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/Hall-Of-Fame/ http://www.povray.org/hof/ The Rayshade home page also has an amazing collection of images made with this renderer and some custom additions at: http://www-graphics.stanford.edu/~cek/rayshade/gallery/gallery.html ------------------------------ Subject 5.5 - Texture Libraries There are a couple of initiatives under way to create a database of POV-Ray textures. People who have any textures at all from POV-Ray are encouraged to send textures to the maintainers of the archives so that everyone can benefit from the time you spent on creating the textures. http://www.informatik.tu-cottbus.de/~rs/povray/tex_lib_eng.html http://www.informatik.tu-cottbus.de/~rs/povray/tex_lib.html [German] | The library maintained by Jon Peterson is not currently available. There is a library of building related textures (bricks, stone, etc.), for use as image maps at: ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/packages/architec/Textures/ ------------------------------ Subject 5.6 - Internet Ray Tracing Competition Starting in November 1994, Matt Kruse started a raytracing competition for the readers of c.g.r.r, and the internet in general. What started out small grew into a great forum for incredible raytraced images on the net. Open to all artists using raytracing as their medium, the competition attracted artists of all skill levels, but more importantly served as a showcase of what is possible, and allowed everyone to learn a few tricks and techniques. Winners invariably pushed the envelope of what people thought possible, and winning was important as much for the admiration of the other artists as it was for the prizes. All of the submitted images from each month, along with the winners ones are available at: http://www.povray.org/competition/ ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/competition/ Because of its popularity, Matt could not keep up with the work needed to run the competition to his satisfaction, and the contest closed one year after it started. Fortunately, a new group of people, Bill Marrs, Chip Richards, and Jon Peterson, collectively known as the IRTC Admin Team, have picked up the flame with the blessing of Matt, and the new Internet Ray Tracing Competition has begun. You can find out more about the competition, and see the images as each competition finishes at: http://www.povray.org/irtc/ ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/irtc/ + If the first month is anything to judge by (and I'm sure it is), this + competition will be something to look forward to every other month as + the pictures become available for voting. There were some spectacular + images for the first competition (the topic was "Time"), and I don't + see any reason why future competitions won't have images at least as + good as the first. Stay tuned!!! ------------------------------ Subject: 6 - Frequently Asked Questions Now that you've been blasted with lists of FTP sites, utilitites, software, books, etc., etc., the only questions you could possibly have left to ask are those that...erm...aren't about FTP sites, utilities, software or books, I suppose. So this section attempts to answer all the other questions that don't fit in above. ------------------------------ Subject 6.1 - "Can I post binaries/images to this group?" In a word, NO. The group is part of the comp.graphics hierarchy which should be, and is, strictly non-binary. The reason for this is that uuencoded binaries tend to be very large. By restricting binary postings to the comp.binaries and alt.binaries hierachies, those sites who do not want to carry large volume groups can easily ignore anything under these two streams. Remember that most sites pay to transfer and store news and if they find that comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing is getting too expensive, they can just stop carrying it. That is their right and priviledge. Also remember that many individuals download this group via modems and pay for every byte. They tend to get a bit annoyed when they have to fork out lots of money to download stuff they might not even want. But what if you're really desperate to share with us your latest ray tracing you've done depicting a mutant star camel exploding in a super nova while naked dancers melt into a checkered floor? (The checkered floor always turns up sooner or later). Great! I'm sure we'd love to see it, you should post it to news:alt.binaries.pictures.misc or upload it to ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/incoming/images/. If you're posting it you should remember to uuencode it and split it into small (less than 64k) parts. Make sure to use an informative title like: RAY TRACING: MUTANT.GIF: mutant star camel scene, part 1 of 6 and include a text posting (part 0 of n) that describes the picture, states what format it's in (.gif, .jpg, etc.), what size it is, how many colours, and anything else you want to mention. The more you put, the better. If you're uploading it to povray.org, be sure to also upload a .txt description of the file so that others can have a good idea of what the image is, and who created it, before they download it. There is a blank upload form for povray.org at /pub/povray/incoming/TEMPLATE.TXT. You can then post a message to news:comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing, along with a few lines saying "I've just posted/uploaded this image to ... It's a picture of...". By the way, ray tracing pictures generally get a good response over in a.b.p.m and you'll often see request for them in news:alt.binaries.pictures.d (the discussion group). If it's a utility you're working on, it should probably go to povray.org for POV-Ray utilities, or graphics.stanford.edu for Rayshade utilities, or whatever it is you're working on. ------------------------------ Subject 6.2 - "Where can I find model data for..." The former Avalon site has been closed down, and the Avalon model site has been moved to Viewpoint, a commercial model vendor, as of 07/95. It is the promise of Viewpoint that the Avalon data remain freely available to all. Avalon is now located at: ftp://avalon.viewpoint.com/avalon/ or http://www.viewpoint.com/avalon.html or ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/mirrors/avalon/ is a mirror. Avalon is probably the best site you'll find for free 3D model data. However, the home page at Viewpoint also has pointers to their free and commercial models if you can't find what you need at Avalon. Another commercial model vendor on the net is MeshMart at: http://cedar.cic.net/~rtilmann/mm/ (See also 2 - FTP Sites, Web Sites, Bulletin Boards, etc.) ------------------------------ Subject 6.3 - "How can I view these pictures?" If you're using UNIX, you can use XV which is available as a source distribution from many sites, or ImageMagick, again available on many sites. It should be noted that XV v3.00, which is installed at some sites, does not display TGA files, although XV v3.10 and ImageMagick do. If XV and/or ImageMagick do not support a particular image format you have, it probably doesn't actually exist :-). However, if you need to handle large numbers of images in batch form, or if you don't have an X windows display and you want to manipulate images (but not necessarily view them), chances are that the netpbm package is what you need. Netpbm is a command line utility, and can converting images from practically any format to any other, but it does not display the images themselves. If you're on a PC and using DOS, you'll probably want to get either QPV or PICLAB to do the displaying. For MS-Windows users, lview seems to be a popular display/editing program, and for OS/2 there is PMJpeg, which is an OS/2 port of lview. There are kegs-o-megs of PC image viewers at most ftp sites, so take your time and find one you like. These packages are available in countless locations on the Internet (see 4 - Utilities and Other Software). ------------------------------ Subject 6.4 - "What is the difference between rendering and ray-tracing?" Ray tracing *is* rendering. But then so is z-buffer rendering, scanline rendering, etc. Ray tracing is just another algorithm used to render (i.e. "paint") pictures. ------------------------------ Subject 6.5 - "This picture doesn't trace." I know it might sound a bit obvious, but have