home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!dreaderd!not-for-mail
- Message-ID: <graphics/raytrace-faq/part1_1082200966@rtfm.mit.edu>
- Supersedes: <graphics/raytrace-faq/part1_1079601013@rtfm.mit.edu>
- Expires: 31 May 2004 11:22:46 GMT
- X-Last-Updated: 2002/02/04
- From: mk@cyrus.ruhr.de (Markus Kniebes)
- Newsgroups: comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing,comp.answers,news.answers
- Subject: comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing FAQ (part 1/2)
- Organization: Ruhr.DE (Germany)
- Sender: mk@cyrus.ruhr.de
- Reply-To: mk@cyrus.ruhr.de
- Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.EDU
- Followup-To: comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing
- Precedence: bulk
- Summary: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about raytracing
- software on comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing
- Keywords: FAQ ray tracing rendering
- Originator: faqserv@penguin-lust.MIT.EDU
- Date: 17 Apr 2004 11:28:48 GMT
- Lines: 1059
- NNTP-Posting-Host: penguin-lust.mit.edu
- X-Trace: 1082201328 senator-bedfellow.mit.edu 576 18.181.0.29
- Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing:62631 comp.answers:56888 news.answers:270026
-
- Archive-name: graphics/raytrace-faq/part1
- Last-modified: 2002/01/12
- Posting-Frequency: every 30 days
-
- Who knows others, is intelligent;
- Who knows himself, insight has.
- Who defeats others, force has;
- Who defeats himself, strength has.
- Lao Tse
-
- 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,
- <abw@peritas.demon.co.uk>, 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. Between 1995 and early spring
- 2000 Andreas Dilger maintained this FAQ. In March 2000 I started to
- maintain this list.
-
- 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.
-
- The latest version of this FAQ is available via WWW at:
-
- http://www.cyrus.ruhr.de/rayfaq/
-
- 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:
-
- <mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu>
-
- 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).
-
- If you're only reading this document because your machine is locked
- up tracing, remember that all things come to those who wait.
-
-
- (C) Copyright 1994 Andy Wardley <abw@peritas demon co uk>
- (C) Copyright 1995 - 1999 Andreas Dilger <adilger@enel ucalgary ca>
- (C) Copyright 2000 Markus Kniebes <kniebes@localhost.ruhr.de>
-
- ------------------------------
-
- 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 - Tachyon
- 1.8 - Others
- 1.9 - Non-Ray Tracing Software
-
- 2 - FTP Sites, Web Sites, Mailing Lists
-
- 2.1 - FTP and Web Sites
- 2.2 - Mailing Lists
-
- 3 - Modelling Software
-
- 3.1 - SCED
- 3.2 - POVLAB
- 3.3 - MORAY
- 3.4 - GUM
- 3.5 - Breeze Designer
- 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's 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 - "Why is the Z axis is pointing the wrong way?"
- 6.11 - "Which 3D accelerator card will speed up raytracing best?"
- 6.12 - "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 seconds 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's POV-Ray Forum (GO POVRAY).
-
- The official distribution site for POV-Ray is Compuserve's GO POVRAY
- forum, but on the Internet, the official FTP and WWW sites are:
- ftp://ftp.povray.org/ [165.113.121.81]
- http://www.povray.org/ [207.159.132.159]
-
- However, at times the access to povray.org is erratic, and it can
- also be very busy, so there are a number of unofficial mirror sites
- (see 2 - FTP Sites, Web Sites, Mailing Lists).
