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101 | Include files | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 36 | Very Low | Low | woodmaps.inc dependency | Closed | |
3.70 beta 38 |
Task Description
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
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124 | Parser/SDL | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 37a | Defer | Very Low | variable number of parameters in macros | Closed | |
Future release |
Task Description
Many programming languages support an indeterminate number of parameters in functions/macros.
JavaScript for instance supports an “arguments” object.
Lua for instance supports the “args” object.
I would like to see that added to POV as well.
Here’s an JavaScript example:
function ArgTest(a, b){
var i, s = "The ArgTest function expected ";
var numargs = arguments.length; //Get number of arguments passed.
var expargs = ArgTest.length; //Get number of arguments expected.
if (expargs < 2)
s += expargs + " argument. ";
else
s += expargs + " arguments. ";
if (numargs < 2)
s += numargs + " was passed.";
else
s += numargs + " were passed.";
s += "\n\n"
for (i =0 ; i < numargs; i++){ //Get argument contents.
s += " Arg " + i + " = " + arguments[i] + "\n";
}
return(s); //Return list of arguments.
}
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96 | Texture/Material/Finish | Feature Request | Not applicable | Very Low | Low | User-defined warps | Tracked on GitHub | |
Future release |
Task Description
User-defined warps would be nice to have, something along the lines of:
warp {
function { MyFnX(x,y,z) } // function to compute pattern-space x-coordinate from object-space <x,y,z> coordinate
function { MyFnY(x,y,z) } // ditto for pattern-space y coordinate
function { MyFnZ(x,y,z) } // ditto for pattern-space z coordinate
}
// a displacement warp:
warp {
function { x + MyFnX(x,y,z) }
function { y + MyFnY(x,y,z) }
function { z + MyFnZ(x,y,z) }
}
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282 | Image format | Feature Request | Not applicable | Defer | Low | Unrendered region should be transparent, not black | Tracked on GitHub | |
Future release |
Task Description
When rendering only a region of a file, using the command-line options +sc/+sr/+ec/+er, the area of the image that is excluded comes out as black in the final PNG.
Expected behaviour is for it to be transparent.
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149 | User interface | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 37a | Very Low | Low | Tray icon: show render progress | Closed | |
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Task Description
In the tray icon, I’d like to see the render progress indicated somehow icon itself. Either a set of numbers (percents), or a change in color of the icon (e.g. from top to bottom). Something like the attached images.
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148 | Documentation | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 37a | Very Low | Low | Thumbnails in docs for shapes.inc, shapes_old.inc, shap ... | Closed | |
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Task Description
The documentation entries for shapes.inc, shapes_old.inc, shapes2.inc, shapesq.inc, etc. should have thumbnails next to the object descriptions.
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119 | Documentation | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 37a | Very Low | Low | Table of Contents in each page of the docs | Closed | |
3.70 release |
Task Description
There should be a table of contents on each page of the documentation, or at least on the very long pages. Scrolling through the entire page to figure out what topics are covered sucks.
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125 | Parser/SDL | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 37a | Very Low | Very Low | System variable to track whether a file has been includ ... | Closed | |
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Task Description
Request a system variable to test whether a scene file has been included by another scene file.
For instance:
#if (is_included)
camera {...}
#end
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327 | Parser/SDL | Feature Request | 3.70 release | Very Low | Low | Support for non-ASCII characters in filename strings | Tracked on GitHub | |
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Task Description
pov 3.7 Can not identify the Chinese.I give the texture map filename in chinese,it turns out parse error.
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133 | Geometric Primitives | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 37a | Defer | Very Low | Subdivision support | Tracked on GitHub | |
Future release |
Task Description
Someone built a version of Povray with internal support for automatic subdivision of meshes. See:
http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~xwu/Pov-Sub/
Would like to see this feature added natively to Povray.
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136 | Parser/SDL | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 37a | Defer | Very Low | String concatenation operator | Closed | |
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Task Description
Using the concat function is tedious. Why not just have an operator with which to concatenate strings?
“Hello " + “world!”
“Hello " . “world!”
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145 | Parser/SDL | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 37a | Very Low | Low | Stack trace report on error | Tracked on GitHub | |
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Task Description
In other languages if you encounter an error you’ll often be presented with a stack trace showing not only the file and line number the error occurred at, but also any calling functions and _their_ calling functions and so on.
