Friday, August 20, 2004
POV-Ray Domain 10th Anniversary
If I remember correctly, about thirteen years ago I was first dating Julie, and starting Computer Science courses at Indiana University, working towards my Masters in Computer Science. One of my major computing interests then (and now, for that matter, though I haven't spent very much time with it for years) was computer graphics. Before I entered IU, my raytracer of choice was the freeware program POV-Ray, the “Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer”. It was fun, though the lack of a graphical front-end, and the somewhat control-freak-y nature of the POV team (IIRC I posted a port to the OS/2 operating system and they [politely] asked me to take it down) dampened my enthusiasm a tad.
On Slashdot yesterday, they had an interesting story somewhat misleadingly titled “POV-Ray 10th Anniversary Contest”; the story also says that the contest is to “celebrate POV-Ray's tenth anniversary ”. This is incorrect—as my recollection and a statement from POV-Ray's logo designer says, the first public release was in July 1991. But the more interesting thing about the Slashdot story, and the thing that inspired me to blog this, was the pointer to the POV-Ray Hall of Fame:
http://www.povcomp.com/hof/
I'm stunned by the quality of these pieces, both from a CGI standpoint (POV-Ray has radiosity and caustics now?!) and an artistic standpoint. I really like Distant Shores, Villarceau Circles, Almost Sphere Spirals, Evening at the River, Non-Cubic Space Division, Balanza, Dancing Cube, Hyperboloides 4, The Accident, The Dark Side of the Trees, and POV Planet. But YMMV ;-).
Hmm, maybe I should think about downloading POV-Ray again ;-).
On Slashdot yesterday, they had an interesting story somewhat misleadingly titled “POV-Ray 10th Anniversary Contest”; the story also says that the contest is to “celebrate POV-Ray's tenth anniversary ”. This is incorrect—as my recollection and a statement from POV-Ray's logo designer says, the first public release was in July 1991. But the more interesting thing about the Slashdot story, and the thing that inspired me to blog this, was the pointer to the POV-Ray Hall of Fame:
http://www.povcomp.com/hof/
I'm stunned by the quality of these pieces, both from a CGI standpoint (POV-Ray has radiosity and caustics now?!) and an artistic standpoint. I really like Distant Shores, Villarceau Circles, Almost Sphere Spirals, Evening at the River, Non-Cubic Space Division, Balanza, Dancing Cube, Hyperboloides 4, The Accident, The Dark Side of the Trees, and POV Planet. But YMMV ;-).
Hmm, maybe I should think about downloading POV-Ray again ;-).
