POV-Ray

Hi,

I think I may have found a bug in the subsurface/radiosity features of Povray 3.7 attached image showing the issue and sample files required to reproduce. The original files (on povray forum images thread) had different radiosity settings but these ones show the problem and only take a few seconds to render the image without AA so probably better for bug fixing/testing etc.

Thanks

Sean

The following paraboloid renders correctly:

intersection
{ quadric { <1, 0, 1>, <0, 0, 0>, <0, 1, 0>, -1 }
  cylinder { 0, y, 1 }
}

However, when I extend the clipping cylinder downward:

intersection
{ quadric { <1, 0, 1>, <0, 0, 0>, <0, 1, 0>, -1 }
  cylinder { -y, y, 1 }
}

the object disappears completely in POV-Ray 3.7 and 3.7.1. In POV-Ray
3.6.1, it renders as expected.

POV-Ray 3.7.0.unofficial (self-compiled with g++ 4.8, but completely unaltered)
POV-Ray 3.7.1-alpha.8150025.unofficial
openSUSE 13.2 GNU/Linux

This scene file illustrates the problem:

// +w480 +h240
#version 3.6; //[sic]

global_settings { assumed_gamma 1 }

camera
{ location <0, 1, -7.5958>
  look_at <0, 1, 0>
  right 2 * x
  up y
  angle 43.1038
}

#default { finish { diffuse 0.6 ambient rgb 0.15618 } }

light_source
{ <-4.3125, 9.6250, -7.4695>,
  rgb 6856.3
  fade_power 2 fade_distance 0.10417
  spotlight point_at <0, 1, 0> radius 45 falloff 90
}

box
{ -<9, 11, 9>, <9, 11, 9>
  pigment { rgb 1 }
}

plane
{ y, 0
  pigment { checker rgb 0.05 rgb 1 }
}

intersection
{ quadric { <1, 0, 1>, <0, 0, 0>, <0, 1, 0>, -1 }
  cylinder { 0, y, 1 }
  pigment { green 0.5 }
  translate <-1.25, 1, 0>
}

intersection
{ quadric { <1, 0, 1>, <0, 0, 0>, <0, 1, 0>, -1 }
  cylinder { -y, y, 1 }
  pigment { green 0.5 }
  translate <1.25, 1, 0>
}

On the right side, there should have been a cylinder capped with a paraboloid. A thread has been started in povray.bugreports. Jerome has started to look at it.

Subsurface scattering must be made radiosity-aware.

Adjusting the brightness of an image-mapped sky sphere, although not an uncommon task especially when using HDR light probes, currently is cumbersome at best, as it is not possible to specify a “finish { ambient ... }” statement.

To simplify tuning a sky sphere’s brightness, I suggest introducing a “brightness FLOAT” modifier (defaulting to 1.0) to either the sky_sphere block or (as a more versatile solution) the image_map statement.

The Rect data type needs to be renamed to avoid a clash with a Mac OSX declaration. It was originally called Rectangle, but this clashed with a Windows declaration. Something more POV-specific should be used, e.g. PovRect.

There can be square (32×32) blotches in partially transparent objects.

global_settings {
   max_trace_level 10
}

camera { 
   location <-30,10,5> 
   look_at <0,0,0> 
   angle 25 
}


light_source { 
   <-100,30,70> 
   rgb 1 
}

difference { // make a dome
  sphere { <0,0,0> 5 }  // ball
  sphere { <0,0,0> 4.9 } // hollow interior
  box { <-6,-6,-6> <6,1,6>  pigment { rgb <0,0,0> }}  // chop off bottom half
  pigment { rgbt <1,1,1,0.675> }
}

box { 
   <-6,-6,-6>, <6,0.99,6> 
   pigment { rgb <1,1,1> } 
   rotate <0,45,0>
} // sit it on a box

Adding an AOI pattern is asked for fairly frequently.

In unix distribution these scripts

• allscene.sh
• allanim.sh
• porfolio.sh

have the variable VERSION set to 3.6

The parser is missing extra period characters when it parses a float as a vector component.

#local sample = <0.0.0.1,0,0>;

Doesn’t generate an error, but should.

The commands:

povray +i /home/ronis/Nm=500/povray.00001.pov

or

povray +i/home/ronis/Nm=500/povray.00001.pov

fail with: povray: this pre-release version of POV-Ray for Unix expires in 2 day(s) and 1 hour(s)
Failed to parse command-line option

Going to the directory and simply running: povray +i povray.00001.pov
works.