Currently, Povray reports the line number of the error as well as the last five or so lines prior to the error. This is usually OK in simple scenes, but breaks down when you start making use of inclusion and macros.
Let’s say you have a macro located in a file that you then include in your scene. Within your scene you call the macro multiple times, passing input to it. However, by accident you pass _invalid_ input to the macro at some point, resulting in an error when parsing. In this case Povray will report the error as belonging to the macro whereas the actual bug exists in the calling code. If the macro is called more than once in your scene it can be difficult to figure out _which_ instance is the one supplying the bad input.
Not sure how much of this is achievable in Povray.
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91 | Texture/Material/Finish | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 36 | Defer | Low | Slope pattern applied to object is not transformed afte... | Tracked on GitHub | |
Future release |
Task Description
There is an big issue with the slope pattern: when the object it is applied to is instanced (again) with a transformation (in particular a rotation, as a translation would not impact.. but a shear might), the colours of the surfaces are changed.
object { p translate -5*x }
object { p rotate 220*y+20*x translate 3*x }
Nobody would expect the object to be different in appearance. If slope {} is replaced with wood, all is fine. (as for others textures, i guess)
IMHO, the slope vector need to be adjusted for the later transformation(s) (so as to compensate the issue of using the Perturbed Normal vector).
This should not impact the AOI/FACING (experimental) patterns, as AOI definition is pretty clear about duplicating & transform if you think about it a bit, as well as FACING: for these two, it is expected to either use the ray(current point of view) or a fixed 3D point as reference. At the limit, discussion about moving the 3D point of FACING might also be opened to interpretation.
AOI/FACING are in task #19
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247 | Other | Feature Request | 3.70 RC6 | Very Low | Low | Set no_radiosity in Screen_Object() | Closed | |
Future release |
Task Description
Suggestion:
In file screen.inc, have macro Screen_Object() set no_radiosity on the object.
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62 | Geometric Primitives | Feature Request | Not applicable | Very Low | Low | Set and get font metrics | Closed | |
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Task Description
Add a way to get and set font metrics.
Attached an image that shows what I’m talking about.
Thanks!!
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276 | Parser/SDL | Feature Request | 3.70 RC7 | Very Low | Medium | SDL Access to Spline Derivatives | Closed | |
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Task Description
I would like to suggest an additional feature regarding splines. POV-Ray’s spline objects (spline {}) are very useful to create animation paths as a function of time from reference points; however, in many cases you do not only need a position to place an object correctly, but also its velocity etc., e.g. if you are animating a car moving along a spline you do not only need to know where the car is at a given clock value but also in which direction it is going. If you want to rotate the wheels correctly you even need to know how this direction is currently changing.
In a nutshell, if you are using splines to create an animation path, you might not only need the spline value itself, but also the value of its first and second derivative. So I suggest adding an SDL capability to access these values like it is possible to access the spline value for a given parameter.
I do not think it would be too difficult to add a feature like this as far as the backend is concerned, since for computing a (cubic) spline you need the first and second derivatives anyway. (They are probably not being stored separately, but a polynomial is not that hard to differentiate.)
Indeed I do not know how an SDL language construct for it should look like (i.e. whether to use ' and ‘’ like in mathematics or a second spline function parameter).
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135 | Platform-specific | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 37a | Very Low | Low | Right-click menu when clicking on editor tab | Closed | |
3.70 beta 38 |
Task Description
When right-clicking on a tab in the editor window a list of options should appear, such as:
* Close * Close all but this * Save * Save as * Print
See Notepad++, EditPad Lite, and Firefox for examples.
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20 | User interface | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 32 | Very Low | Very Low | render window behavior | Tracked on GitHub | |
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Task Description
When changing the behavior of the render window, “Keep above main”, requires restarting the POV editor to take effect. It would be nice either to get a warning to restart, or to get it to work without restarting.
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305 | Geometric Primitives | Feature Request | 3.70 RC7 | Very Low | Low | remove maximum component limit for blobs | Closed | |
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Task Description
Blobs are currently limited to 1,000,000 components (with each cylindrical component counting as three: one cylinder + two end hemispheres); this limit may have served a historic purpose, but is now entirely arbitrary: The remaining code is limited only by the available RAM and the numeric limits of the int data type. The arbitrary maximum components limit per blob should therefore be removed.
