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comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing FAQ (part 1/2) |
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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,
, 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:
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
(C) Copyright 1995 - 1999 Andreas Dilger
(C) Copyright 2000 Markus Kniebes
------------------------------
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 , 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 , 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 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
. 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 , 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
and Nick Fotis from which
much of the following has been taken.
* ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/ [128.252.135.4]
George Kyriazis
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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 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 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 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
. 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.
Section 1 of 2 - Prev - Next
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