I came across this by accident trying to get emac’s povray mode to work; apparently it passes the full path name to povray.

I don’t think there is a problem in 3.6.1

After a recent update on the POV-Wiki the GuMax skin doesn’t recognize MediaWiki:Common.css entries.

Develop MediWiki extension to extract documentation sets from the POV-Wiki.

In POV-ray 3.7 beta 33 under Windows XP, the editor’s MRU list incorrectly handles files that have a comma in the pathname. Only the part of the name before the comma appears on the MRU list, but the rest of the name is left off.
Consequently, the file cannot be reopened via the MRU list. The file is also not reopened on launch if pov was closed with the file open. This also occurs in 3.6.1, I haven’t tried it under 3.6.2 yet.

Interestingly enough, a quick peek in the registry shows that both 3.6 and 3.7
are saving the entire path name correctly under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\POV-Ray\v3.6\POV-Edit\Recent (or \v3.7\POV-Edit\Recent).

This seems to be limited strictly to the editor’s MRU list. The file can still be opened normally using the open dialog box. Calling POV-ray from the command line and using a file or path name with commas in it works correctly. Included files with commas in the path work correctly, and the Tools→Edit last rendered file/View last rendered file work correctly also.

To duplicate, save a file with a comma in the pathname (either in the directory
name or the filename itself). Close the file, then attempt to reopen it using the MRU list in the file menu.

Some sample scenes are no longer up-to-date, causing warnings, and should be fixed. For instance, the advanced/benchmark scene still includes “Buffer_Output=Off” and “Buffer_Size=0” in its .ini file. This should be checked systematically, and fixed as appropriate.

It seems that the new area_illuminate flag for area lights does not take into account fade_power and fade_distance. The illumination falloff is still being calculated from the center of the light_source.

Here’s some relevant code:

camera{
  location<0,10,-10>
  look_at 0
}
plane{y,0 pigment{rgb 1}}
light_source{
  y*.1,100
  area_light x*10, z*1, 8, 8
  jitter
  area_illumination
  fade_power 2 fade_distance 1
}

When rendering a series of scenes (e.g. animation, or render queue in POV-Ray for Windows), number_of_waves is not properly reset to its default value between scenes, causing the parameter to default to the value set by the previous scene.

For instance, rendering the following scenes from a queue will cause “arches.pov” to be rendered differently the second time:

1. scenes\textures\finishes\arches.pov
2. scenes\textures\normals\normavg.pov
3. scenes\textures\finishes\arches.pov (again!)

The parser does not accept mesh objects (or CSG objects including a mesh object) as a parameter to the inside() built-in function, reporting error “Solid object identifier expected”, even if the mesh is “solidified” by specifying an inside_vector.

(see news://news.povray.org:119/4a983716@news.povray.org)

Trace level is not handled properly with blobs using per-component reflective or refractive textures, leading to lockups. Stepping through the code, it seems that POV-Ray fails to properly mark the blob object as increasing the trace level.

(Until this bug is fixed, the issue can be worked around in most cases by assigning a reflective texture to the blob as a whole.)

Add a way to get and set font metrics.

Attached an image that shows what I’m talking about.

Thanks!!

Improve native support for 2D primitives. Ideally a 1:1 mapping of SVG primitives/shapes. They go a long way to making diagrams look a lot better. Having to create image maps based on externally created bitmaps slows the workflow down a lot!

Add metatags to output images identifying the file as having been created using POV-Ray.

In the following scene, the mesh object will always cast a fully-opaque shadow, even if the image has an alpha channel:

camera {
  location  <0.5, 1.0, -1.0>
  look_at   <0.5, 0.0,  0.5>
}

light_source { <0, 30, 0> color rgb 1 }

mesh {
    triangle { <0,0,0>, <1,0,0>, <1,0,1> uv_vectors <0,0>, <1,0>, <1,1> }
    triangle { <0,0,0>, <1,0,1>, <0,0,1> uv_vectors <0,0>, <1,1>, <0,1> }
    texture { pigment { uv_mapping image_map {png "FOOBAR.png"} } }
}

plane { y, -0.1 pigment { color rgb 1 } }

The following modification to the texture will give the expected results:

    texture { uv_mapping pigment { image_map {png "FOOBAR.png"} } }

The problem can be observed with both POV-Ray 3.7 (tested with beta.34), as well as 3.6 (tested with 3.6.2).