Aside from unnecessarily limiting the power of the blob component, another drawback of the current test is that it is only performed after parsing of all the blob’s components, potentially hours after the limit had actually been reached.
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300 | Other | Feature Request | 3.70 RC7 | Defer | Very Low | Reference Documentation Support | Tracked on GitHub | |
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Task Description
As emerged as an idea during the discussion of FS#299, an SDL / POV-Ray editor feature would be useful that allows API documentation via formal comments, e.g. in include files:
/**
* Creates a car object.
* @param a
* description of param a
* ...
*/
#macro car(a,b,c)
...
#end
In addition to the ability of (auto-)generating a documentation file from such comments, an editor window feature would be convenient that allows popup display of a macro’s (object’s / parameter’s / ...) documentation section.
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176 | Other | Feature Request | Not applicable | Very Low | Low | Raise maxpower of the Poly Oject to 16. | Closed | |
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Task Description
At the moment in the Poly Object the maximum power is 15. The mathematics for converting the three parametric equations for x, y and z into a formula for the Poly Object require that the equations are squared several times given max-powers of 4, 8 and even 16. I’ve one eqaution that needs power 16. At the moment this is just one power short. Please raise this to 16. That’s all I ask for.
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175 | Radiosity | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 39 | Very Low | Low | Radiosity. Emissive and scattering media don't illumina ... | Closed | |
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Task Description
Tested with beta 40. Also affect version 3.6.1 as reported in the discution group.
When using radiosity and emissive media. Any object, or part of, that is inside the media container is not affected by the illumination comming from the media.
When using scattering media, the light scattered by the media also don’t affect objects that are inside it’s container.
http://news.povray.org/povray.newusers/thread/%3C4cf8fe22%241%40news.povray.org%3E/
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332 | User interface | Feature Request | 3.70 release | Very Low | Low | Progress animation in taskbar tabs | Closed | |
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Task Description
On Windows 7 and newer operating systems, some programs are able to display their progress in the taskbar buttons.
Here is an example of Chrome downloading something and showing the progress in the taskbar:
http://www.winbeta.org/sites/default/files/news/oldfashinoned.jpg
Here is an example with Paint.NET instead:
http://www.getpaint.net/images/pdn351_superbarProgress.png
I think this feature would use fewer CPU resources than a) minimizing/maximizing the whole application window each time you want to check progress, or b) hovering the mouse over the taskbar button to show the thumbnails.
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35 | Documentation | Feature Request | All | Very Low | Low | problem parsing +i option in povray-3.7.0.beta.32 on li ... | Closed | |
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Task Description
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
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173 | Other | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 39 | Very Low | Low | Prevent POV-Ray for Windows from stealing focus | Closed | |
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Task Description
In some cases it may be desirable to run POV-Ray from a batch file, without causing it to “steal the focus”.
I suggest making this dependant on whether POV-Ray is run with the /EXIT parameter.
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76 | Other | Feature Request | 3.6 | Very Low | Medium | Povray returns incorrect exit code when aborting render | Closed | |
3.70 release |
Task Description
If you abort a render with ^C, Povray exits with a ‘success’ error code.
To test:
povray scene.ini
(^C to abort it)
echo $?
Right now 0 is returned (’success’). A non-zero value should be returned (’failure’).
This is particularly important for scripting, where command lines like:
povray scene.ini && halt
...can be used. I only want the halt to be executed if the scene renders successfully. If I change my mind and ^C it, I don’t want the machine to shut down!
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245 | Other | Feature Request | All | Defer | Low | POVMS message queue can fill up with GB of data for ver... | Tracked on GitHub | |
Future release |
Task Description
With very fast renders and very large output files, the message queue can fill up because the producers are not limited by IO, while the consumer performance is limited by disk IO. Consequently, the message queue can fill up to exhaust all available memory. The solution is to build in some better control of pending output data in the message queue on the producer side. This will also pave the way for message communication over slow links (i.e. a network).