you read the error message and tried to understand it? Did you look in the manual? Still nothing? I know I sound cynical, but it's not uncommon for people to have something go wrong and then post straight to the 'net without even *trying* to figure out what went wrong. A little patience and thought will solve the problem a lot quicker. Here's some common problems: * POV-Ray versions A lot of people get fooled when trying to trace old POV-Ray code with a new version. Use the -MV1.0 option or use #version in the code to get the parser to treat it as old code. You may find that you have to change any references to "shapes.inc" to "shapes.old". The POV-Ray docs can help you out here. What do you mean "I haven't got the docs"? Go get them. (See 1 - Ray Tracing Software) * Include files Have you checked that you've #included any include files that your scene requires? Include files tend to define colours, textures or objects that your scene may use. Make sure you've told the ray tracer where to look for include files. For example, POV-Ray uses the -L option to specify the directory where include files are, eg. -L/home/adilger/povray/include The POV-Ray docs can help you out here. What do you mean "I haven't got the docs"? Go get them. The same applies if you haven't actually got the files (see 2 - FTP Sites, Web Sites, Bulletin Boards, etc.) ------------------------------ Subject 6.6 - "I traced my picture, but I can't see anything." If the picture is completely dark, there are several things you can check: * Have you added any light sources? * Are the light sources blocked by anything? (This is a favourite of mine - I put in a large sphere for the sky and then add or move lights *outside* the sky sphere. Where did the lights go?) * Where are you looking? Are you sure your camera isn't inside an object? * Have you applied textures to your objects. If you haven't, you might find that your ray tracer defaults your object to be black. Have you actually put anything into the picture? This isn't as silly as it sounds. If you #declare on object (POV-Ray, again) like this: #declare my_object= union { sphere { <0, 0, 0> 1 } cylinder { <-2, 0, 0> <2, 0, 0> 0.5 } } Then you have just told the ray tracer that when you refer to "my_object", you actually mean a union of a sphere and a cylinder as shown. To use the object, you must explicitly put it in: object { my_object } ------------------------------ Subject 6.7 - "I traced my picture, but the output is garbage." Did you specify the correct output file format? Most ray-tracers have several options for output file formats. If you haven't explicitly specified the output format, there's a good chance it's not what you want it to be. Also note that using a file name with an extension (like .TGA) does not necessarily mean this is the format of image. This is a common mistake with POV-Ray 2.2 for UNIX which uses an obscure output format by default. Also, if you don't compile in the URT support for Rayshade, you will get MTV format output files. What is MTV you ask? It's one of the very early publicly available ray tracers, written by Mark Terrence VandeWettering, now with Pixar. Some image display programs use the file extension to determineand the file contents, so if you call the file output.tga, and it's actually a PNG image, your display program may complain that the TGA file is corrupted. This is especially a problem with TGA files, since they do not start with a "magic number", and this makes file identification difficult. ------------------------------ Subject 6.8 - "What does this mean..." Some ray tracing and related terms you might come across: * CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry) - A term describing ways in which you can build up complex shapes from simple primitives like cubes, speres, and cylinders. By combining the primitives in different ways, namely adding them together (union), taking one away from the other (difference) or getting the part where they intersect (intersection) you can make small building blocks, which can in turn be used to make more complex CSG objects. * Height Field - A height field can be thought of as a 3 dimensional bar graph. It is a grid of data where the value at any point corresponds to the "altitude" of that point. Height fields are typically stored as images with the lighter areas being higher, and the darker areas lower. Heightfields are usually used for flat surfaces, but can also be wrapped around cylinders and spheres in some software packages. * Radiosity - Most ray-tracers use an empirical lighting model - that is the parameters specified for lights and objects do not really correspond to physical properties, but are selected to make things look good. Radiosity calculates the reflections and lighting between all objects in the scene, and gives a more realistic rendering of the scene. This method is very good at representing the diffuse lighting in a scene, while ray-tracing is better at handling the reflection. In some renderers, both techniques are used to give spectacular results. Needless to say, radiosity is even more computationally complex than ray-tracing. ------------------------------ Subject 6.9 - "Rotating/scaling this object doesn't work properly." With most ray tracers, rotating on object in a given direction rotates it around the axis *not* around its own centre. If your object is centred on the X axis and you rotate it in the X direction, it will spin. However, if it is some distance from the axis and you rotate it, it will "orbit" the X axis, tracing a circle with a radius equal to the distance of the object from the axis. Confused? Think of the Earth spinning on it's axis. It doesn't go anywhere because it is centred on its axis (ignoring rotation around the Sun). The moon, however is some distance from the Earth's axis and as it rotates around that axis, it travels through space, orbiting the Earth. To work out which way something will move, you need to know if your ray tracer uses a left or a right handed co-ordinate system. POV-Ray, for example, uses a left handed system. To work out which way an object will turn, point your thumb in the positive direction of the axis you're rotating in and the way you fingers curl indicate the direction of positive rotation. The hand you use to do this depends on your ray tracer; left-handed, use left hand, right handed, use right. The same thing goes for scaling. If your object is already some distance away from the origin, that distance will also get scaled. For example, if you have a sphere 2 units away from the origin, with a radius of 1 and you scale it by 2, the radius will now be 2 *and* the distance from the origin will be 4. ------------------------------ Subject 6.10 - "Who is..." This section looks at some of the ray tracing artists and people who are particularly well known for their work, be it images or software. The list is in strict alphabetical order as I don't fancy the task of trying be subjective about who's pictures are better than who's. A VERY IMPORTANT POINT: A lot of these people have to pay for their Email and 'net access. DO NOT send them large images or other posts without checking with them first. Certain members of the POV team have recently had some pretty hideous costs (like $30 for 1 mail item) because of this. (Was that OK, Dan?) * Truman Brown Truman Brown <71477.221@compuserve.com> is particularly well known for his "woild" series of images. He is a self-confessed "Obsessed Programmer / Trace-aholic" and has written a range of very useful utilities, including Connect The Dots Smoother (CTDS), Circle Master (CM) and its companion, HYPE. He has an understanding wife but his kids wish he didn't hog the PC so much. His utilities are available from most FTP sites and you can check out some of his images at: ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/Hall-Of-Fame/ http://www.povray.org/hof/ * Dan Farmer One of the original POV-Ray development team, Dan Farmer has created a large portion of the POV-Ray demo scenes, as well as other amazing images including the stunning "frosty.gif". Dan explains how he did it: "The image was done in POV-Ray. It's really quite simple. The face is a freely available dataset produced by Mira Imaging... I'm sure it exists on the net somewhere. The fractal shape is done with Fractint, using the 16 bit continuous