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POV-Ray 3.6 Released
ehmdjii writes "After a long betatesting-phase the POV-Ray team just released version 3.6 of the popular opensource raytracer. It's been two years since the last version and many bugs have been fixed as well as some changes in the render core. This release concentrates on stability and providing a framework for future re-implementations."
This release concentrates on stability and providing a framework for future re-implementations.
Translation:
We know this shit is kind of broken, but we've cleaned it up best we can; here, we've tried to make sense of it; could someone who knows what they're doing maybe come in and rewrite it for us?
Not nearly as nice as some of the pro stuff out there, but definitely usable for the rank amateurs among us.
I wonder if that might be more accurately stated in the reverse: Definitely better than some of the pro stuff out there, but not nearly as usable for the rank amateurs among us.
It's actually far harder to use than simple point-click-and-drag solutions like 3dsmax or Maya, but the results can be just as good. Two of my favorite POV-Ray images:
'The Wet Bird'
'Chado'
I can't even imagine putting those images together using POV-Ray. Using 3dsmax, sure. But POV-Ray? Wow.
Its not GPL, it was started years ago under a different license.
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I suppose no article on POV-Ray is complete without a link to the work of Gilles Tran, creator of some utterly amazing works in his 'Book of Beginnings'. It's art, it's programming (check out stuff like his Pipes macro), and it's literature - all the pictures are accompanied by am intriguing, often tangential short story, which abruptly ends mid-sentence...
Highly recommended!
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
POV-Ray is not open source. The license forbids, among others, commercial distribution. In fact now that I read the 3.6 license, it seems to forbid distribution, PERIOD.
This seems to be an interesting contrast to this comment where someone (apparently a POV-Ray developer?) discusses plans to release POV-Ray under an open source license and explains why this is not currently possible:
"we can't reach many of the people who contributed the original code under the old license, so we don't have the right to just switch the license. We'll have to rewrite some pretty big chunks of code before we can think about a more open license. That (the rewrite) is slated to happen for the next major release."
Not nearly as nice as some of the pro stuff out there, but definitely usable for the rank amateurs among us.
:-)
POV-Ray's a bit different from usual 3D rendering and modelling software, in that a lot of the effort has gone into making a programming language which can then be used to generate objects. Typical renderers strive to render as many triangles as possible as quickly as possible, while POV-Ray gives you an entire programming environment. For instance, while a typical 3D modeller might laboriously hand-craft a tree out of triangles, shaders and alpha-blended foliage textures, a POV-Ray user would effectively write a program for generating trees.
A different approach giving different sorts of results, and while POV-Ray might not be suitable for, say, modelling, animating and rendering feature films, it can be used to create some quirky, glorious images. Who cares if it's not some carbon-copy of Maya or Renderman - an alternative approach is always appreciated.
People are always complaining about 'programmer art'. With POV-Ray, programming is visual art.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Gilles Tran, the artist who made 'The Wet Bird' piece has a wonderful 9-page series of web pages on The Making of the Web Bird He's one of the best 3D artists our there in any media. You can see more of his gallery here
Cool! They've changed the speed of light!
If you want to support this guy, he sells his work through zazzle