-
- The files that make up official 3.1g versions of POV-Ray are:
-
- - povmsdos.zip MS-DOS 32-bit binary, scene files, and docs
- - povmsd_s.zip MS-DOS source code
- - povwin3.zip Windows 32-bit binaries, scene files, and docs
- - povwin_s.zip Windows source code
- - pve-cv6.zip Visual C++ v6 compiled versin of pvengine.exe
- - povlinux.tgz Linux for x86 ELF binaries, scene files, and docs
- - povuni_s.tgz Unix source files
- - povuni_d.tgz Unix documentation, include, sample scene files
- - povmac68.sit.hqx Mac 680x0 with FPU binary, scene files, docs
- - povmacnf.sit.hqx Mac 680x0 witout FPU binary, scene files, docs
- - povpmac.sit.hqx Mac PowerPC binary, scene files, docs
- - povmacs.sit.hqx Mac source files
- - povam020.lha Amiga 68020/68881 version
- - povam040.lha Amiga 68040 version
- - povamsrc.lha Amiga source files
-
- There is also an official version of POV-Ray for Amiga available at:
- http://www.amigaworld.com/support/povamiga/
-
- 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.aussie.org/products/
-
- * MegaPoV was formerly known as UVPov, SuperPatch and MultiPatch. This
- is not an official compile of Pov-Ray.
-
- There are version for:
- - Windows http://nathan.kopp.com/patched.htm
- - MacOS http://users.skynet.be/smellenbergh/
- - MS-DOS http://www.stuartgibson.com/
- - Cygwin http://www.schunter.etc.tu-bs.de/~chris/povcyg.html
- - Linux http://www.mailbag.com/users/mtgordon/megapov.html
- - Linux/ PGCC http://www.bigfoot.com/~nimbus186/nocss/ray.html
- - BeOS http://www.bigfoot.com/~nimbus186/nocss/ray.html
- - Linux PVM http://www.wozzeck.net/images/pmp/
- - Tru64 DEC Alpha http://www.ourservers.net/openvms_ports/
- - Source code http://members-proxy-5.mmbrprxy.home.net/ceckak/mpov07/
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject 1.2 - Rayshade
-
- Rayshade is a free ray tracing package originally developed in 1988
- by Craig Kolb <cek@princeton.edu>, 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. 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 systems. One is inetray, the other raynet, available at:
- http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/ray/inetray/
-
- ------------------------------
-
- 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 2.0 software package for a site license fee
- from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
-
- Greg Ward <gjward@lbl.gov>, 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, and is available in source form:
- ftp://hobbes.lbl.gov/ [128.3.12.38] in California
-
- 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 and an online
- order form, please see:
- http://radsite.lbl.gov/adeline/HOME.html
-
- An FTP site with basic info and an ASCII order form is available at:
- ftp://hobbes.lbl.gov/pub/adeline/
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject 1.4 - Blue Moon Rendering Tools (BMRT)
-
- The Blue Moon Rendering Tools are a set of rendering programs and
- libraries, written by Larry Gritz <lg@pixar.com> as a Ph.D. student,
- 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 many popular Unix platforms and Windows 95/NT
- 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 web site:
- http://www.bmrt.org/
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject 1.5 - Polyray
-
- The program Polyray is a freeware 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.
-
- The main site for Polyray (including source code) is:
- ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pub/unix/graphics/polyray/
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject 1.6 - Vivid (including BOB)
-
- Vivid is a shareware ray tracer for IBM PC's by Stephen Coy
- <scoy@microsoft.com>. 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 - Tachyon
-
- Tachyon is a freeware raytracer for a wide range of systems by
- John E. Stone <mailto:johns@megapixel.com>, the current state is
- under development.
-
- Tachyon is a more simple raytracer than e.g. POV-Ray. Its features
- are parallel execution, grid-based spatial decomposition, simple
- antialiasing, basic beometric objects, texture mapping, volumetric
- data sets as seen in the documentation.
-
- Tachyon can be foudn on the web at
- http://jedi.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/raytracer/
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject 1.8 - 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 VMpRAY. Eric Haines' Ray Tracing
- News (see 5 - Further Information and Resources), or the
- comp.graphics.misc FAQ for more info.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject 1.9 - 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 REYES based software package (REYES is based in scanline
- methods). 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 was used to
- render 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 several
- thousand dollars, even with an 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 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, Mailing Lists
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject 2.1 - FTP and Web 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
- <erich@acm.org> and Nick Fotis <nfotis@theseas.ntua.gr> from which
- much of the following has been taken.
