POV-Ray

[diordna]

It hasn't been updated for over a year and the Mac version has to be run in Classic since the Jaguar version won't render or let you open files from the Open menu. Does anyone else suspect that it's dead?

The Mac page also has many ooooooooold links and counts Meshwork as "new."

[skyhawk]

Get something called MacMegaPov 0.7 (maybe a later version but I doubt it). It works just fine in OS X. I am sorry, but I do not know where I got it though.

[jamn]

MacMegPov is available at this link http://users.skynet.be/smellenbergh/

It is up to version 1.0 now. I haven't used it recently so I don't know what has changed or been improved.

--Jim

[skyhawk]

I need help rotating a sphere. I want to rotate it around its center, but when I rotate it (rotate around the x axis), it rotates around the bottom of the sphere. what translations do I need to do to the sphere to make it stay in the same location yet rotate like I want it to?

[Dr. Light]

http://www.povray.org/
You can find a standard Mac OS / OSX release here. That other one mentioned earlier looked like it had more to it though.


As for free modelers:
http://www.artofillusion.org/
Its a tad slow, but pretty well rounded for the average ametuer. Setting it to single view speeds it up a lot.

[Dr. Light]

I need help rotating a sphere
Make sure the center of your sphere is located at 0,0,0 (in relation to itself), otherwise it will orbit. That might not fix the problem though, because its been a little while since I've messed with it.

[skyhawk]

Originally posted by Dr. Light
Make sure the center of your sphere is located at 0,0,0 (in relation to itself), otherwise it will orbit. That might not fix the problem though, because its been a little while since I've messed with it.

I know it is orbiting, I was wondering what I could do to translate it so it wouldn't orbit.... or how I would translate whatever to the center of the sphere... help me out here. code be nice to :D

[diordna]

If it orbits, just move it up twice its radius. But that's just if you're rotating 180 degrees.

Anyway, I got MegaPOV and it works wonderfully.

Dr. Light, I was originally complaining about the official Mac release. That's why I posted in the first place. I don't need a link to the site.

AoI is pretty good, but it lacks features of many 3D apps.

[Dr. Light]

Hmm. Your right, it hasn't been updated for quite some time now that I think about it. Don't know what I was thinking...:wacko:

AoI is pretty good, but it lacks features of many 3D apps.
If only it were a tad more simple then it would be great for beginners. The texture setup is awful, cause you either got to import from another file or whip it up from scratch every time you make a new file. Unfortunately, it requires some sit-down time and a little bit of know-how to get something done. As for professional work, goodness no; however, it does manage to get this cowboy's work done with room to spare, and at a price I can afford. In short: not perfect, but I love it.:D

[diordna]

You needn't list free 3D apps for me, unless they're not on this list:

Art of Illusion
Blender
Coalesce
jPatch
Mechanisto
Meshwork
PatchDance
PixelShox
POV-Ray
Sphaera
StrataVision 4.0
Terragen
Wings3D

[skyhawk]

now out of those, I believe pov ray has the best rendering quality, but what has the best overall (modelling, rendering, texturing) and the best in each of those categories?

[Max]

Diordna, you forgot Amapi 3D v4! There are also a few "abandonware" applications like Infini-D and RayDream Studio.

[diordna]

I have that too, but I didn't like it so I don't use it.

Wings has the best modelling, but the worst texturing. StrataVision is good in all areas but is out of date. It has the best texturing.

[skyhawk]

Okay another question: How would I rotate something on the y=x axis. I tried rotating x and y at the same time... but that causes my ball to spin out of control. solutions?

[Carlos Camacho]

>abandonware" applications like Infini-D and RayDream Studio
Technically, both are NOT abandonware. Eovia owns the rights to both, and markets their line to the customers of those apps.

>now out of those, I believe pov ray has the best rendering quality
PR can make some nice images, although I hear that the Mac version is SLOWER than the PC/Linux versions. I don't know the status on this issue to comment though.

[skyhawk]

Originally posted by Camacho

>now out of those, I believe pov ray has the best rendering quality
PR can make some nice images, although I hear that the Mac version is SLOWER than the PC/Linux versions. I don't know the status on this issue to comment though.

The problem is that povray wants double precision floating point numbers, while the altivec can only do single precision, thus they could not do some serious altivecing action on it.

Aways, it depends on the rendering you do and how many lights you use. On my slow as heck machine, I can generally render my 200x150 image with 5 lights in 1 minute with level 2 antialiasing and level 9 quality.