potential features. It's an inverted Mandelbrot set. The silver texture is Silver1 in textures.inc. The sky is the usual bozo, but it's mapped onto a plane, not a sphere. Floor is an imagemapped plane. That's all there is to it!" Frosty's at ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/Hall-Of-Fame/frosty.gif The Mira dataset ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/scenes/mirpov.zip Unfortunately, Dan rarely releases his source code any more due to certain unscrupulous sorts using his images for commercial purposes without payment or even permission. Luckily, he has made the scene file for this image available on the POV-Ray CD-ROM which is also available online (see 1 - Ray Tracing Software). Dan has taken a leave of absence from the POV Team because he wants to spend more time with his real life than answering questions. He asks that people not contact him with questions about POV-Ray. * Eric Haines Eric A. Haines has probably done as much as anyone to make ray-tracing as understandable and accessible as it currently is. His many, many hours compiling the Ray Tracing News helped lots of people understand and develop ray tracing software, as well as serve as a forum for discussion between those interested in the art. (See 5 - Further Information and Resources). * Mike Miller If you ever need inspiration to see what can be done using POV-Ray, a piece of graph paper and a pencil, then look at some of Mike Miller's <70353.100@compuserve.com> images. His pictures never fail to impress and he has undoubtedly produced some of the best pictures ever created with POV-Ray. Mike created many of the demo scenes that come with POV-Ray and he is responsible for the excellent textures in "stones.inc". The cover story of the January 1994 IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications is entitled "Mike Miller's Many Hats" and looks at his work and includes many of his pictures. You can find his images and scene files on many sites. A good one to start with is ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/Hall-Of-Fame/ or ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/images/. Particular ones to look out for are benz9.jpg (model of a 1928 Mercedes Benz), camera.jpg, bug1.gif, etc., etc., the list goes on. * Ken Musgrave Ken Musgrave was called "the first true fractal-based artist" by Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractals. His work shows the artistic side of what can be done with mathematics and inspiration. Many have seen his image "Blessed State" inside the cover of "Computer Graphics, Principles and Practice" by Foley & van Dam, the authoratative computer graphics book. He has an excellent exhibit of his works available on the WWW at: http://www.seas.gwu.edu/faculty/musgrave/art_gallery.html Ken is currently applying his skills to creating an entire world model with algorithmic principles. This project is named Slartibartfast, after the designer of worlds in the "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series. ------------------------------ Subject: 7 - Roll the Credits Special thanks go to Eric Haines for his help and the wealth of information he has provided both directly and in Ray Tracing News, FTP lists, etc. Thanks also to all those people who maintain other lists, bibliographies, FTP sites, or have provided me with specific information, told me where to look, produced mini-faqs (thanks John) or have just posted answers to the group: John Beale Nick Fotis Jim Grimes Ian Grimstead Eric Haines Laszlo Herczeg Chris W. Morris Bjorn-Kare Nilssen George Kyriazis Daniel Palermo Harry Rowe Heinz Schuller Rick Speer Greg Ward Andy Wardley Oliver Weyand Marius Watz Finally, some king-size thanks to all those people out there who have developed, and continue to do so, all the ray tracing software and utilities that keep us so occupied. Wives, girlfriends and children may disagree on this point, but thanks anyway. Special awards in this category go to Dan Farmer <70703.1632@compuserve.com> who wins the Award for "Not-Only-Doing-All- His-POV-Team-Stuff-But-Also-Answering-Lots-of-Questions-And-Being-An-All- Round-Mr.-Nice-Guy", and Chris Cason who gets the coveted "Also-Does-His-POV-Bit-Especially-Being-Admin-of-the-POV-Site- And-Answering-Questions-As- Well-And-Making-the-POV-Ray-CD-Too". Sorry if I've forgotten anyone. Thanks anyway. ------------------------------ Subject: Epilogue You may have noticed one or two gaps in the FAQ or spotted a glaring error, or just thought of something that I really should have mentioned. If that's the case and you can provide some info or corrections, then let me know and sort it out. Well here you are at the end of the document, and your trace is still only half done. You've probably got time to walk the dog before it's finished... Happy Tracing. -- Andreas Dilger University of Calgary \"If a man ate a pound of pasta and (403) 220-8792 Micronet Research Group \ a pound of antipasto, would they Dept of Electrical & Computer Engineering \ cancel out, leaving him still http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/ hungry?" -- Dogbert ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Path: news1.ucsd.edu!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!swrinde!news.sgi.com!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!ddsw1!news.mcs.net!van-bc!unixg.ubc.ca!rover.ucs.ualberta.ca!news.ucalgary.ca!adilger From: adilger@enel.ucalgary.ca (Andreas Dilger) Newsgroups: comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing,comp.answers,news.answers Subject: comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing FAQ (part 2/2) Supersedes: Followup-To: comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing Date: 23 Sep 1996 06:30:34 GMT Organization: ECE Department, U. of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada Lines: 1053 Sender: adilger@enel.ucalgary.ca (Andreas Dilger) Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.EDU Expires: 19 Oct 1996 06:31:23 GMT Message-ID: References: Reply-To: adilger@enel.ucalgary.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: adilger@munet-d.enel.ucalgary.ca Summary: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about raytracing software on comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing Keywords: FAQ ray tracing POV Precedence: bulk Xref: news1.ucsd.edu comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing:10052 comp.answers:16363 news.answers:65478 Archive-name: graphics/raytrace-faq/part2 Last-modified: 1996/07/19 Posting-Frequency: every 10 days This is part 2 of the comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing Frequently Asked Questions list. The latest version of the FAQ is available via anonymous WWW at: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/bngusenet/top.html under comp->graphics->rendering->raytracing. It is also available via anonymous ftp at: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/raytrace-faq/ If you only have email, you can get it by sending email to: with both "send usenet/news.answers/graphics/raytrace-faq/part1" and "send usenet/news.answers/graphics/raytrace-faq/part2" in the body of the message (without the quotes). (C) Copyright 1994 Andy Wardley (C) Copyright 1995, 1996 Andreas Dilger ------------------------------ Subject: 4 - Utilities and Other Software ------------------------------ Subject 4.1 - Image Display/Conversion Programs * DISP - an excellent viewing and post-processing utility for DOS. Available on simtel and mirrors. * IMAGEMAGICK - An X-Windows based image display program (source distribution), that also allows simple editing of images, such as color modification, scaling, rotating, text annotation, etc. PNG format images are now supported by ImageMagick. Available at: ftp://harbor.ecn.purdue.edu/pub/imagemagick.tar.gz http://www.wizards.dupont.com/cristy/ImageMagick.html (Cristy, 1995) * NEOPAINT - A useful DOS shareware paint package (registration US $45) for creating images, height fields, etc, or just touching up finished artwork. Available from wuarchive and mirrors. * NETPBM - A collection of command-line utilities for most platforms (source distribution). Executables available for most other platforms like DOS, OS/2, Linux, and others. NetPBM utilities convert practically any format to any other by using a common intermediate file format, as