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Welcome to the section on
POV-Ray Renders
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This is a new section. Please keep visiting and see as it
progresses.
POV-Ray is "Presistance of Vision - Ray tracer".
In the words of the makers of the software...
"The Persistence of Vision Raytracer is a high-quality,
totally free tool for creating stunning three-dimensional
graphics. It is available in official versions for Windows
95/98/NT, DOS, the Macintosh, i86 Linux, SunOS, and Amiga.
"
Basically POV-Ray allows your to describe scenes using a
scripting language that is similar in symantics to C. Althought
there are other other professional software that allow the
scene description to be done using GUI tools, ie., a drag
and drop and modify approach, almost all of POV-Ray's creative
work is done using the scripting language. The scripting language
is powerful and flexible, and the code written is as maintainable
as a C-program.
What is Raytracing?
"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."
In raytracing, you 'describe' a scene as seen by a viewer,
to the raytracing program. You describe in detail the objects
that are existing in the scene. Where they are located. What
do they look like, and what other characteristics do they
have. You also describe what are the light sources that are
illuminating the scene and where they are located along with
information on their color.
Once you finish describing these to the raytracer program,
it will try to 'render' the scene and show it to you in all
its glory. It will not only show you only what you told it
just a few moments ago. In fact the render will take care
of millions of things. Like hidden and partically hidden things
are autmatically shown as such. Shadow effects are shown for
all the objects on which there is incident light. There will
be reflection effects also shown depending on the surface
of the subjects in the scene. All this information is in our
control when you describe the scene.
The positive aspects of this method is that you get brathtakingly
realistic and perfect pictures. Every aspect of the scene
can be minutely controlled and the effect carefully monitored
for the best of renders. Describing the physical aspects of
the scene may be one aspect of art using POV-Ray. Getting
the colors right, getting the right amout of light in the
right place of the right color it also important. It is also
important to choose the reflectivity of the objects along
with the clarity of the atmosphere to get the perfect picture.
The main drawback is that it is not fast. Complex scenes
may take from hours to days to trace! That does depend on
the kind of machine that you use. Also note that the catch
phrase is 'complex scenes'. Simple scenes take bout 5 to 10
seconds on a 200 MHz. These figures are only meant not to
dissuade you, please dont hold them against me, this is not
a speed review. Also note that this is not the only methods
to get such stunning imagery, but in my opinion the best results.
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