-
- * ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/ [128.252.135.4]
- George Kyriazis <kyriazis@esd.sgi.com>
-
- A huge repository of graphics stuff, particulary:
-
- - /graphics/graphics - get CONTENTS file.
- - /graphics/graphics/objects/TDDD - the TDDD objects/converters.
- - /mirrors/unix-c/graphics - Rayshade, MTV, 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 <Frank.Neumann@informatik.uni-oldenburg.de>
-
- 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/ [165.113.121.81]
- http://www.povray.org/ [207.159.132.159]
- Christopher Cason <Chris.Cason@povray.org>
-
- This is 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 ray tracing competition
- - /pub/irtc - image from the new ray tracing competition
- (note that the IRTC has its own site http://www.irtc.org/)
- - /pub/mirrors/avalon - avalon.vislab.navy.mil mirror (See below)
- - /pub/polyray - Polyray source files
-
- Due to increasing demand for better access, ftp.povray.org now has
- many mirror sites around the world. None of the mirrors are
- "Official", so there is no guarantee that they will have everything
- at povray.org, nor that it is the latest version. However, POV-Ray
- is not a release-a-week piece of software, so chances are that the
- local mirror will have the latest release. If anyone notices that
- one of these sites no longer exists, please let me know.
-
- http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/mirrors/ [128.252.135.4]
- ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/graphics/graphics/mirrors/ [128.252.135.4]
- ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/povray/ [165.113.121.81]
- ftp://ftp.vu.union.edu/pub/povray/ [149.106.37.186]
- http://www.vu.union.edu/~ftp/pub/povray/ [149.106.37.186]
- ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/graphics/povray/ [128.174.5.14]
-
- ftp://ftp.uwa.edu.au/ [130.95.128.1]
- ftp://plaza.aarnet.edu.au/graphics/graphics/mirrors/ [139.130.23.2]
- ftp://ftp.ncu.edu.tw/Packages/ray-tracing/ [140.115.1.71]
- http://ftp.ncu.edu.tw/Packages/ray-tracing/ [140.115.1.71]
- ftp://ring.asahi-net.or.jp/pub/misc/povray/ [202.224.39.15]
-
- http://www.hensa.ac.uk/ftp/mirrors/povray/ [129.12.200.129]
- ftp://www.hensa.ac.uk/ftp/mirrors/povray/ [129.12.200.129]
- ftp://ftp.shu.ac.uk/pub/computing/packages/raytrace/ [143.52.20.24]
- ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/Mirrors/ftp.povray.org/ [193.63.255.4]
- ftp://ftp.fh-rosenheim.de/pub/mirror/ftp.povray.org/ [141.60.160.3]
- ftp://ftp.tu-clausthal.de/pub/mirror/povray/ [139.174.2.10]
- http://ftp.tu-clausthal.de/pub/mirror/povray/ [139.174.2.10]
- ftp://kermit.stud.fh-heilbronn.de/mirrors/povray/ [141.7.1.181]
- http://kermit.stud.fh-heilbronn.de/povray/ [141.7.1.181]
- ftp://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/other/povray/ [131.188.3.2]
- http://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/other/povray/ [131.188.3.2]
- ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pub/graphics/raytracing/povray [128.130.34.160]
- http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/graphics/raytracing/povray/ [128.130.34.160]
- ftp://stef.u-picardie.fr/pub2/ftp.povray.org/ [193.49.184.23]
- http://stef.u-picardie.fr/ftp/pub2/ftp.povray.org/ [193.49.184.23]
- ftp://ftp.univ-lille1.fr:/pub/povray/ [134.206.1.72]
-
- ftp://ftp.etsimo.uniovi.es/pub/raytrace/ [156.35.23.24]
- http://www.etsimo.uniovi.es/ftp/pub/raytrace/ [156.35.23.24]
- ftp://ftp.nectec.or.th/pub/mirrors/ray-tracing/ [192.150.251.33]
- http://ftp.nectec.or.th/pub/mirrors/ray-tracing/ [192.150.251.33]
- ftp://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/povray/ [148.81.209.3]
