From comp.graphics.raytracing Fri Apr 22 17:00:39 1994 Xref: uniol comp.graphics.raytracing:1254 comp.graphics:40295 Path: uniol!mpifr-bonn.mpg.de!news.rhrz.uni-bonn.de!urmel.informatik.rwth-aachen.de!news.dfn.de!darwin.sura.net!sgiblab!munnari.oz.au!news.uwa.edu.au!povray From: povray@uniwa.uwa.edu.au (POVRAY account) Newsgroups: comp.graphics.raytracing,comp.graphics Subject: POV-News #1A (***modified,official***) Date: 17 Apr 1994 13:08:27 GMT Organization: The University of Western Australia Lines: 131 Message-ID: <2orccb$3jh@styx.uwa.edu.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: uniwa.uwa.edu.au Summary: POV-RAY NEWS Keywords: POV NEWS X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] ****************************** POV News ******************************* (modified 17 April 1994) This is the first of a series of irregular bulletins about POV. This is an official POV-Team publication. They will be issued only when there is sufficient news to report to make it worthwhile, and will be posted to comp.graphics and comp.graphics.raytracing from time to time. Responses to this article should be placed in comp.graphics.raytracing to gain the attention of the POV-Team. A POV-Team member usually checks this every couple of days. Email to Team Members ===================== Recently, a couple of indcidents have occurred where users on the internet have emailed large files to POV team members on Compuserve. POVDOC requests that this NOT be done without prior arrangement. Compuserve charges on a per-kilobyte basis for such mail and the most recent occurrence cost the POV-Team member in question US$30.00 in charges. What's worse, most of the information sent (a custom version of POV complete with all source, scene files, &c) was redundant. PLEASE ask first before sending any large email to anyone on Compuserve !!! New POV FTP Site. ================= The main official site for POV is alfred.ccs.carleton.ca (134.117.1.1). uniwa.uwa.edu.au in pub/povray is the new official secondary distribution site for official POV-Ray files. It also carries a good selection of unofficial files (but no unofficial compiles). uniwa, BTW, is a hub so should give you pretty good response. If you want to get POV but are unsure of what files you need, grab POVINF.DOC from one of the abovementioned sites. A listing of some of the more relevant current contents of uniwa may be obtained by performing a finger on povray@uniwa.uwa.edu.au, or by retrieving the file CONTENTS_PLEASE_READ from uniwa. Some utilities of note - MORAY (1.5 of course !), SUDS, CTDS, POVCAD, TGA2GIF, TTG, DXF2POV and RAYLATHE, just to mention a few. The contents file gives a more specific description, explaining what each one does. The uniwa site is also currently mirrored (once a week, on Sundays) at wuarchive.wustl.edu in /graphics/graphics/ray/pov/official-archive. We can't guarantee how up-to-date this mirror is as we do not have control of the mirroring process, but expect that it will be pretty good. Image of the Month ! ==================== The image of the month for April is FROSTY by Dan Farmer, a POV classic ! This image also featured in the book Ray Tracing Creations by The Waite Group. it is available at the below site as IMAGE_OF_THE_MONTH.TGA/JPG, 800x600x16m. Looks even better if you have a hicolour or truecolour card ! It is also available in the HALL_OF_FAME subdirectory as FROSTY.GIF. For those with Compuserve access, a full range of high-quality images done with POV-Ray and other raytracers can be found in GRAPHDEV section 3, 'Hall of Fame'. Since the POV-Team is based on Compuserve and not the internet, GRAPHDEV is the best place to get up-to-date POV info, though the uniwa and carleton sites will be maintained on a regular basis. Official Files ============== The most current POVDOC*.???, POVSCN*.???, POVIBM*.EXE and POVSRC*.??? files. These are in the top-level directory, pub/povray. Only official files are found here. Unofficial files are in subdirectories. All official archives have the current version appended to them, therefore, POVDOC.ZIP is POVDOC-2.2.ZIP. Note that all files are actually stored as lower-case ; the use of capitals is just for this newsletter. Hall Of Fame ============ The above FTP site has a HALL_OF_FAME subdirectory containing a selection of some of the best images around today ! Mike Miller and Truman Brown feature strongly. You are encouraged to provide submissions for this library, the only requirement being that the image is traced with POV-Ray. Truman Browns WOILD series features strongly, and I encourage people to check them out. The source for some of these is available and I will put it up if there is enough requests, and the author OK's it. Images have more chance of remaining on the site permanently if they have a scene file accompanying them. Incoming scenes should have a description (in a .TXT file or zipped up with the scene) and can be placed in incoming/scenes. Retrieve CONTENTS_PLEASE_READ or finger povray@uniwa.uwa.edu.au for more detailed submission criteria. Images/Scenes ============= Apart from the above, there is an images and scenes (image source) sub- directory for non-Hall Of Fame-type images. Contributions most welcome. BinHex files ============ Several MAC users have had problems downloading the current MacBinary SEA archive format on the internet, and have requested binhex'ed files to be made available instead. Official binhex'ed archives have been produced and are up at uniwa now. If anyone has problems with these files, please let us know. Help Reader =========== An official POV-Ray hypertext-based help system has been produced and will be released once the current work on FAQ's (both here and on Compuserve) has been completed. Designed to be portable, the reader currently only runs under DOS but will probably be ported to UNIX as soon as time is available to do so. The help database itself is portable and eventually will probably have back ends to create native (i.e. Windows, Mac) help files as well. ******************************************************************************