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187 | Frontend | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 41 | Very Low | Low | POV-Ray 3.70 ignores SIGTSTP signal, noisy on SIGWINCH ... | Closed | |
3.70 RC2 |
Task Description
When POV-Ray 3.70 is run on a terminal, on an unix shell, and the user hits ctrl-Z to suspend (stop) POV-Ray, rather than stopping as expected, POV-Ray just reports that it did receive the signal, as if to laugh at the user “I’m not obeying your puny stop attempts”. It
The default action (as happens if the SIGTSTP signal is not trapped) would be much better, and is usually safe also in multithread programs. It takes actual effort to _ignore_ the TSTP signal (namely, to trap that signal), so the current behavior is definitely a dysfeature, probably an oversight by whoever programmed the signal handler.
Also, when the terminal window is resized, POV-Ray needlessly reports that it received a signal number so-and-so (the number of SIGWINCH), adding irrelevant noise to its terminal output. Both signals (SIGTSTP and SIGWINCH) should simply be excluded from the signal trapping mask. I guess there are also other signals that are needlessly captured. It would be better to capture only those signals that an action is needed for.
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190 | Photons | Feature Request | 3.70 RC1 | Very Low | Low | photon message reporting | Closed | |
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Task Description
couple of observations:
if no photons are gathered (hey it happens ... my typo) when attempting to save a photon map the warning message just indicates that it couldn’t save the map, maybe the message could be enhanced to say something like: No photons were gathered so no map information was saved. At first I thought something had changed in my I/O restrictions (I’m writing to an image directory not current or work directory)
when reading a previously saved photon map there is no indication that it was read in other than the end stats showing a small amount of photon time. I don’t recall but didn’t v3.6 indicate that the a previously saved map was being used? Just for the heck of it I moved the map file aside and it did prove to me that it was indeed being input. Some sort of message at the time the file is read in might be helpful.
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160 | Other | Feature Request | All | Very Low | Very Low | Parallel GPU processing support | Closed | |
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Task Description
...for instance nVidia’s CUDA architecture, discussed here and other places.
General consensus is that it’s not worth the effort if only a partial set of POV-Ray’s features are possible.
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121 | Parser/SDL | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 37a | Very Low | Low | Option to render pixels randomly, or in Nth pixel | Closed | |
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Task Description
Assuming there are no performance issues, it would be nice to tell Povray to select the pixels to render randomly, so that the image gets filled in gradually instead of from top to bottom and from left to right.
Also, maybe an option to tell it to render every Nth pixel.
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299 | Parser/SDL | Feature Request | 3.70 RC7 | Very Low | Low | Object Properties Feature | Tracked on GitHub | |
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Task Description
Up to POV-Ray 3.7 RC7 it has not been possible so far to declare custom properties for POV-Ray’s objects, which would be especially useful for complex objects defined in include files.
Currently, if you want to have an object (e.g. a car) with certain variable parameters (e.g. colour, wheel rotation, ...) defined in an include file and the parameters set by a scene file which uses the include file, you have to choose one of the following approaches:
1. use a macro
#macro car(colour, wheelrot, ...)
...
#end
or, 2. check parameters declared before, e.g.
#declare car =
union {
#ifdef (colour)
#local colour_internal = colour;
#else
#local colour_internal = default_colour;
#end
}
The resulting object would be used in the following way:
#include "car.inc" // include file once
object {
car(rgb <1,0,0>, 0, ...) // macro approach
}
// other approach
#declare colour = rgb <1,0,0>;
#declare wheelrot = 0;
...
#include "car.inc" // include file every time you want to have a car object instance
object {
car
}
Needless to say, both approaches are not quite optimal.
The macro approach needs only one #include directive and name conflicts will (hopefully) not be a problem. However, one would have to look up the parameter order of the macro in the include file, in the worst case every time the macro is used.
The other approach needs as many #include directives as car objects shall be instantiated, there can arise name conflicts with other inculde files used in the scene, and a (potentially long) list of parameters has to be declared before each #include. On the other hand, with this approach for any value it is clear which information it gives, e.g. #declare colour = rgb <1,0,0> can easily be read as ‘set car colour to “red”‘.
My suggestion would be creating an SDL feature to
One step up could be to even declare object classes along with them.
This could look like this:
// include file code
class car { // alternatively (without classes) use #declare car = object { ...
property colour = rgb <1,0,0>; // with default colour
union {
...