- http://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/povray/ [148.81.209.3]
- ftp://ftp.flashnet.it/pub/ftp.povray.org/ [194.247.160.5]
- http://serviceftp.flashnet.it/mirrors.htm [194.247.160.5]
-
- ftp://sunsite.wits.ac.za/pub/mirrors/ [146.141.15.214]
-
- The POV-Ray CD-ROM from Walnut Creek Raytrace! is now available
- online. Check it out at:
- http://www.aussie.org/products/
-
- * ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/ [128.112.128.1]
- Craig Kolb <cek@cs.princeton.edu>
-
- 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://avalon.viewpoint.com/ [204.212.34.10]
- Webmaster <sph@viewpoint.com>
-
- 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/
-
- * ftp://hobbes.lbl.gov/ [128.3.12.38]
- http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/HOME.html [128.3.12.33]
- Greg Ward <gjward@lbl.gov>
-
- Official distribution site for Radiance ray trace/radiosity package.
-
- * 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 - 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 <Your full name>
- 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 <first name> <last name>
- Posting: imagine@sjuvm.stjohns.edu
-
- * Toaster
-
- This list deals with the Video Toaster system for the Amiga.
-
- Subscription: toaster-request@bobsbox.rent.com
- Body Text: subscribe <address> 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 <address> lightwave
- Posting: lightwave@bobsbox.rent.com
-
- * TrueSpace
-
- This is a mailing list for users of trueSpace, maintained by
- employees of trueSpace's maker, Caligari (http://www.caligari.com).
-
- Subscription: truespace-request@caligari.com
- Body Text: subscribe <address> 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 <address> 3dstudio
- Posting: 3dstudio@bobsbox.rent.com
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject: 3 - Modelling Software
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject 3.1 - SCED
-
- SCED is a constraint based scene editor written by Stephen Chenney
- <schenney@franklin.cs.berkeley.edu>. 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://www.cs.wisc.edu/~schenney/sced/sced.html
- 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. You can find out more about SCEDA at:
- http://members.home.net/mbeast1/
-
- 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 (open source) DOS based 3D graphic modeller
- for POV-Ray 3.0 written by Denis Olivier <dolivier@cyberstation.fr>.
- Here are some of its features:
-
- * 16/256 colors graphic SVGA/VESA 1.2.
- * 387 protected mode, optimized for 486 and Pentium.
- Virtual memory, up to 32 mb.
- * 4 viewports (left, front, top and camera).
- * Material & texture preview, library management, add your own.
- * Real time camera, like 3D Studio does, including POV-Ray FOV.
- * Lights: omni, spot, area/spot, cylinder (color, shadows, on/off).
- * Deformation (matrix scale, translate and rotate based).
- * User configuration (full ascii, very simple to modify).
- * Selection (rotation, scale, translate, copy, ...).
- * Normal/fast/boxed display, freezed and ignored objects.
- * Raw objects, box, cone, cylinder, blob, disc, tube, torus, plane,
- sphere, lathe, bezier patches, spline, automap, extruder,
- superellipsoid...
- * CSG (copy, merge, difference, union).
- * Procedures (rotate and copy, translate and copy, align, extruder).
- * Plugins: program your own external procedures/object generators
- * Mesh precision control for height-fields and torus.
- * Up to 20000 objects.
- * Parameters: ior, refraction, ambient, phong, phong_size,
- diffuse, crand, reflection, image, bump map...
- * Create 3D fonts (read TrueType fonts).