well as allowing quantization, cropping, combining, blur, and many other effects. Available at: ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/packages/NetPBM/ (Poskanzer et al., 1991-1994) * PICLAB - An excellent package for converting and post-processing images for DOS. (Crocker, 1990) * QPV - The Quick Picture Viewer. A great utility for displaying and converting images for DOS/Win systems. Formerly QPEG, QPV has been improved, and has new features, such as the ability to read and write PNG format images. (Fromme, 1995) * XV - An X-Windows based image display program (source distribution), with simple image editing facilities, such as color editing, scaling, rotation, and also filter effects for blurring, edge detection, and others. A patch is available for XV 3.10 to support PNG images via libpng and libgz. (Bradley, 1995) ------------------------------ Subject 4.2 - Format Conversion Utilities Much of the following sections area taken from Amanda Osbourne's "Raytrace Utilities for DOS (and Windows)" list. All are IBM PC based unless otherwise specified. Various utilities for converting from one 3D file format to another: * 3DSPOV - Reads 3d studio mesh files. Writes out to Raw, POV-Ray (1 & 2), Vivid and Polyray. (Anger & Bowermaster, 1993) * DEM2POV - This program (source distribution) converts US Geological Survey (USGS) Digital Elevation Maps (DEM) to the TGA format heightfields used by POV-Ray 2.2. Includes a large DEM file of the region around the Grand Canyon. (Kirby, 1995) * DXF2POV - DXF to POV-Ray 1 conversion program. (Collins, Wells, Farmer & Gibeson, 1992) * DXF2RAW - DXF to Raw conversion program. (Coy, Barber, Daigle & Shiffman, 1992) * DXF2V - DXF to Vivid conversion program. (Coy, Barber, Daigle & Shiffman, 1992) * DXF3DS - DXF to 3DS conversion program. (Yost/Autodesk, 1991) * HUTIL101c - A set of utilities (source) for converting between various POV-Ray heightfield formats (16-bit TGA, GIF, POT) as well as OCT and Matlab 32-bit MAT files. In addition, it can combine heightfields using arithmetic operators, join them together, scale, and create spherical and cylindrical heightfields with triangle meshes. See also HF-Lab. (Beale, 1995) * MRYPLY - Converts Moray files to PolyRay files. * OBJ2ASC2 - Wavefront object to 3d studio ascii converter. (Knight, 1993) * RAW2PV - Excellent utility that allows the user to adjust the level of smoothing to apply to raw data as it is translated to POV-Ray (1 & 2.x), Polyray or Vivid 2. It can also add a camera and light to the scene, making things fairly easy for the novice user. (Anger, 1993) * RAYL210 - Helpful utility to convert uLathe (an object creator program for windows) files to RAW, POV-Ray 1 & 2.x or Vivid 2 format. (Koehler, 1993) * TDDD2ASC - TDDD (Imagine) to 3D studio ascii file converter. (Knight, 1993) * WC2POV - Although wcvt2pov (MS-Windows) started out converting 3D file formats to POV-Ray, wcvt2pov has become a generic 3D file format conversion utility, with support for importing 3d studio, Wavefront, NFF, DXF, TrueType Fonts, RAW triangles and some other formats, and exporting 3ds, asc, POV-Ray, NFF, DXF, VRML, Wavefront, Open GL 'C' code fragments, RAW triangles, and some other formats. (Rule, 1995) ------------------------------ Subject 4.3 - Creation Creators Utilities to aid in the creation of ray tacing objects: * BOXER - Object generator for POV-Ray 1 (makes things like bathroom tiles and such based upon user input). (Miller, 1993) * BRANCH - Tree creator for POV-Ray 1. (Weller, 1992) * CHAIN - Generates interlocking chain links for POV-Ray 1.0. (Koehler, 1992) * CM - CircleMaster utility for working with quadric spheres and ellipsoids; writes output to POV-Ray 1.0. (Brown, 1992) * COIL - Creates coiled objects for POV-Ray 1.0. (Kirby, 1992) * COILV - Creates coiled objects for Vivid 2. (Kirby & Cox, 1992) * CTDS - Connects a series of xyz dot coordinates. Though this may not sound like much, this is an extremely helpful utility. Supports POV-Ray, Vivid and Polyray. (Brown, 1993) * FORM - All sorts of shapes can be generated with this program. Form files consist of both shapes and commands (like twistx and bend) and output may be POV-Ray 1, 2 or .plg. Interesting program, complementary to LPARSER. (Rowbottom, 1993) * FRACTINT - The ultimate fractals generator for DOS, X-windows source code, and distributed with the Linux Slackware games disks. Great for creating height fields, colour maps, viewing gifs or just creating fractals. (The Stone Soup Group, 1990-95) * FRGEN - Fractal Landscape (and other shapes too) Generator. Though the program supports Vivid and POV-Ray 1 & 2 directly, by selecting raw output you can smooth triangles out with RAW2POV to create nice hills and dales. (Anger, 1993) * GEODOME - Utility for generating geodesic domes. Output to POV-Ray 2.x format as either facets or a mesh of pipes and joints. IBM PC executable, with source included. (Wardley, 1994) * GFORGE - Graphical Fractal Forgery (source, DOS exe). Generates 16-bit heightfields for POV-Ray, using a high-quality algorithm: the IFFT of 1/f noise. File formats include PGM, PNG, POV TGA heightfield, and Matlab bin. Several parameters give you control over the appearance of the output, which can range from sand to hills to mountains. Useful also for 2D textures; the image always tiles perfectly. Now also supports craters. (Beale, 1995) * HFLAB - Heightfield Lab (DOS/UNIX source, DOS exe). Generates and manipulates 16-bit heightfields for POV-Ray, using a variety of mathematical and procedural algorithms. Has a graphical interface for both DOS and X Windows. Allows the combination of two or more heightfields by addition, multiplication, or side-by-side joining, and many other operators. File formats include PGM, PNG, POV TGA heightfield, and Matlab 32-bit floating point. (Beale, 1996). * LPARSER - L-system creator and mutator. This program is particularly strong in the creation of organic looking forms. Many example data files are included with the program. The language of l-systems is not intuitive but the results can be truly stunning. Outputs to DXF (both R12 and 3D faces), POV-Ray 2.x, RAW and Renderstar VOL. A wire-frame viewer that reads .3DS, .RAW, Fractint .RAY, ARE-24 .POL and Lparser/Renderstar .VOL files is included. (Lapre, 1993) * LV20POVID - Newer and more powerful than LV2POV, this program reads an lviewer info file and generates data files in POV-Ray (1 & 2.x) and Vivid formats. The program's main strength lies in landscape generation. (van der Mark, 1993) * TRMK - Terrain Maker (DOS) uses a triangle midpoint subdivision algorithm to generate a variety of GIF heightfields. (Jorgensen, 1995) * PLANT - Fractal plant generator. Outputs supported are POV-Ray (1 & 2), Polyray and CTDS (Connect the dots smoother). (Bryerton, 1993) * SUDS - Random positioning of lots of spheres (or other objects) based on a variety of selections. (Farmer, Wegner & Schwan, 1994) * TORPATCH - This program creates a rope/wire object that passes smoothly through supplied points out of a series of clipped tori. Available as DOS EXE, and Turbo Pascal or C source. Can also create a random tangle of wires. (Mackey & Beddes, 1996) * TWISTER - Utility that will create spirals, coils, etc., of blobs, cubes or sphere. IBM PC executable with source, output to POV 2.x format. (Wardley, 1994) ------------------------------ Subject 4.4 - Texture Editors * CMAP - Interactive color map creator for POV-Ray. (Lutz & Kretzschmar, 1993) * TCE - The color editor for POV-Ray 1. (Farmer, 1991) * TCEV - The color editor for Vivid. (Farmer, 1991) * TEXMAKE - Early version of a utility to assist in texture creation in POV-Ray 2.x. (Sigler, 1993) * TXMAG - Texture Magic is an interactive, 32-bit MS-Windows based texture editor for POV-Ray 2.x, Assymetrix 3D F/X, and Autodesk 3D-Studio. ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/texture-editors/texture-magic/ http://www.eskimo.com/~scott/povtext.html (Pultz, 1996) ------------------------------ Subject 4.5 - Animation * AERO - AERO is a X-Windows based physical simulation environment suitable for making complex, realistic animations. Objects (including the camera) can be given properties like mass, velocity, and acceleration, constraints like springs and dampers can be specified between objects, and then AERO performs collision detection, position, and orientation calculations. Output is to POV-Ray 1.0 or 2.x scene files. (Keller, Stolz, Ziegler, Braunl, 1995) * AWKANI - AWK script to output POV-Ray animation data. (Farmer, 1992) * DTA - Dave's Targa Animator (DOS) converts .TGA and many other single image format frames into .FLI's and .FLC's. (Mason, 1995) * MPEG_ENCODE - MPEG_ENCODE (source distribution, also many executables) can take images in PPM and JPEG formats (as well as other formats, if a ...toppm converter exists) to produce a fully compliant MPEG 1 animation. It is possible to run the encoding on multiple processors. It is available in many locations (see 2 - FTP Sites, Bulletin Boards, etc.) (Rowe, et al, 1995) * MPEG_PLAY - MPEG_PLAY (source distribution, also many executables) displays MPEG 1 encoded animations on a large variety of systems. (Rowe, et al, 1995) * PPP - The POV and PolyRay Preprocessor allows scene files to be created with conditional statements, loops, math functions, vector math, and more to generate one or more scene files for animation and complex object creation. (Wind, 1995) * PVQUAN - PVQUAN (source) is a set of tools that allow you to create .FLI creations on many platforms including UNIX and DOS. Source code is provided and includes a hosts of useful functions like quantisation, .GIF read, display, etc. * RAYSCENE - Set of animation utilities, not raytracer specific. (Jarik & Hassi, 1991) * RTAG - Ray Tracing Animation Generator (not raytracer specific). A powerful program with its own language which supports, amongst other things, spline path generation. (Sherrod, 1993) * SCEDA - SCEDA is a descendant of the SCED X-Windows modeller, with enhancements to allow generation of multiple scene files for an animation. (See also 3 - Modelling Software) (McLaughlin & Chenney, 1996) * SP - Spline paths for animations. Many output formats (POV-Ray, Vivid, Polyray, 3DV, Wire 3D) and acceleration and deceleration are supported as well. (Mason, 1992) * ZOOM - Interpolates steps between two positions for POV-Ray 1.0. (Brown, 1993) ------------------------------ Subject 4.6 - Miscellaneous Utilities * POVMODE.EL - A mode for emacs to handle POV-Ray syntax. Available at: ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/old-incoming/misc/pov-mode.el * POVRAY TUTORIAL - The POV-Ray tutorial is a 100 page text tutorial that you can print out and read in the comfort of your own home. It covers almost all of POV-Ray's features, including height fields, realistic spotlights, and image maps. You can either jump to the section that interests you or follow through from the beginning to see the complete complex scene through to completion. The tutorial is designed for beginners and more advanced artists alike. It is distributed free in MS-Windows, Mac and postscript formats currently at: ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/old-incoming/utilities/pvt100.zip ------------------------------ Subject: 5 - Further Information and Resources ------------------------------ Subject 5.1 - On-line Resources * FAQs All of the FAQs in the USENET heirarchy that are posted to the news.answers newsgroup (as all FAQs should be) are archived at: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/ They are also converted to HTML format and made available at: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/bngusenet/top.html For those people that are interested in learning about the internal workings of a ray tracer, you should take a look at the newsgroup comp.graphics.algorithms Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). This document describes rotations, intersections, texture mapping, etc. * Ray Tracing News Eric Haines has put together a phenomenal amount of information on ray tracing. This he combines into his Ray Tracing News (RTNews). They are a wealth of information and contain articles, sofware reviews and comparisons, book reviews and lists of everything and anything to do with ray tracing. They are available from many sites in text and/or HTML format, including: ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/Graphics/RTNews/ http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/ray/RTNews/html/ http://www.povray.org/rtn/ Eric's ray tracing and radiosity bibliographies as well as an FTP list are available at: ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/Graphics/Papers/ * Ray Tracing Bibliogaphy Rick Speer has also done a lot of work in bringing together articles on ray tracing. He maintains a cross-indexed ray tracing bibliography of over 500 articles from 1968 to the present. These include papers from all Siggraph, Graphics Interface, Eurographics, CG International and Ausgraph proceedings. All citations are keyworded and cross-indices are supplied by author and keyword. The bibliography is in the form of a 41 page postscript file which is held at many ftp sites as "speer.raytrace.bib.ps.Z": ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/bib/RT.BIB.Speer/ ftp://karazm.math.uh.edu/pub/Graphics/ ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/sci/papers/graphics/ Ian Grimstead has also collected together a large collection of over 360 pages on-line of ray tracing papers. It is accessible via the World-Wide Web and has links to other on-line papers and documentation at: http://www.cm.cf.ac.uk/Ray.Tracing/RT.Bibliography.html Ian also maintains a web page of links to other WWW ray tracing pages. You can also add your own links to ray tracing pages that you maintain at: http://www.cm.cf.ac.uk/Ray.Tracing/ * Ray Tracing Abstracts Tom Wilson has collected over 300 abstracts from ray tracing related papers and books. The collections is available as plain ascii, with Latex and troff formatting programs included. It is available as "rtabs.*" from many sites. * Graphics Resources List The Graphics Resources List contains a wealth of information on all sorts of computer graphics and visualization information. It has info on mailing lists, plotting packages, ray-tracers, other rendering methods, etc. It is available on comp.graphics, comp.answers or archived at various sites. The official archive is ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/resources-list/part1 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/resources-list/part2 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/resources-list/part3 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/resources-list/part4 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/resources-list/part5 ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/graphics/resources-list/part6 * Paper Bank Project Juhana Kouhia has collected together various technical papers in electronic form. Contact him for more information. ------------------------------ Subject 5.2 - Other Newsgroups Some other newsgroups that may be of interest to you are listed below. - comp.graphics.algorithms - comp.graphics.animation - comp.graphics.misc - comp.graphics.apps.alias - comp.graphics.apps.lightwave - comp.graphics.apps.softimage - comp.graphics.apps.wavefront - comp.graphics.packages.3dstudio - comp.graphics.rendering.misc - comp.graphics.rendering.renderman - comp.graphics.visualization ------------------------------ Subject 5.3 - Books Title: Ray Tracing Creations Authors: Drew Wells and Chris Young Publisher: The Waite Group Year: 1993 ISBN: 1-878739-27-1 This book has been written by Drew Wells and Chris Young, two of the original developers of POV-Ray, as a user and reference manual for POV-Ray. Coming in at 573 pages, it's an excellent publication with literally hundreds of stunning colour and monochrome pictures. The only drawback with the book is that it deals with POV-Ray version 1.0 which is a little dated now that version 2.2 is out, but it is still a very worthwhile investment for any POV-Ray user. Title: Ray Tracing Worlds with POV-Ray Authors: Alexander Enzmann, Lutz Kretzschmar, and Chris Young Publisher: The Waite Group Year: 1994 ISBN: 1-878739-64-6 Raytracing Worlds with POV-Ray is written with the intermediate to advanced POV-Ray user in mind. This book comes with POVRay V2.2, Moray, and several additional tools for MS-DOS on diskette. It assumes you have a basic knowledge of POVRay, which you can easily get by reading the POVRay documentation. An review of the book is available at: http://www.povray.org/povzine/povzine1/raytrace.html Title: Adventures in Ray Tracing Author: Alfonso Hermida Publisher: Que Corp. Year: 1993 ISBN: 1-56529-555-2 This book looks at Alexander Enzmann's ray tracer, Polyray (see 1 - Ray Tracing Software), and the author's own modelling system, POVCAD which runs under MS Windows. The two work well together. The content of the book is good and, as in the previous book, there are many excellent illustrations and pictures. There are a few errors in the book, but Alfonso has produced an errata list which is available from: ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/books/erratas/ Title: Photorealism and Ray Tracing in C Authors: Christopher Watkins, Stephen Coy, Mark Finlay Publisher: M&T Books Year: 1993 ISBN: ???? Provided with this book is source code for a ray tracer called Bob which is a subset of Stephen Coy's full-blown ray tracer, Vivid (see 1 - Ray Tracing Software). Title: Making Movies on Your PC Authors: David K. Mason and Alexander Enzmann Publisher: The Waite Group Year: 1993 ISBN: 1-878739-41-7 Focusing on animation, this book is by David K. Mason, author of many utilities including DTA - Dave's Targa Animator, and Alexander Enzmann, author of Polyray. These tools, and others, are used to show how animations can be created on a PC. It's a 210 page book that is laid out well with ample illustrations. Title: An Introduction to Ray Tracing Authors: Andrew Glassner (ed) Publisher: Academic Press Year: 1989 ISBN: 1-12-286160-4 An Introduction to Ray Tracing has its main focus on the programming techniques, implementation, and theoretical concepts in writing a ray tracer. It has been described as one of the two required books for ray tracing programmers (the other being Object-Oriented Ray Tracing in C++ by Nicholas Wilt) . It contains chapters from many of the pioneers of ray tracing. Eratta is available at: http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/books/erratas/IntroToRT Title: Object-Oriented Ray Tracing in C++ Author: Nicholas Wilt Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Year: 1993 ISBN: 0471-304-158 US Price: $36.95 This book takes the reader through many issues involved with the development of a ray tracer in C++. The last section of the book deals with OORT, a class library for ray tracing. It does not implement any input language or user interface but uses C++ calls to the library. This is intuitive, due to the nature of C++, and extremely powerful as all the normal constructs of C/C++ such as loops, conditionals, etc., are available. It's definately a programmer's book and some knowledge of graphics programming is assumed. Because of this, the nature of the book is quite technical and can be hard going. Eric Haines sums it up well: "If you want to make pretty pictures, get POV, Polyray, Rayshade, etc. If you want to look at some nice C++ code for a vector & matrix library, etc, check this code out." The code is available from: ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphic/graphics/ray/ ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/graphics/packages/ray-tracing/oort/ ------------------------------ Subject 5.4 - Image Libraries The POV-Ray home site has a good collection of ray traced images. The site maintains a "Hall of Fame" for outstanding images created with POV-Ray: ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/Hall-Of-Fame/ http://www.povray.org/hof/ The Rayshade home page also has an amazing collection of images made with this renderer and some custom additions at: http://www-graphics.stanford.edu/~cek/rayshade/gallery/gallery.html ------------------------------ Subject 5.5 - Texture Libraries There are a couple of initiatives under way to create a database of POV-Ray textures. People who have any textures at all from POV-Ray are encouraged to send textures to the maintainers of the archives so that everyone can benefit from the time you spent on creating the textures. http://www.informatik.tu-cottbus.de/~rs/povray/tex_lib_eng.html http://www.informatik.tu-cottbus.de/~rs/povray/tex_lib.html [German] | The library maintained by Jon Peterson is not currently available. There is a library of building related textures (bricks, stone, etc.), for use as image maps at: ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/packages/architec/Textures/ ------------------------------ Subject 5.6 - Internet Ray Tracing Competition Starting in November 1994, Matt Kruse started a raytracing competition for the readers of c.g.r.r, and the internet in general. What started out small grew into a great forum for incredible raytraced images on the net. Open to all artists using raytracing as their medium, the competition attracted artists of all skill levels, but more importantly served as a showcase of what is possible, and allowed everyone to learn a few tricks and techniques. Winners invariably pushed the envelope of what people thought possible, and winning was important as much for the admiration of the other artists as it was for the prizes. All of the submitted images from each month, along with the winners ones are available at: http://www.povray.org/competition/ ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/competition/ Because of its popularity, Matt could not keep up with the work needed to run the competition to his satisfaction, and the contest closed one year after it started. Fortunately, a new group of people, Bill Marrs, Chip Richards, and Jon Peterson, collectively known as the IRTC Admin Team, have picked up the flame with the blessing of Matt, and the new Internet Ray Tracing Competition has begun. You can find out more about the competition, and see the images as each competition finishes at: http://www.povray.org/irtc/ ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/irtc/ + If the first month is anything to judge by (and I'm sure it is), this + competition will be something to look forward to every other month as + the pictures become available for voting. There were some spectacular + images for the first competition (the topic was "Time"), and I don't + see any reason why future competitions won't have images at least as + good as the first. Stay tuned!!! ------------------------------ Subject: 6 - Frequently Asked Questions Now that you've been blasted with lists of FTP sites, utilitites, software, books, etc., etc., the only questions you could possibly have left to ask are those that...erm...aren't about FTP sites, utilities, software or books, I suppose. So this section attempts to answer all the other questions that don't fit in above. ------------------------------ Subject 6.1 - "Can I post binaries/images to this group?" In a word, NO. The group is part of the comp.graphics hierarchy which should be, and is, strictly non-binary. The reason for this is that uuencoded binaries tend to be very large. By restricting binary postings to the comp.binaries and alt.binaries hierachies, those sites who do not want to carry large volume groups can easily ignore anything under these two streams. Remember that most sites pay to transfer and store news and if they find that comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing is getting too expensive, they can just stop carrying it. That is their right and priviledge. Also remember that many individuals download this group via modems and pay for every byte. They tend to get a bit annoyed when they have to fork out lots of money to download stuff they might not even want. But what if you're really desperate to share with us your latest ray tracing you've done depicting a mutant star camel exploding in a super nova while naked dancers melt into a checkered floor? (The checkered floor always turns up sooner or later). Great! I'm sure we'd love to see it, you should post it to news:alt.binaries.pictures.misc or upload it to ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/incoming/images/. If you're posting it you should remember to uuencode it and split it into small (less than 64k) parts. Make sure to use an informative title like: RAY TRACING: MUTANT.GIF: mutant star camel scene, part 1 of 6 and include a text posting (part 0 of n) that describes the picture, states what format it's in (.gif, .jpg, etc.), what size it is, how many colours, and anything else you want to mention. The more you put, the better. If you're uploading it to povray.org, be sure to also upload a .txt description of the