}
}
// scene file code
car { // alternatively (without classes) use object { car ... }
colour rgb <0,0,1>
}
Note that this solution makes the declarations much more concise and easy-to-read. Especially in scenes with many includes and animation scenes where objects’ properties have to be manipulated according to sometimes complex functions, this would be very useful. Please also consider that such user-defined objects can have dozens of properties.
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240 | Geometric Primitives | Feature Request | 3.70 RC3 | Very Low | Low | Object for efficient automatic periodic pavement | Tracked on GitHub | |
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Task Description
Whenever some object is to be periodically repeated in some kind of grid, you can achieve this with macros, but it a) wastes a lot of resources
even if object references are implemented in the future, wrapper with its own transformation matrix still takes space and bookkeeping
b) is not infinite
annoying when making infinite planar tiling with arbitrary objects
like an approximate water surface or tiling with real bricks
or anything that needs to extend to horizon
c) is not optimized for periodicity
I think it can be very efficiently implemented as an object that takes a finite object argument (like CSG functions) and can be periodic in either 1D,2D or (possibly dangeorous?) 3D with specified period. In each dimension, the number of repetitions can be any integer or even infinity (or max_int). Something like periodicity <2,2,Infinity> 2 copies in 1 direction, 2 in the other, infinite in the third grid_separation <1,2,2> 1 unit size in first direction, 2 unit sizes in the other two
All the code needs to do is raytrace in the current unit cell and if the ray passes uninterrupted, pass it through the neighbouring unit cell (which means trace a translated ray through the same object). The object itself would just feel an additional clipping box, everything else would work seamlessly.
In case of infinite column of transparent object, max_trace stops the infinite loop anyway.
This is just a suggestion, I realize this is more of a long-term change but it is quite easy to implement and would simplify a large number of projects.
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231 | Image format | Feature Request | 3.70 RC3 | Very Low | Low | Number of digits in file name at an animation | Closed | |
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Task Description
There is a long animation to render.
computer 1 should render 0..799 computer 2 should render 800..1599
And after this, You have a bad surprise with the filenames.
animation799.png animation0800.png
There should be a seting how many digits a file name in an animation should have.
This avoids, that there are series of pictures with 3 and other with 4 digit filenames.
BTW: All the experiences for this feature requests had been made during producing http://roland.pege.org/2011-gusi-peace-prize/calculation-error.htm
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212 | User interface | Feature Request | 3.70 RC3 | Very Low | Low | Next beta: new desktop icon | Closed | |
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Task Description
For the next beta version, could you please create a new desktop icon? I keep clicking on the wrong version.
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132 | Geometric Primitives | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 37a | Very Low | Low | Native support for mesh-based surface approximations | Closed | |
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Task Description
There are various scripts around the Net meant for approximating things like isosurfaces and parametric objects using meshes. It would probably run bit faster and be easier to use if this were supported natively within Povray. The feature would require an additional object parameter in order to toggle this behavior on/off.
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108 | Parser/SDL | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 37 | Very Low | Low | motion_blur feature similar to Megapov version | Tracked on GitHub | |
Future release |
Task Description
motion_blur which is a simple and effective feature to use in Megapov to simulate motion blur of, e.g. bird wings, propellers or running animals, would be a neat addition to version 3.7 and later.
In Megapov, the feature requires a line of code in the global_settings{} e.g.: motion_blur 10, 2 and a declaration for the moving object. e.g.:
motion_blur {
type 0
object{MyObject material{MyMaterial rotate x*clock*2}}
rotate x*clock*10
}
type represents several types of pre-defined motions.
Thanks,
Thomas
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118 | Light source | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 37a | Very Low | Low | More efficient handling of fading lights | Tracked on GitHub | |
3.71 release |
Task Description
Currently, fading light sources are used for lighting and shadow calculations even when so far away as to no longer have any effect on the outcome. The proposed solution is to add a new keyword fade_cutoff_distance which tells povray to ignore the light source when alluminating a point at larger distance.
A sample implementation is provided in the attached files. These changes are still based on beta 34 as sources for the current beta are not yet available, and starting to merge changes to beta 35 only at this time didn’t seem worth the effort. Also, please disregard, changes in the CVS header comments (I also use CVS locally for managing source files).
Further considerations regarding this feature:
- For special effects this feature can also be used if the light source does not actually use fading. On the other hand, cutting the light at some distances can be considered an extreme form of fading which may justify the keyword name anyhow.