- * Image files viewer, best palette fitting (dithering, scaling and more).
- * HSL and RGB color's dialog boxes.
- * Formatted output with user's "soft" tabs (thanks Dan Farmer).
- * Compiled with management for FDIV Pentium's error.
- * Shell to your favorite viewer.
- * Support a lot of new options in POV-Ray 3.0 as :
- - Extended light sources (atmosphere, fading, ... ).
- - Focal blur.
- - Atmospheric effects and layered fog.
- - Caustics, fade_distance, fade_power.
- - Adding blobs for spheres and cylinders.
- - Adding hollow keyword.
- - Added cylindrical lights.
- - Support superellipsoids.
- - Support radiosity.
- * Support rendering in WINPOV.
- * B-Spline path with CTDS like connections.
- * Debugging infos an files.
- * View POV scene code with lights, cameras and objects manual editing.
- * Smooth key vertices on the spline.
- * OS/2 setup files.
- * Support online, patches, helpers, faq, mailing list,
- illustrated tutorial, scenes, objects.
-
- System requirements for POVLAB are floating point unit (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.povlab.org/
-
- Dennis Olivier has stopped all development on POVLAB. However,
- currently a small group of enthousiasts is reworking POVLAB to a
- multi-platform version. Their ongoing work can be followed at:
- http://pdelagrange.free.fr/labdev/
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject 3.3 - MORAY
-
- MORAY, by Lutz and Kretzschmar, is a shareware modeller for PC's that
- directly supports POV-Ray 3.1 primitives and more. Registration is
- required after a trial period. Support is available via email and the
- POV-Ray news server news.povray.org.
-
- 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.
-
- 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
- * define new textures 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 objects, transforming each independently
- * specify a region of the 3D view to render
- * call POV-Ray from within MORAY to render scenes
- * A complete 100% Texture Editor for POV-Ray with Preview.
- * Fewer redraws that are interruptible.
- * Right-Mouse-button support.
- * New Objects (Blobs, RAW triangles, User-defined objects).
- * Shallow and deep copies.
- * CSG evaluation.
- * Actual Heightfield display (for TGA).
- * Manipulations in 3D views.
- * Spotlight views.
- * Multi-level Undo for major scene operations.
-
- The latest version of MORAY for Windows V3.1 (Build 4325) offers these
- improvements:
-
- * Full support for POV-Ray 3.1 texturing, including interior and media.
- * Automatic, seamless support for POV-Ray For Windows.
- * Material Library support.
- * Inverse Kinematics.
- * Local coordinates (pivot points).
- * Online Helpsystem.
- * Plugin SDK to allow access to the scene data. Supports import/export
- filters, custom objects, and MORAY interface access.
-
- MORAY V3.1 runs under Windows 95/98/NT and requires POV-Ray 3.1 or later.
- It is recommended to have at least 32MB and a truecolor desktop.
-
- For the latest information and pricing, please visit our website at
- http://www.stmuc.com/moray.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- 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 <IO770073@student.io.tudelft.nl>.
-
- 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.tu-clausthal.de/pub/mirror/povray/povray/utilities/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 - Breeze Designer
-
- Breeze Designer is a freeware 32-bit 3D modelling and design tool
- written by John Neville <neville@imagos.dialix.oz.au> 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-Ray, 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/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/utilities/modellers/breeze/
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Subject 3.6 - Other Modellers
-
- * AC3D
- AC3D, by Andy Colebourne <andy@comp.lancs.ac.uk>, is reportedly
- a very easy to use 3D object/scene modeller currently available
- for SGI, SUN, Linux, and MS Windows platforms. It outputs POV,
- Renderman, VRML, Dive, and Massive files. The Linux, Windows,
- and SGI binaries are shareware, while the SUN version is free.
- Source code is not available. More details, manual, and binary
- downloads are available at:
- http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/users/andy/ac3d.html
-
- * 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.
-
-