[OneSadCookie]

The problem is that a 1GHz G4 is one third the speed of a 3GHz P4.

Wait until Monday ;)

[Carlos Camacho]

Speaking of free renderers. Any one get Radiance to work on Mac OS X? I downloaded it, but am a bit lost. (It is more for rendering light scenes, like buildings)

http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/framew.html

Wish there was some Mac front-end.

[Leisure Suit Lurie]

Originally posted by Camacho
>abandonware" applications like Infini-D and RayDream Studio
Technically, both are NOT abandonware. Eovia owns the rights to both, and markets their line to the customers of those apps.

>now out of those, I believe pov ray has the best rendering quality
PR can make some nice images, although I hear that the Mac version is SLOWER than the PC/Linux versions. I don't know the status on this issue to comment though.
MegaPOV is very fast. There used to be this nifty Infini-D to POV Ray utility. Very cool. Much easier than figuring out POV's scene language.

[jamn]

I finally got around to trying MacMegapov and I was impressed. I havenít really done anything with Povray in years and Megapov was rendering much faster than I remember, although to be fair my current machine is much faster than the one I used back then. Meshwork can also export to Povray format. I have been experimenting with it a little and am going to see how the combo of using Meshwork as the modeler and Megapov as the renderer works out. Anyone else have experience with this and have hints on using the two together?

-Jim

[jamn]

I was able to experiment a little using Meshwork and MegaPov and was able to come up with this.

http://home.gci.net/~go/images/alphaManSmall.png

It is AlphaMan, a low poly model made by Todd DeMelle and is one of he examples included with Meshwork. The only texture is the face and I just used a swatch of color for that. (note that I didnít create the art, I am only a fair programmer and a worse artist)

When you export the Meshwork object over to PovRay format it creates an .inc file. When you create your scene file you have to make sure and scale this down significantly as is outlined at the Meshwork Web Site http://codenautics.com/meshwork/povray.html

I modified the scene file (.pov) from the Meshwork site and here is the part which deals with adding the exported object from the .inc file that Meshwork generated.

// Load the Meshwork include file, and call it "AlphaMan"
#declare AlphaMan = union {
#include "AlphaMan.inc"
}
// (note: wrapping the include with "union" is not needed
// if your export comes from Meshwork v1.5 or later)

// instantiate the "AlphaMan" object
object { AlphaMan scale 0.008
}

Note that the model is scaled down by a factor of 8000!

In the .inc file it puts in placeholder texture names like texture1.png, texture2.png etc. You have to manually edit these in the .inc file to match your actual texture name or rename your textures to match the .inc file. This part is outlined at the Meshwork Site.

It renders within a few seconds on my ibook 500. I think that this combo would be great to create sprites, GUI objects, splash screens etc. I hope this is useful to someone. If anyone else has used this combo please let us know of any tips you might have.

-Jim

[Baldock]

Originally posted by OneSadCookie

Wait until Monday ;)
From this can we guess that OSC is getting a faster toy?

[OneSadCookie]

Actually, Monday was the 23rd of June.

On "Monday", they told us we'd have to wait until "August".

AFAIK, they still haven't told us when in August we'll be able to get PowerPCs that compete on speed with Pentiums.

Personally, I won't be getting a new computer for a year or two yet...

[skyhawk]

Originally posted by Baldock
From this can we guess that OSC is getting a faster toy?

He may not, but myself and another mac guy who goes to A&M will be ordering in august

[Mark Levin]

I believe that some orders are scheduled to ship on August 29th, according to XLR8yourmac.

It is possible to do double-precision floating point with the Altivec unit, at least as I understand according to some of the links here (http://developer.apple.com/hardware/ve/acgresearch.html) (I haven't read them myself).

[OneSadCookie]

What there implies that?

The VMX unit on the G5 has the same size registers and almost the same instruction set (± 2 instructions) as the G4, so no, you can't do double-precision floating point math natively in VMX on the G5.

[skyhawk]

Originally posted by OneSadCookie
What there implies that?

The VMX unit on the G5 has the same size registers and almost the same instruction set (± 2 instructions) as the G4, so no, you can't do double-precision floating point math natively in VMX on the G5.

The 970 does have 1 double precision floating point register. But you are right, the altivec can't do double precision.

[OneSadCookie]

The 970 has 32 64-bit floating point registers, just like the G4 (+ a bunch more 64-bit floating point rename registers, of course).