- Depending on how FS#46 is implemented, the test for cutoff may then be needed at another location as well.
- The default value currently is 0 (or *no* cutoff distance). For #version 3.7 of higher, the default could be chosen automatically based on the light source intensity and adc_bailout, although it may then need to be overriden by the user for extreme pigments.
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115 | Texture/Material/Finish | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 37a | Very Low | Low | More cutaway_textures | Tracked on GitHub | |
Future release |
Task Description
Think this is still a problem. See the attached scene file. Find the WindowFrameSegment declaration for more info. The scene as-is shows the problem (SOME portions of the difference inherit the color of the room) the window opening is scaled larger to show that they AREN’T touching. The problem goes away when (in WindowFrameSegment) the 1st occurrence of the applied texture is commented out and the 2nd occurrence is uncommented, and cutaway_textures is commented out.
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178 | Texture/Material/Finish | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 39 | Very Low | Low | Modify metallic reflection code to better work with con... | Tracked on GitHub | |
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Task Description
The combination of metallic reflection with conserve_energy causes the reflection to lose colour, as demonstrated by the following scene:
global_settings {
max_trace_level 10
}
camera {
right x*image_width/image_height
location <-2,2.6,-10>
look_at <0,0.75,0>
}
light_source {
<500,300,150>
color rgb 1.3
}
sky_sphere {
pigment {
gradient y
color_map {
[0.0 rgb <0.6,0.7,1.0>]
[0.7 rgb <0.0,0.1,0.8>]
}
}
}
plane {
y, 0
texture { pigment { color rgb 0.7 } }
}
#declare M=
material {
texture {
pigment {rgbt <1.0,0.7,0.2,0.99>}
finish {
ambient 0.0
diffuse 0.5
specular 0.6
roughness 0.005
reflection { 0.8, 1.0 metallic }
conserve_energy
}
}
interior { ior 1.5 }
}
box {
<-0.2,0,-2.3>, <0.0,4,0.3>
material { M }
rotate z*5
rotate x*2
}
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128 | Parser/SDL | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 37a | Very Low | Low | Mixed-type arrays | Closed | |
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Task Description
Currently, arrays may contain only one object type. Would be nice to eliminate this restriction and allow arrays to contain objects of different types.
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272 | Other | Feature Request | 3.70 RC6 | Defer | Very Low | Minor change, significant speedup in cubic polynomial s... | Tracked on GitHub | |
3.71 release |
Task Description
While familiarizing myself with the code, I found some small changes in the solve_cubic function that lead to a significant speedup.
In my experience, “pow” is by far the slowest function in math.h and replacing it with simpler functions usually makes a tremendous impact on the speed (it’s an order of magnitude slower than sqrt/exp/cbrt/log).
solve_cubic has a “pow” function that can be replaced by cbrt (cubic root), which is standard in ISO-C99 and should be available on all systems. Separate benchmarks of solve_cubic function show this change almost doubles the speed and does not lower the accuracy. As solve_cubic is part of the solution of quartic equation, this improves the speed for many primitives. Testing with a scene containing many torus intersection tests (attached below) I still observed almost 10% speedup (Intel, 4 threads, 2 hyperthreaded cores, antialiasing on, 600×600: from 91 to 84 seconds). And this is for a torus, where a lot of time is spent in the solve_quartic and cubic solver is only called once! Similar speedup should be expected for prism, ovus, sor and blob.
I do believe the cubic solver can be done without trigonometry, but that would mean changing the algorithm, introducing new bugs and requiring a lot of testing. However, the trigonometric evaluation can still be simplified (3% speedup in full torus benchmark).
These changes don’t affect the algorithm at all, they are mathematically identical to the existing code, so the changes can be applied immediately. I also included other changes just as suggestions. Every change is commented and marked with [SC 2.2013].
This sadly does not speedup the sturm solver, which uses bisection and regula-falsi and looks very optimized already.
The test scene I used has a lot of torus intersections from various directions (shadow rays, main rays, transmitted rays).
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130 | Parser/SDL | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 37a | Very Low | High | Master scene unit system variable | Closed | |
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Task Description
Currently, many POV scenes/include files behave differently depending on the basic units used within the scene. Scaling them differently can affect things like ior and media. A master system variable that users can set to configure the scene’s units would be beneficial for sharing and collaboration purposes, so that person A’s glass interior works correctly in person B’s wine glass scene. Just like the #version system variable, it should have a default value but should be possible to explicitly override.