file so that others can have a good idea of what the image is, and who created it, before they download it. There is a blank upload form for povray.org at /pub/povray/incoming/TEMPLATE.TXT. You can then post a message to news:comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing, along with a few lines saying "I've just posted/uploaded this image to ... It's a picture of...". By the way, ray tracing pictures generally get a good response over in a.b.p.m and you'll often see request for them in news:alt.binaries.pictures.d (the discussion group). If it's a utility you're working on, it should probably go to povray.org for POV-Ray utilities, or graphics.stanford.edu for Rayshade utilities, or whatever it is you're working on. ------------------------------ Subject 6.2 - "Where can I find model data for..." The former Avalon site has been closed down, and the Avalon model site has been moved to Viewpoint, a commercial model vendor, as of 07/95. It is the promise of Viewpoint that the Avalon data remain freely available to all. Avalon is now located at: ftp://avalon.viewpoint.com/avalon/ or http://www.viewpoint.com/avalon.html or ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/mirrors/avalon/ is a mirror. Avalon is probably the best site you'll find for free 3D model data. However, the home page at Viewpoint also has pointers to their free and commercial models if you can't find what you need at Avalon. Another commercial model vendor on the net is MeshMart at: http://cedar.cic.net/~rtilmann/mm/ (See also 2 - FTP Sites, Web Sites, Bulletin Boards, etc.) ------------------------------ Subject 6.3 - "How can I view these pictures?" If you're using UNIX, you can use XV which is available as a source distribution from many sites, or ImageMagick, again available on many sites. It should be noted that XV v3.00, which is installed at some sites, does not display TGA files, although XV v3.10 and ImageMagick do. If XV and/or ImageMagick do not support a particular image format you have, it probably doesn't actually exist :-). However, if you need to handle large numbers of images in batch form, or if you don't have an X windows display and you want to manipulate images (but not necessarily view them), chances are that the netpbm package is what you need. Netpbm is a command line utility, and can converting images from practically any format to any other, but it does not display the images themselves. If you're on a PC and using DOS, you'll probably want to get either QPV or PICLAB to do the displaying. For MS-Windows users, lview seems to be a popular display/editing program, and for OS/2 there is PMJpeg, which is an OS/2 port of lview. There are kegs-o-megs of PC image viewers at most ftp sites, so take your time and find one you like. These packages are available in countless locations on the Internet (see 4 - Utilities and Other Software). ------------------------------ Subject 6.4 - "What is the difference between rendering and ray-tracing?" Ray tracing *is* rendering. But then so is z-buffer rendering, scanline rendering, etc. Ray tracing is just another algorithm used to render (i.e. "paint") pictures. ------------------------------ Subject 6.5 - "This picture doesn't trace." I know it might sound a bit obvious, but have you read the error message and tried to understand it? Did you look in the manual? Still nothing? I know I sound cynical, but it's not uncommon for people to have something go wrong and then post straight to the 'net without even *trying* to figure out what went wrong. A little patience and thought will solve the problem a lot quicker. Here's some common problems: * POV-Ray versions A lot of people get fooled when trying to trace old POV-Ray code with a new version. Use the -MV1.0 option or use #version in the code to get the parser to treat it as old code. You may find that you have to change any references to "shapes.inc" to "shapes.old". The POV-Ray docs can help you out here. What do you mean "I haven't got the docs"? Go get them. (See 1 - Ray Tracing Software) * Include files Have you checked that you've #included any include files that your scene requires? Include files tend to define colours, textures or objects that your scene may use. Make sure you've told the ray tracer where to look for include files. For example, POV-Ray uses the -L option to specify the directory where include files are, eg. -L/home/adilger/povray/include The POV-Ray docs can help you out here. What do you mean "I haven't got the docs"? Go get them. The same applies if you haven't actually got the files (see 2 - FTP Sites, Web Sites, Bulletin Boards, etc.) ------------------------------ Subject 6.6 - "I traced my picture, but I can't see anything." If the picture is completely dark, there are several things you can check: * Have you added any light sources? * Are the light sources blocked by anything? (This is a favourite of mine - I put in a large sphere for the sky and then add or move lights *outside* the sky sphere. Where did the lights go?) * Where are you looking? Are you sure your camera isn't inside an object? * Have you applied textures to your objects. If you haven't, you might find that your ray tracer defaults your object to be black. Have you actually put anything into the picture? This isn't as silly as it sounds. If you #declare on object (POV-Ray, again) like this: #declare my_object= union { sphere { <0, 0, 0> 1 } cylinder { <-2, 0, 0> <2, 0, 0> 0.5 } } Then you have just told the ray tracer that when you refer to "my_object", you actually mean a union of a sphere and a cylinder as shown. To use the object, you must explicitly put it in: object { my_object } ------------------------------ Subject 6.7 - "I traced my picture, but the output is garbage." Did you specify the correct output file format? Most ray-tracers have several options for output file formats. If you haven't explicitly specified the output format, there's a good chance it's not what you want it to be. Also note that using a file name with an extension (like .TGA) does not necessarily mean this is the format of image. This is a common mistake with POV-Ray 2.2 for UNIX which uses an obscure output format by default. Also, if you don't compile in the URT support for Rayshade, you will get MTV format output files. What is MTV you ask? It's one of the very early publicly available ray tracers, written by Mark Terrence VandeWettering, now with Pixar. Some image display programs use the file extension to determineand the file contents, so if you call the file output.tga, and it's actually a PNG image, your display program may complain that the TGA file is corrupted. This is especially a problem with TGA files, since they do not start with a "magic number", and this makes file identification difficult. ------------------------------ Subject 6.8 - "What does this mean..." Some ray tracing and related terms you might come across: * CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry) - A term describing ways in which you can build up complex shapes from simple primitives like cubes, speres, and cylinders. By combining the primitives in different ways, namely adding them together (union), taking one away from the other (difference) or getting the part where they intersect (intersection) you can make small building blocks, which can in turn be used to make more complex CSG objects. * Height Field - A height field can be thought of as a 3 dimensional bar graph. It is a grid of data where the value at any point corresponds to the "altitude" of that point. Height fields are typically stored as images with the lighter areas being higher, and the darker areas lower. Heightfields are usually used for flat surfaces, but can also be wrapped around cylinders and spheres in some software packages. * Radiosity - Most ray-tracers use an empirical lighting model - that is the parameters specified for lights and objects do not really correspond to physical properties, but are selected to make things look good. Radiosity calculates the reflections and lighting between all objects in the scene, and gives a more realistic rendering of the scene. This method is very good at representing the diffuse lighting in a scene, while ray-tracing is better at handling the reflection. In some renderers, both techniques are used to give spectacular results. Needless to say, radiosity is