Another .pov exporting plug-in

[PerFnurt]

Problem:
After I export my AC3D model as a .pov file I usually do a lot of tweaking in POVRay before reaching the final render. Moving objects about, adding skysphere, setting up for animation and whatnot.

Unfortunately, if I make some changes in the AC3D model, the changes made in the .pov is lost when I re-generate it.

Solution:
To overcome this I developed my own .pov exporter, PfPOV.

Key features:
* All objectes & groups are declared with unique names and can thus easily be accessed in POVRay for tweaking. The object & group hierachy in the AC3D model is reflected in the .pov file.
* PfPOV can be instructed to leave portions of the .pov intact when it is re-generated.

For more info & getting the plug in (incl. full VC++ 6 source) see http://www.perfnurt.se/pfpov.asp

Feedback, suggestions, criticism etc is most welcome...

[Greasetattoo]

Hello,
I went to your site and downloaded the file.
I can't find the AC3D SDK file?
I am a registered user of AC3D.
I am trying to use POVray as my renderer.

My problem is:
I rendered a scene from AC3D now the same scene renders all the time. I even loaded a different scene in AC3D and it still renders the scene I had loaded before..

thanks for any help.
Grease

[lisa]

Cool, that looks really handy! I'll have to try it out.

I can see this being super-useful for making include files. I usually put my models in separate pov files from the camera and lights, and just #include them as I need to I can hide parts of the scene while I'm doing test renders. Telling the plug-in to supress the camera and lighting stuff would be a big time saver over removing it all by hand.

[PerFnurt]

Hello,
I went to your site and downloaded the file.
I can't find the AC3D SDK file?
I am a registered user of AC3D.
I am trying to use POVray as my renderer.


Well, the AC3D SDK is an AC3D thingie that you'll need if you wish to compile plugins. You don't need it if you're only using the plugin as a regular ... well ... user.


My problem is:
I rendered a scene from AC3D now the same scene renders all the time. I even loaded a different scene in AC3D and it still renders the scene I had loaded before..


Hmmm. And you are exporting it to povray using the PfPov plugin?

Note that just loadning a different .ac file into AC3D won't tell POVRay anything, but a fresh .pov file probably will.

[PerFnurt]

Cool, that looks really handy! I'll have to try it out.

I can see this being super-useful for making include files. I usually put my models in separate pov files from the camera and lights, and just #include them as I need to I can hide parts of the scene while I'm doing test renders. Telling the plug-in to supress the camera and lighting stuff would be a big time saver over removing it all by hand.

Note that the directives only makes sense when you export from AC3D.

The point of the suppressing directives is mainly to support a work flow like :
1. Initial export from AC3D to .pov
2. Select elements in the .pov and put them outside the PfPOV_BEGIN / END scope. That way any modification of them in the .pov file will be preserved.
3. Use the various PfPOV_NO... directives so that AC3D doesn't re-generate those elements.

But yes, one side-affect of using PfPOV is that all model specific scripting can be in put into one single .pov file.