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- Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games
- Path: sparky!uunet!munnari.oz.au!uniwa!cujo!cc.curtin.edu.au!crod
- From: crod@cc.curtin.edu.au (Scott Kevill)
- Subject: Re: Maelstrom blather
- Message-ID: <1992Dec30.195712.1@cc.curtin.edu.au>
- Lines: 71
- Sender: news@cujo.curtin.edu.au (News Manager)
- Organization: Curtin University of Technology
- References: <1992Dec29.191836.27698@fcom.cc.utah.edu> <1992Dec29.233322.4129@kth.se>
- Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 10:57:12 GMT
-
- In article <1992Dec29.233322.4129@kth.se>, d88-jwa@hemul.nada.kth.se (Jon WΣtte) writes:
- > In <1992Dec29.191836.27698@fcom.cc.utah.edu> Dmitry Boldyrev <dmitry@chemistry.chem.utah.edu> writes:
- >
- >>Andrew doesn't use sprites! If you'll take a look
- >
- > Andrew doesn't use sprites, and no one else does either,
- > since there ARE no sprites for the Mac.
- >
- >>Why doesn't he used POV or any other Ray-Tracing programs to
- >>draw his pictures? -It's easy!
- >
- > Well, yes and no. He probably preferred to have someone else do
- > the graphics (who has forked out the dough for the tracer
- > program, and knows it) and concentrate on the game. Seems
- > reasonable to me. A decent renderer is $500; maybe the graphics
- > was cheaper...
- ^^^^
- POV-Ray (Persistance of Vision) is FREE and is far more *FLEXIBLE*
- than a lot of commercial renderers like StrataVision 3D etc. in the
- way of surfaces and objects.
-
- For example, some it supports are :
- Quadrics (eg sphere, cylinder, cone, paraboloid, hyperboloid)
- Polygons
- Quartic Surfaces
- Blobby models
- Height fields
- Bezier/Bicubic patches (smooth surfaces)
- Constructive Solid Geometry (eg subtract part of a cylinder
- from a sphere)
- Toroids (donuts)
- and more !
-
- It also includes an enormous number of textures in the form of
- libraries.
-
- The only disadvantage (or it could be an advantage) is that everything
- is done in a scene description language, although it is very easy to
- use and learn, and there are many sample scenes to get you started.
-
- It might be well worth looking into, for people other than game-
- writers as well. By the way, despite the scene description language
- it does have a very nice macintosh front end.
-
- Its home site is alfred.ccs.carleton.ca [134.117.1.1]
- Sorry I can't remember the directory, I think /pub/POV-Ray
- Make sure you read the README so you get the right files (there
- are versions for other computers there as well)
-
- For the daring, the source code is also publicly available in the
- same directory, but read the legal info on re-distribution.
-
- Even if you don't want to learn a new language, get it anyway
- because there are lots of nice scenes already made, ready to
- render.
-
- (I didn't write it by the way :-)
-
- >
- > Cheers,
- >
- > / h+
- >
- > --
- > -- Jon W{tte, h+@nada.kth.se, Mac Hacker Deluxe --
- >
- > -- I don't fear death, it's dying that scares me.
-
- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
- Scott Kevill crod@cc.curtin.edu.au
- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
-