even more computationally complex than ray-tracing. ------------------------------ Subject 6.9 - "Rotating/scaling this object doesn't work properly." With most ray tracers, rotating on object in a given direction rotates it around the axis *not* around its own centre. If your object is centred on the X axis and you rotate it in the X direction, it will spin. However, if it is some distance from the axis and you rotate it, it will "orbit" the X axis, tracing a circle with a radius equal to the distance of the object from the axis. Confused? Think of the Earth spinning on it's axis. It doesn't go anywhere because it is centred on its axis (ignoring rotation around the Sun). The moon, however is some distance from the Earth's axis and as it rotates around that axis, it travels through space, orbiting the Earth. To work out which way something will move, you need to know if your ray tracer uses a left or a right handed co-ordinate system. POV-Ray, for example, uses a left handed system. To work out which way an object will turn, point your thumb in the positive direction of the axis you're rotating in and the way you fingers curl indicate the direction of positive rotation. The hand you use to do this depends on your ray tracer; left-handed, use left hand, right handed, use right. The same thing goes for scaling. If your object is already some distance away from the origin, that distance will also get scaled. For example, if you have a sphere 2 units away from the origin, with a radius of 1 and you scale it by 2, the radius will now be 2 *and* the distance from the origin will be 4. ------------------------------ Subject 6.10 - "Who is..." This section looks at some of the ray tracing artists and people who are particularly well known for their work, be it images or software. The list is in strict alphabetical order as I don't fancy the task of trying be subjective about who's pictures are better than who's. A VERY IMPORTANT POINT: A lot of these people have to pay for their Email and 'net access. DO NOT send them large images or other posts without checking with them first. Certain members of the POV team have recently had some pretty hideous costs (like $30 for 1 mail item) because of this. (Was that OK, Dan?) * Truman Brown Truman Brown <71477.221@compuserve.com> is particularly well known for his "woild" series of images. He is a self-confessed "Obsessed Programmer / Trace-aholic" and has written a range of very useful utilities, including Connect The Dots Smoother (CTDS), Circle Master (CM) and its companion, HYPE. He has an understanding wife but his kids wish he didn't hog the PC so much. His utilities are available from most FTP sites and you can check out some of his images at: ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/Hall-Of-Fame/ http://www.povray.org/hof/ * Dan Farmer One of the original POV-Ray development team, Dan Farmer has created a large portion of the POV-Ray demo scenes, as well as other amazing images including the stunning "frosty.gif". Dan explains how he did it: "The image was done in POV-Ray. It's really quite simple. The face is a freely available dataset produced by Mira Imaging... I'm sure it exists on the net somewhere. The fractal shape is done with Fractint, using the 16 bit continuous potential features. It's an inverted Mandelbrot set. The silver texture is Silver1 in textures.inc. The sky is the usual bozo, but it's mapped onto a plane, not a sphere. Floor is an imagemapped plane. That's all there is to it!" Frosty's at ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/Hall-Of-Fame/frosty.gif The Mira dataset ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/scenes/mirpov.zip Unfortunately, Dan rarely releases his source code any more due to certain unscrupulous sorts using his images for commercial purposes without payment or even permission. Luckily, he has made the scene file for this image available on the POV-Ray CD-ROM which is also available online (see 1 - Ray Tracing Software). Dan has taken a leave of absence from the POV Team because he wants to spend more time with his real life than answering questions. He asks that people not contact him with questions about POV-Ray. * Eric Haines Eric A. Haines has probably done as much as anyone to make ray-tracing as understandable and accessible as it currently is. His many, many hours compiling the Ray Tracing News helped lots of people understand and develop ray tracing software, as well as serve as a forum for discussion between those interested in the art. (See 5 - Further Information and Resources). * Mike Miller If you ever need inspiration to see what can be done using POV-Ray, a piece of graph paper and a pencil, then look at some of Mike Miller's <70353.100@compuserve.com> images. His pictures never fail to impress and he has undoubtedly produced some of the best pictures ever created with POV-Ray. Mike created many of the demo scenes that come with POV-Ray and he is responsible for the excellent textures in "stones.inc". The cover story of the January 1994 IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications is entitled "Mike Miller's Many Hats" and looks at his work and includes many of his pictures. You can find his images and scene files on many sites. A good one to start with is ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/Hall-Of-Fame/ or ftp://ftp.povray.org/pub/povray/images/. Particular ones to look out for are benz9.jpg (model of a 1928 Mercedes Benz), camera.jpg, bug1.gif, etc., etc., the list goes on. * Ken Musgrave Ken Musgrave was called "the first true fractal-based artist" by Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractals. His work shows the artistic side of what can be done with mathematics and inspiration. Many have seen his image "Blessed State" inside the cover of "Computer Graphics, Principles and Practice" by Foley & van Dam, the authoratative computer graphics book. He has an excellent exhibit of his works available on the WWW at: http://www.seas.gwu.edu/faculty/musgrave/art_gallery.html Ken is currently applying his skills to creating an entire world model with algorithmic principles. This project is named Slartibartfast, after the designer of worlds in the "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series. ------------------------------ Subject: 7 - Roll the Credits Special thanks go to Eric Haines for his help and the wealth of information he has provided both directly and in Ray Tracing News, FTP lists, etc. Thanks also to all those people who maintain other lists, bibliographies, FTP sites, or have provided me with specific information, told me where to look, produced mini-faqs (thanks John) or have just posted answers to the group: John Beale Nick Fotis Jim Grimes Ian Grimstead Eric Haines Laszlo Herczeg Chris W. Morris Bjorn-Kare Nilssen George Kyriazis Daniel Palermo Harry Rowe Heinz Schuller Rick Speer Greg Ward Andy Wardley Oliver Weyand Marius Watz Finally, some king-size thanks to all those people out there who have developed, and continue to do so, all the ray tracing software and utilities that keep us so occupied. Wives, girlfriends and children may disagree on this point, but thanks anyway. Special awards in this category go to Dan Farmer <70703.1632@compuserve.com> who wins the Award for "Not-Only-Doing-All- His-POV-Team-Stuff-But-Also-Answering-Lots-of-Questions-And-Being-An-All- Round-Mr.-Nice-Guy", and Chris Cason who gets the coveted "Also-Does-His-POV-Bit-Especially-Being-Admin-of-the-POV-Site- And-Answering-Questions-As- Well-And-Making-the-POV-Ray-CD-Too". Sorry if I've forgotten anyone. Thanks anyway. ------------------------------ Subject: Epilogue You may have noticed one or two gaps in the FAQ or spotted a glaring error, or just thought of something that I really should have mentioned. If that's the case and you can provide some info or corrections, then let me know and sort it out. Well here you are at the end of the document, and your trace is still only half done. You've probably got time to walk the dog before it's finished... Happy Tracing. -- Andreas Dilger University of Calgary \"If a man ate a pound of pasta and (403) 220-8792 Micronet Research Group \ a pound of antipasto, would they Dept of Electrical & Computer Engineering \ cancel out, leaving him still http://www-mddsp.enel.ucalgary.ca/People/adilger/ hungry?" -- Dogbert .