Raytracing Software - QRT, POV, Merlin
Philip Whittaker
Help me if you can please.
My son has been using QRT for raytracing - a computer studies project at school.
I have just heard about Persistence of Vision. This is said to be an improvement.
Thanks to Michael Attenborough for that advice.
My son would like to buy Merlin witten by a German and available from Norwich Computers.
Can anyone tell me whether this commercial programme is worth the difference of about £ 100 plus VAT (a hundred quid).
Can anyone with experience of two or more of these programs give a comparative review in a couple of lines.
At the end of the day should he shell out his long saved funds on the commercial software?
Is any support availble for any of this software?
Philip Whittaker
The Melrose Centre
Frank Foehl
> > p...@sbcmrc.demon.co.uk (Philip Whittaker) wrote:
> >
> >My son has been using QRT for raytracing - a computer studies
> project at school.
> >
> >I have just heard about Persistence of Vision. This is said to be an
> improvement.
> >Thanks to Michael Attenborough for that advice.
> >
> >My son would like to buy Merlin witten by a German and available
> from Norwich Computers.
>
>
> Can anyone tell me whether this commercial programme is worth the
> difference of about » 100 plus VAT (a hundred quid).
Despite being one of the authors of Merlin's 3D Editor, I can
honestly say that there's hardly an alternative to Merlin
on Acorn machines at the moment. Of course POV is a state-of-the-
art raytracer, but it is not very sensible to use it via the
command scripts (I can't believe that it's *meant* to be used
that way), and it's also very very slow on about any Acorn machine,
except on an A5000 with FPA. Merlin's images can be no less
spectacular, and it's faster because it uses specially written
Floating Point routines. However I must say that the 3D Editor,
despite being well usable, is not yet in its final state and
still under development. The version currently sold uses still
the rather slow Floating Point Emulator in the Editor, but this
will be replaced by fixed point routines in the next version,
which will make the editor many times faster (it already runs,
but only on my HD so far :-) One of the next versions will also
have a 3D animation tool.
Frank
Dave Roberts
p...@sbcmrc.demon.co.uk (Philip Whittaker) wrote:
>
>My son has been using QRT for raytracing - a computer studies
project at school.
>
>I have just heard about Persistence of Vision. This is said to be an
improvement.
>Thanks to Michael Attenborough for that advice.
>
>My son would like to buy Merlin witten by a German and available
from Norwich Computers.
>
>
>Can anyone tell me whether this commercial programme is worth the
difference of about £ 100 plus VAT (a hundred quid).
The major difference between the two is that Merlin has a 3D design
tool whereas with POVray you have to create everything in script ie
co-ordinates, textures, colours etc, so you don't really know what
it will look like until its traced.
I haven't used Merlin, but POVray can produce spectacular results if
slow, but if your used to using a design tool it would be very, very
difficult to get to grip with.
Dave Roberts.
to...@tcp.co.uk
> The major difference between the two is that Merlin has a 3D design
> tool whereas with POVray you have to create everything in script ie
> co-ordinates, textures, colours etc, so you don't really know what
> it will look like until its traced.
>
> I haven't used Merlin, but POVray can produce spectacular results if
> slow, but if your used to using a design tool it would be very, very
> difficult to get to grip with.
>
> Dave Roberts.
I remember reading somewhere about a 3D editor compatible with QRT and
POVray. APDL's catalogue has apps called !Model and !3DEditor. There is
also a simpler raytracer called Ray3D.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Tony Houghton to...@tcp.co.uk
Using a RiscPC 700 http://www.tcp.co.uk/~tonyh
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Al Slater
: On Mon, 29 Jan 1996 11:53:31 +0000 (GMT) Dave Roberts wrote:
: > The major difference between the two is that Merlin has a 3D design
: > tool whereas with POVray you have to create everything in script ie
: > co-ordinates, textures, colours etc, so you don't really know what
: > it will look like until its traced.
: >
: > I haven't used Merlin, but POVray can produce spectacular results if
: > slow, but if your used to using a design tool it would be very, very
: > difficult to get to grip with.
: >
: > Dave Roberts.
: I remember reading somewhere about a 3D editor compatible with QRT and
: POVray. APDL's catalogue has apps called !Model and !3DEditor. There is
: also a simpler raytracer called Ray3D.
Umm, there is a PC based widget called MoRay which I believe is
shareware and lets you create POV source files by graphically playing
with them first, ie tinker around to generate wireframes first, plonk
down your light sources, etc and it writes the POV for you...
Bad news is that it wont go on anything that isnt a DX... :-(
cheers,
al
Philip Whittaker
Thanks for replying to my posting about ray tracing.
At last someone who has herd of mERLIN!
Not only that, someone working on the package.
It does seem from what you say that it is not completely finished.
Is this the case??
