Negative Space: Persistence of Vision
- And this has what to do with dice?
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Now that we understand the basics of intersection and planes, we can use this to create each half of a ten-sided die.
- Art gallery
- Jerry Stratton’s Gallery of Computer-Generated Images.
- The Basic Bullet Shape
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We’ll create the bullet shape using POV’s lathe object. The lathe is useful for creating irregular but symmetrical shapes.
- The Basics of Superellipsoids
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The superellipsoid is easy to set up: you need to decide how sharp or how rounded you want your edges to be.
- Bounding your CSG
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When using intersections, bounding becomes very important, because otherwise POV will have to assume the possibility that your object is much larger than it actually is.
- Broken Bridges
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An image inspired by a photo from postwar in Tennessee, and a visit to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.
- Christmas Eve
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Christmas Eve, with snow, a red-brick chapel, and stylized evergreens
- Creating a Persistence of Vision Scene
- This example scene file will allow us to look at the important parts of using POV-Ray on Mac OS X.
- Creating the text
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Obviously, the main part of this tutorial is going to be creating the text object. This particular text object isn’t quite as simple as just making a single object. There are large letters across the top, and small text across the bottom.
- Declarations: Declaring Objects and Values
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Use declarations to create ‘template’ objects and values that can be re-used.
- Directives
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Use directives to control your scene through the POV scripting language’s special commands and functions.
- Easier ways and Harder ways
- POV-Ray includes some functions that make it easier for you to position objects without resorting to the trigonometric functions. Also, this relatively easy trigonometry using right triangles can be expanded to any triangle.
- Functions
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POV-Ray contains several built-in mathematical and text functions that you can use to control your scene.
- Getting the Pips in the Box
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Gouging the pips out of the cube is somewhat tedious, but we can use POV-Ray’s variables to help us a little.
- Have a Merry Scripting Christmas with Persistence of Vision
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The ASCII Merry Christmas from Astounding Scripts was taken from a scene I created in Persistence of Vision. It’s a very simple scene that highlights many of the advantages of using POV to create images.
- Hollowing Out Our Bullet
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A solid shape can be hollowed using the difference statement. It takes one shape and removes it from another shape.
- Image Maps
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POV-Ray can wrap photographs and other images onto objects. It makes a great effect for logos and posters.
- The inside and outside of planes
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CSG, especially intersection and difference, really show off the unique properties of planes.
- Intersection in Constructive Solid Geometry
- An intersection of two objects is the space contained in both objects.
- The intersection of two spheres
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When making an intersection, don’t forget that you can use “union” to show where all of the objects are, position them, and then switch from union to intersection to get the desired shape.
- Macros
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Macros can centralize the writing of similar lines of your POV scene.
- Moving objects within your scene
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The translate command moves an object from one place in your scene to another place.
- Now, what about the primer?
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The super ellipsoid is a great choice for slightly more realistic cylinders and squares. The rounded edges of the super ellipsoid object can add a lot to a scene.
- Persistence of Text
- A series of useful Persistence of Vision tutorials, starting with the very basics of simple object creation and progressing to automation and the usefulness of math.
- Persistence of Vision Backgrounds
- The default background is black, but you can change that to any solid color, or to a sphere with a pattern on it.
- Persistence of Vision Basics
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The basics of ray-tracing three-dimensional images with Persistence of Vision. Learn about cameras, light sources, and how to move objects around in your POV scenes.
- Persistence of Vision Camera
- The location the camera affects the perspective of the scene. It also, of course, affects what parts of the scene you see and the angle you see them from.
- Persistence of Vision Include Files
- You can store common scene information in special files that are then “included” in your main scene files.
- Persistence of Vision Light Sources
- POV uses the location and color of light sources to determine the location and length of shadows and the brightness of objects.
- Persistence of Vision Locations
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Persistence of Vision’s cartesian co-ordinate system specify exactly where in the scene an object or effect belongs.
- Persistence of Vision Macintosh Basics
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This tutorial will get you acquainted with the most important preferences and menu items in Persistence of Vision for the Mac, including editing your scene file and creating animations.
- Persistence of Vision tutorial
- A step-by-step tutorial, available under the Gnu Free Documentation License, on using the Persistence of Vision raytracer.
- Photo-editing with Persistence of Vision
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You can use the Persistence of Vision raytracer from the command-line to add elements to photos.
- Play Around!
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It’s always important when learning something to play around with it later. Do strange things, break it, and then learn why it broke.
- POV is Trig
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If you understand triangles and their functions, you can more easily determine where rotated objects end up. Use trigonometry to calculate lengths when you rotate objects in Persistence of Vision.
- POV-Ray Animation
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Normally, you’ll probably want to create your animations frame by frame. But for simple animations, you can have POV-Ray create the movie directly.
- POV-Ray Application Preferences
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You’ll need to set some items in the preferences before you start using POV-Ray.
- POV-Ray Scene Preferences
- The scene’s preferences are where you’ll control most of POV-Ray’s behavior: how big your image will be, whether it is animated, and how high its quality is.
- Putting numbers on the die
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Now that we have a ten-sided die, we need to place text objects on it as well to display the number on each side.
- Roll a ball down an incline at a constant speed
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Roll a ball down at a constant speed. How high is it at any point?
- Roll a ball down an incline with acceleration
- Roll a ball down due to gravity. How far across has it gone at any height?
- Rotate a bar and determine its new endpoint
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Rotate a bar up and how high is it? How far has the leftmost side moved to the right?
- Rotating objects in your scene
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The rotate command changes the orientation of objects in your scene.
- Scaling objects in your scene
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The scale command changes the size of objects, specifically changing their size in relation to the origin.
- Scene Quality
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You can greatly increase scene quality by turning on anti-aliasing.
- Scene Size
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The size of your image directly affects the time it takes to render.
- Scripting Persistence of Vision
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POV’s built-in scripting feature allows you to both simplify your scene creation and make much more complex scenes. Using scripting to make complex and redundant three dimensional objects.
- Simple Photorealism using Persistence of Vision
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Simple photorealism for people who can’t draw. This tutorial guides you through using the free Persistence of Vision ray-tracer. You’ll create a planet, with rings and an orbiting moon set against a starry background.
- Six-Sided Dice
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Use the superellipsoid and a little bit of CSG to create a very realistic six-sided die. The superellipsoid lets you create rounded boxes in your Persistence of Vision scenes.
- Sparkling lights for Christmas
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This POV-Ray scene file will animate sparkling lights against a green background. If you want to make three dimensional images with lots of similar objects and then animate them, this will show you how to do it.
- Spent Bullet Casing
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Use lathes, constructive solid geometry, text, cylinders, and superellipsoids to create a spent bullet casing from a .40 S&W using Persistence of Vision.
- Stamping Text Into the Bottom
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The while statement can repetitively do the same thing over and over: such as rotate a piece of text around the edges of a circle.
- Ten-sided dice
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The intersection of multiple shapes is often one of the least understood features of constructive solid geometry. Here we’ll create a ten-sided die using the intersection of planes.
- Text logo with a super-imposed image
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Use constructive solid geometry and image maps to create a text logo from photographs or other images.
- Why text?
- Why the text interface to Persistence of Vision is extremely important.
More Information
- Internet Ray-Tracing Competition
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A great collection of ray-traced images from a series of competitions from 1996 through 2006. You can have a lot of fun browsing through these images, their source code, and the comments about them!
