Geek In Need Of Major Help

Richard,

3DC now writes those material parameters to
Povray correctly. Also, I think somehow this last fix
is a bit more stable than 5.5x has in genertal been.
Was something else fixed also?

Anyway, thanks again for great support work! andnbsp;

Markku

PS. Everyone, I’ve seen Ice Age twice and would
recommend that movie to everyone… andnbsp;

Zounds, Richard, that was fast.

I’m downloading 5.5c right now. That picture in the first post *might* be similar to what’s happening to my renderings…I can’t really tell if it’s the same problem because of all the reflections in that image and the fact there aren’t any reflections in mine.

But when I read afterwards that 5.5a fixed POV normals, I decided to go ahead and upgrade to 5.5c just for the sake of keeping up to date. I have no clue how I managed to totally miss those two posts in my search for information before I posted…mea culpa.

And I really wasn’t sure if it was actually a software issue or if my machine’s chair-to-keyboard interface was malfunctioning again, so I didn’t really look too hard for software problem postings and mainly looked for POV tutorials and whatnot that might have led to a forehead-slapping andquot;Doh!andquot; moment. Next time I’ll broaden my search criteria a little before posting questions, LOL

Thanks for pointing me to the answer.

-Mel Ebbles

Addendum:

It worked. I still don’t like POV-Ray, but it works now. I have to use it separately from 3DC because 3DC is a little unstable when directly rendering with POV, but the export capability neatly solves that issue as far as I’m concerned.

Thanks again <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –>

-Mel Ebbles

Hmmm. I’ve never experienced any problem with POVRay. But perhaps others have?

Richard

Could be this will help:

[img:pxqhll8n]http&#58;//www&#46;amabilis&#46;com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB&#46;cgi?board=3DCProGeneralandamp;action=displayandamp;num=1013660897andamp;start=0[/img:pxqhll8n]
<!– m –><a class="postlink" href="http://www.amabilis.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=3DCProGeneralandamp;action=displayandamp;num=1013660897andamp;start=0">http://www.amabilis.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/Ya … mp;start=0</a><!– m –>

Fixed in 5.5a:

[img:pxqhll8n]http&#58;//www&#46;amabilis&#46;com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB&#46;cgi?board=3DCProGeneralandamp;action=displayandamp;num=1013903219andamp;start=0[/img:pxqhll8n]
<!– m –><a class="postlink" href="http://www.amabilis.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=3DCProGeneralandamp;action=displayandamp;num=1013903219andamp;start=0">http://www.amabilis.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/Ya … mp;start=0</a><!– m –>

Richard

#include baloneycode.foo
#include caveman.foo
#include annoyeduser.foo
#include 3DCproforum.foo

dim Str3DCForum as String
dim StrAargh as String
dim StrGoodbyeCruelWorld as String
dim CAVEMAN_MODE as Boolean

Str3DCForum = GetAddress()

CAVEMAN_MODE = TRUE

StrAargh = andquot;Thag frustrated. Thag take club, bash POV-Ray! Bash bash bash smash whack thud! Thag HATE POV-Ray! Thag think POV-Ray smell like mastodon doo doo!

Or maybe Thag idiot. Thag not know for sure. Thag ask on forum.andquot;

ExecRant(str3DCForum, strAargh)

CAVEMAN_MODE = FALSE

strGoodbyeCruelWorld = andquot;Ack…every time I try to render something using the 3DC raytrace button or the snapshot with raytrace enabled, my output looks really goofy.

The lights just don’t look right…they’re all either too bright or too dark, and absolutely nothing I can do makes it look good at all. I’m running POV-Ray 3.5 beta 13 (same thing happened with beta 12). Shadows look all nasty and too dark.

I haven’t upgraded to 5.5c yet (still running 5.5 out of the andquot;if it works, don’t fix itandquot; philosophy) , so I don’t know if this is either me being a moron or maybe something’s going kablooey somewhere between 3DC and POV-Ray. Any ideas?andquot;

ExecBegForHelp(str3DCForum, strGoodbyeCruelWorld)

ExecWaitForResponse(str3DCForum)

End

-Mel Ebbles

Richard,

That’s an awfully good point. Of course, I’m probably my harshest critic, so I rarely think of alternate explanations like that when it comes to situations like this, and instead analyze my stuff to find out how to improve it further. This, on occasion, has made my wife seriously consider beating me to death with a blunt, heavy object <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –>

-Mel Ebbles

Richard and Mel,

yes, some rendering functionality which uses Pov (in
Materials for example) crashes to desktop / hangs
now and then.

Also, 3DC takes numeric separator from users
settings. This means that for material settings I (I have
Finnish settings, we use andquot;,andquot; in place of andquot;.andquot; for decimal
separator here) get numeric values which do not parse
correctly in Povray.

This I can solve by exporting .pov and then editing
offending separators in Povray.

Markku

Mel,

Also, enabling at least one level of radiosity improves renders, but at the cost of speed. You can set the radiosity level with Properties on the File menu.

Richard

Markku,

I found one instance that was exporting andquot;,andquot; instead of andquot;.andquot;. This was occuring whith radiosity (error_bound). Have you seen any other examples? If so, could you let me know?

Thanks,

Richard

Actually, no reason to wait. The POVRay fix is here:

[img:1e144465]http&#58;//www&#46;3DC&#46;com/downloads/3DC55cPOVFixexe&#46;zip[/img:1e144465]
<!– m –><a class="postlink" href="http://www.amabilis.com/downloads/3DC55cPOVFixexe.zip">http://www.amabilis.com/downloads/3DCa … Fixexe.zip</a><!– m –>
(2MB)

It requires that 3DC 5.5c be installed.

Richard

Richard,

Here is offending line from a .pov file
which was generated by 3DC.
(I formatted the line so that I could
add a comment…)

pigment {
image_map {
gif andquot;greenie.GIFandquot;
filter all 5,098033E-02 andnbsp;***comma***
interpolate 2}}

Markku

Richard,

Yeah, the radiosity helps quite a bit. This is too funny though, I spent three hours getting really annoyed because my terrain wasn’t being shaded properly.

Then after some tweak or another, it suddenly hit me that POV was actually shadowing the clouds from my alphamapped cloud plane onto the terrain itself, LOL…I didn’t know it could do that. Nice feature, but really annoying when what you want is a bright, sunny day instead of a gloomy overcast day.

Color me silly.

I wouldn’t be using POV normally, but it seems people don’t really like the Direct3D rendering look and feel. I happen to like the way D3D rendering looks, but I’m a minority.

I posted some 800×600 D3D snapshot renders of one of my models (Type 78 VTOL in Model Feedback) and only got like two or three comments, while other people tend to get a lot more replies to their image postings.

The difference in andquot;viewer appealandquot; seems to be mainly in the renderer used, so I figured I’d better get with the program and learn how to use POV if I want to present my content in a way that pleases a viewer.

-Mel Ebbles

Mel,

I don’t think it was the renderer. I for one looked at them and thought andquot;coolandquot;. But I didn’t reply since I didn’t think there was anything constructive I could say except andquot;coolandquot;. But that was self-evident, so unnecessary. Sometimes silence indicates approval not disinterest.

Richard

Markku,

That will be fixed for the next patch.

If you have 5.5c I can provide you with an EXE download (2 MBs) that will fix this if you want.

Thanks,

Richard