The configure script for unix uses a dumb string compare to test whether libpng version is 1.2.5 or higher, leading it to reject (for instance) libpng 1.2.27 and unnecessarily compile and statically link the older libpng version it comes with.

Scenes starting with the incorrect syntax

version 3.7;

do not raise an error, instead they render a black screen with an empty scene warning.
#version should fail with an error when the # is missing.

Windows 7, Home Premium 64bit
In Options/Editor Window/Editor Preferences/Language Tabs
saving a tab size of 4 does not work - on restart it reverts to the default of 8

In Options/Editor Window/Editor Preferences/Misc
saving a Line numbering style of Decimal and a Start number of 1, does not work, on restart the defaults are restored.

When I try to re-render the insert menu bitmaps,on the Windows version 3.7b36 there is an error with the
Shapes.pov file.
line 474: Parse Error: Unexpected additional ‘.’ in floating-point number

line 474 is:

<2.6, 0>, <3.6.9>, <4, 1.1>, <3.4, 2>, <3, 1>, <2, 1>

The second vector has two decimal points
Change to <3.6,.9>

File output code for virtually all file formats performs gamma correction on unclipped color values, which leads to issues when color values happen to be negative for some reason and gamma does not happen to be an integer value such as 1.0 or 2.0. As a consequence, subsequent steps (clipping and converting to integer) apparently produce compiler-dependent results. Compiled with Microsift or Intel compilers, POV-Ray seems to write zero brightness in such cases, while compiled with g++ 4.4 (and possibly other compilers) it seems to write full brightness instead.

(See thread news://news.povray.org:119/4ba819f6@news.povray.org for examples.)

The proper solution should be to apply gamma correction after clipping.

When choosing PPM output with a bit depth other than 8 bits per color channel (e.g. +FP16), POV-Ray messes up the colors (see thread news://news.povray.org:119/4babb48f$1@news.povray.org)

The current Windows version of POV-Ray does not fully support forward slashes in pathnames; specifically, POV-Ray fails to recognize drive letters when followed by a forward slash, e.g. “C:/foo/bar.pov” or “C:/foo\bar.pov”, rejecting such names for e.g. Input_File_Name.

When using cutaway_textures the differenced part traces black. Simple scene file attached.

woodmaps.inc depends on colors.inc, more specifically the definition of the color “Clear” perhaps a #ifndef colors.inc belongs in woodmaps.inc or probably more correctly changing the call of “Clear” to rgbf 1

The #switch directive isn’t parsing correctly. In the following construct NO warning or error is generated:

#switch (RF)

case (0)
	rotate z*355
#break
case (144)
	rotate z*7.5
#break
case (216)
	rotate z*5
#break

#end

RF is a variable passed to the macro in which this construct resides. The first ‘case’ action IS executed, but none of the others are on successive calls to the macro. If I properly add ‘#’ to the second case the 1st and 2nd condition are executed but not the last. If ‘#’ is REMOVED from any of the break directives an error is generated and parsing halts.

POV-Ray 3.7-generated JPEG image output files do not conform to the JFIF standard. Most importantly, the files written do not use the standard YCbCr color model (they seem to use plain RGB instead), nor do they have a proper JFIF tag.

As a consequence, some software may be unable to read the generated JPEG files properly. In addition, it seems that POV-Ray mixes up the Red and Blue channels.

POV-Ray 3.7 does not show output options, such as:

Output Options
  Image resolution 640 by 480 (rows 1 to 480, columns 1 to 640).
  Output file: D:\foo\test.png, 24 bpp PNG
  Graphic display......On  (gamma: 2.2)
  Mosaic preview.......Off
  CPU usage histogram..Off
  Continued trace......Off

(the above is what 3.6 used to show)

I can no longer run a Myfile.ini over a network, on a different computer.

Possiblely related to:

    http://bugs.povray.org/task/97   FS#97  (Forward-slash pathnames not fully supported in Windows version)

-
Cannot open INI file
‘\\STEPHEN-POVRAY\Bishop3d\Objects\Industrial_enclosure\Telco_enclosure_extra.ini’.
Failed to start render: Failed to parse INI file

The following line in the lathe1a.pov, lathe1b.pov, and lathe1c.pov appears to have an error in it.

  <3.6.9>, <4, 1.1>, <3.4, 2>, <3, 1>, <2, 1>,

Although it works in version 3.6, only in 3.7 does a render time error ocurr.

Scene source should be adjusted to the following

  <3.6, 0.9>, <4, 1.1>, <3.4, 2>, <3, 1>, <2, 1>,