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333 | User interface | Feature Request | 3.70 release | Very Low | Low | Make text in "about" alt+b dialog selectable with the m... | Tracked on GitHub | |
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Task Description
When you press alt+b or access the “about” dialog in the Help menu it displays some text including software version number and list of contributors.
It would be nice to be able to select and copy this text using this mouse. Sometimes in the newsgroup I have to tell people what version of POVray I am using, and typing the version number can be a pain.
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134 | Image format | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 37a | Very Low | Low | INI option to overlay render information on output imag ... | Closed | |
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Task Description
It would be nice to configure an INI option to add render information like render time, date, and input file to output images.
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230 | User interface | Feature Request | 3.70 RC3 | Very Low | Low | Improved handling of animations | Tracked on GitHub | |
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Task Description
October to middle November, I prodduced a 5 minutes video mainly py POVRAY.
Here a part of the video.ini file
#
# szenes based on games.pov #
#game-pat #Initial_Frame=450 - time scale 1000 - 30 seconds #Final_Frame=899 #Initial_Clock=-12500 #Final_Clock=17500
#game-lost - time scale 1000 - 22 seconds #Initial_Frame=0 #Final_Frame=659 #Initial_Clock=2000 #Final_Clock=24000
#game-lost - time scale 3000 - 12 seconds - fast through the night #Initial_Frame=0 #Final_Frame=359 #Initial_Clock=24000 #Final_Clock=60000
#book-cover #clock=64000
#game-sunrise - time scale 1000 - 35 seconds #Initial_Frame=0 #Final_Frame=1049 #Initial_Clock=60000 #Final_Clock=95000
Now imagine all the problems:
One computer crashes often because of thermal problems. Last picture rendere 487.
Now calculate the setings, that this computer continues the task at 487
Or 2 computers should render a scene.
Sounds very easy. Something like computer 1 makes 0..499 computer 2 makes 500..999.
But the computers are different in speed and the pictures are very different in computation time.
So it would be best
computer 1: 0 to 999 computer 2: 999 to 0
They would meet in the middle, where ever this middle is.
So it would be much easier with
#game-sunrise - time scale 1000 - 35 seconds Initial_Frame=0 Final_Frame=1049 Initial_Clock=60000 Final_Clock=95000 Initial_Task=487 Final_Task=1049
So I have not to calculate the exact clock seting, when a computer sould continue a task after crashing at picture 487
#game-sunrise - time scale 1000 - 35 seconds Initial_Frame=0 Final_Frame=1049 Initial_Clock=60000 Final_Clock=95000 Initial_Task=1049 Final_Task=0
This would be the reverse calcualtion order. Starting with picture 1049 and going down 1048..1047
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44 | Radiosity | Feature Request | All | Very Low | Low | Improve Normals Handling in Radiosity | Tracked on GitHub | |
Future release |
Task Description
Currently, radiosity does not make use of the fact that pertubed normals would theoretically just require a different weighting of already-sampled rays, leading to the following issues:
Honoring normal pertubations in radiosity leads to an increased number of samples, slowing down sample cache lookup.
The increased number of samples is generated from a proportionally higher number of sample rays, slowing down pretrace even further.
Low-amplitude pertubations tend to be smoothed out; “reviving” these is only possible by increasing the general sample density.
Handling of multi-layered textures with different normal pertubations is currently poorly implemented.
As a solution, I propose to store for each radiosity sample not only the resulting illumination for a perfectly unpertubed normal, but from the same set of sample rays also compute the illumination for an additional set of about a dozen standardized pertubed-normal directions, and interpolate among these when computing the radiosity-based illumination for a particular point that has a pertubed normal.
For backwards compatibility, this method of dealing with pertubed normals in radiosity might be activated by a different value for the “normal” statement in the radiosity block, say, “normal 2”.
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41 | Other | Feature Request | 3.70 beta 32 | Very Low | Low | improve command-line parsing error messages | Tracked on GitHub | |
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Task Description
POV-Ray 3.6, upon encountering problems when parsing command line and/or .ini file options, would quote the offending option in the error message.
