Persistence of Vision

[Gregory DG]

Did anyone have this raytracer for the Atari? Was it just for the Falcon or for the ST line too? I'm pretty sure I remember seeing this in ST Format...

 

Anyway, I was checking out The Free Site.com and found POV's web site. Of course there is no Atari version, but the other versions are free.

[+rdemming]

POV can be found on the Umich Atari Archive. No idea if it is the latest version though.

 

http://www.umich.edu/~archive/atari/Graphi...s/Raytrace/Pov/

 

Robert

[Han]

I am pretty sure it was included on a ST Format disk. I think I might still have it somewhere. Didn't use it much because it was soooo slooooow. I preferred to play around with the Cyber series...

[Ayreon]

http://www.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/~kl...t/povshell.html

 

You can get the POV shell here. Page in in german though

[lais]

Did anyone have this raytracer for the Atari? Was it just for the Falcon or for the ST line too? I'm pretty sure I remember seeing this in ST Format...

 

Anyway, I was checking out The Free Site.com and found POV's web site. Of course there is no Atari version, but the other versions are free.  

 

Yes, it came on an ST Format disk. Some years later I got hold of a specially compiled copy for my Mega STE that would use the 68882 FPU, it was shockingly faster. By that time, though, my POV installation was scattered all over my hard disk and it would be a great task to remember what is where. In fact last August I needed the "POV Pac-Man" picture to use in MyAtari magazine, I had to render it again because I couldn't find a pre-rendered version. I really struggled but finally did it (with anti-aliasing).

[[ProToS]]

hi,

 

you could find pov 3.1g and megapov 0.7 for atari here

http://eureka.lutece.net

 

pov 3.5d here

http://membres.lycos.fr/pmandin/

 

and EBmodel 3 for pov ( shareware ) here

http://helijah.free.fr

[Gregory DG]

Did the ST version also require C+ only? Weird... I guess I just don't understand how you can create graphics of that quality with just text. I'd think renderers would have moved into a 3D world and away from the text. Even Quake models in 3D... Ah well.

[lais]

Did the ST version also require C+ only? Weird... I guess I just don't understand how you can create graphics of that quality with just text.

 

Ultimately that "text" is what describes the geometry of the graphical objects in all 3D rendering software. For example, the Pac-Man picture is nothing more than some spheres (with surface attributes like reflectivity, colour, and so on...) with straight lines on the floor. The eyebrows, I believe, are simply a bitmap texture-mapped onto the main yellow sphere. The "quality" of the graphics, as you mention, depends on the complexity of the models and sophistication of the rendering (how well it simulates the behaviour of light and all of its associated parameters), the output resolution and anti-aliasing.

 

POV's script language is similar to C. So it doesn't "require" C as such but it helps to know it if you plan to create 3D scenes from scratch in text.

 

I'd think renderers would have moved into a 3D world and away from the text. Even Quake models in 3D... Ah well.

 

There is a graphical model editor for POV, it's called EB-Model. You draw and place objects like in a CAD program, and the shell translates these into the necessary POV format script file for parsing by the renderer. Think of it as being similar to creating a web page by writing raw HTML or using a WYSIWYG editor.

[LinkoVitch]

Just to clarify a wee bit.. The syntax of POV has a SIMILAR structure to that of a C program, however the language is nothing like C and more akin to HTML.

 

EG stuff like

 

Sphere <0 0 0 0.1> {texture < colour > }

 

(not 100% accurate POV syntax I know, but you should get the gist at least) if that were right it would draw a sphere with a radius of 0.1 units at the location 0,0,0 (XYZ) with the colour red.

 

There is a lot more you can do with the language to add nice effects like phong and gourad shading and specular highlights. You can do it the hardcore way with a text editor, or as Iais said there are numerous graphical editors, wouldn't be suprised if there were a few converters that would convert AutoCAD to POV scenes.

 

Other Raytracer to remeber for ST Format QRT (or Quick Raytracer) very good but not as powerful as POV, may have been slow, but the output was worth it.

[[ProToS]]

Cloe render was very nice too and it was aviable for various computer like pov

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pierre.g/ray/