POV-Ray 3.7 currently just reports that there is some problem with the command line, without providing any details. I suggest changing this, as the information may be helpful at times.
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248 | Parser/SDL | Feature Request | Not applicable | Very Low | Low | Implement mechanism to compute direction of a spline | Tracked on GitHub | |
Future release |
Task Description
The SDL currently provides no way to compute the exact direction of a spline at a given location, even though mathematically this is a piece of cake: The first-order derivative of any spline section gives you the “speed” as a vector function, and is trivial to compute for polynomial splines (which are behind all spline types that POV-Ray supports); the normalized “speed” vector, in turn, gives the “pure” direction.
For exact direction/speed computations, I propose to extend the SDL invocation syntax as follows to allow for evaluating a spline’s derivative:
SPLINE_INVOCATION:
SPLINE_IDENTIFIER ( FLOAT [, SPLINE_TYPE] [, FLOAT] )
or
SPLINE_INVOCATION:
SPLINE_IDENTIFIER ( FLOAT [, FLOAT] [, SPLINE_TYPE] )
where the second FLOAT will specify the order of derivative to evaluate (defaulting to 0). In order to compute the position, direction, and acceleration of an object traveling along a certain spline, one could then for instance use:
#declare S = spline { ... }
#declare Pos = S(Time);
#declare VSpeed = S(Time,1);
#declare VAccel = S(Time,2);
#declare Dir = vnormalize(VSpeed);
#declare Speed = vlength(VSpeed);
#declare AccelDir = vnormalize(VAccel);
#declare GForce = vlength(VAccel) / 9.81;
Alternatively, a mechanism may be devised to create a spline representing another spline’s derivative; however, it would be debatable whether the syntax should be parameter-like (being an added information that could be overridden again when creating other splines from such a derived spline), or operation-like (converting the spline), and in the latter case how it should affect spline type (and consequently control points); so the spline invocation parameter approach might be more straightforward, with less potential surprises for the user.
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278 | Backend | Feature Request | 3.70 RC7 | Very Low | Medium | Implement Lens Flare Rendering | Tracked on GitHub | |
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Task Description
Currently POV-Ray does not support rendering lens flare effects, however, they can be simulated using a macro (include file) by Chris Colefax.
I would like to suggest adding a feature to POV-Ray to support lens effects “natively” since
as far as I know the macro has been designed for POV-Ray 3.1 so with each new POV-Ray version it gets more likely that this macro does not work properly any more
the macro does not work when rendering with radiosity, probably because the macro creates the lens effect by using a pigment with a high ambient value (which is ignored by POV-Ray 3.7’s radiosity algorithm).
Additionally, the macro is not quite easy to employ because
it needs to know the exact camera parameters (location etc.) and defines an own camera itself so any important camera information has to be stored if the effect has to work as expected
it does not (actually cannot) take into account that objects may (partially) hide the lens effect
reflections and refractions (of light sources) cannot be combined with it properly - the user would have to calculate both the point where the reflected/refracted light source can be observed and the shape it then has due to distortion, and in more complex scenes such computations are nearly impossible in SDL.
I would suggest integrating such a lens flare rendering feature with the “looks like” mechanism you already have for light sources. Several parameters that can currently be set for the macro - including effect brightness and intensity, lens options and whether to create a flare at all - could be set for the light source.
Then POV-Ray could store the location and colour of each ray that finally intersected the “looks like” object of a light source and, having finished the main rendering, from that data compute a partially transparent “lens flare layer” eventually mixed into the rendered image. By this, the above mentioned problems could be avoided:
an object fully or partially intersecting a light source’s “looks like” object would also reduce the number of pixels used to create a flare - and therefore reduce that flare until fully hiding it
the same goes for reflected and/or refracted versions of the “looks like” object
the camera’s location and other properties would be used automatically
and finally, as a feature supported by POV-Ray itself, there would be neither compatibility issues nor problems like the effect not fitting together with radiosity.
Do not get me wrong, I would not expect POV-Ray to really calculate intersections that naturally happen in a camera lens, causing lens flares. Effects looking appropriate can actually be created just in 2D space (as some graphics programs do support) so the work to be done would, as far as I have any overview, be:
storing, as mentioned above, the relevant data for pixels showing “looks like” objects
calculating a lens flare from that data after the render has finished
overlaying the rendered image with the newly created lens effect.
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