The main problem with QRT is the slow speed of rendering complex screens -
like three days on an
Acorn A4000!!!!!!
Merlin seems ideal. however evertone seems to support
POV ( can Merlin use POV scripts???????? )
Is it really faster than QRT?
Could you give me timetable for the development of MErlin. I have
been in on the start of things with other software and have found myself
involved in unpaid bug testing.
we need something that works - quite soon if possible.
It sounds good. But is it really all there at the moment?
Thanks for paying attention to the posting
Philip Whittaker
Thomas Boroske
: I remember reading somewhere about a 3D editor compatible with QRT and
: POVray. APDL's catalogue has apps called !Model and !3DEditor. There is
: also a simpler raytracer called Ray3D.
I remember an advertisment for a suite called SolidTools long, long ago.
This seemed to be a complete suite og modeller, renderer and animator, and
quite expensive btw.
It looked good, does anyone know anything about it ?
Thomas
Steffen Dünner
> shareware and lets you create POV source files by graphically playing
> with them first, ie tinker around to generate wireframes first, plonk
> down your light sources, etc and it writes the POV for you...
using POV (and Moray on PC)for quite a while on Amiga, PC and RiscPC...
Merlin is really quite nice but it still has some major bugs. On a RiscPC without FPA (that means
on nearly all RiscPCs) it runs EXTREMELY SLOW. I've tested it on a ARM700/FPA11 (a friend of
mine really has one of those FPAs) and it really ran like hell !!!
I now purchased a Cyrix586-100 and now use POVray2.2, POVsb and Midnight Modeller. Those are
really cool modellers. Moray is quite cool but a bit too complicated (not complex) for me.
POV and Merlin are really SLOW on computers without FPA. But there's hope in sight:
There soon will be an integer version of Merlin which I hope to be very fast (They told me so
!!).
Now you have the choice:
- Buy a 586card and use POVray ('cause it has some really powerful features)
- Buy Merlin & Wait for StrongARM (and hope they will implement a FPA)!!!
- Write to Peter Bondar and tell him again and again to send you an ARM700/FPA11card (my friend
did so and it really worked !!!)
Hope this helps !! Bye
Rik Griffin
> Now you have the choice:
> - Write to Peter Bondar and tell him again and again to send you an
> ARM700/FPA11card (my friend did so and it really worked !!!)
Are you pulling our collective wossnames ?
How about we have a mass letter writing session, everyone who reads this
group can write a letter to Mr. Bondar, and the poor chap will probably have
a nervous breakdown ...
--
Squeak
Olaf Krumnow
p...@sbcmrc.demon.co.uk (Philip Whittaker) wrote:
>
> Could you give me timetable for the development of MErlin. I have
> been in on the start of things with other software and have found myself
> involved in unpaid bug testing.
> we need something that works - quite soon if possible.
> It sounds good. But is it really all there at the moment?
I receive updates every some weeks, so it's supported.
It got a lot faster in the last update, too.
Olaf
--
+-------------------------+----------------------------+
| Olaf Krumnow | email: o...@gag.de |
| German Archimedes Group | www: Nicht mehr lange hin! |
+-------------------------+----------------------------+
GAG-NEWS - Acorn-Informationen auf deutsch (in...@gag.de)
Frank Foehl
> [ ... ]
>
> Merlin is really quite nice but it still has some major bugs. On a RiscPC without FPA (that means
> on nearly all RiscPCs) it runs EXTREMELY SLOW. I've tested it on a ARM700/FPA11 (a friend of
> mine really has one of those FPAs) and it really ran like hell !!!
>
> I now purchased a Cyrix586-100 and now use POVray2.2, POVsb and Midnight Modeller. Those are
> really cool modellers. Moray is quite cool but a bit too complicated (not complex) for me.
> POV and Merlin are really SLOW on computers without FPA. But there's hope in sight:
>
> There soon will be an integer version of Merlin which I hope to be very fast (They told me so
> !!).
Please do not confuse things! Just to put that right: The Merlin package consists of
two major applications
!Merlin - the tracer, formerly 'PowerShade', an ARM-coded version of RayShade
which uses specially written floating point routines, and
*is already now* in the current version comparatively fast.
For example, a scene with 400 polygons, some reflections, 320x240
can be traced in five minutes on a standard RiscPC. A scene with
3000 polygons can be traced in half an hour. We will soon make some
benchmarks and post them to acorn.apps and acorn.announce.
!MerlinEd - the 3D editor, which currently uses the FPemulator extensively,
and is therefore quite slow on all non-FPA machines. However
there will definitely be an integer version of MerlinEd in the
near future, which will be many times faster. I admit that there
are some known bugs in MerlinEd, that still have to be ironed out,
but it is well usable despite of this.
as well as some smaller tools. If you refer to Merlin, please state which of the
two different programs you mean.
Latest rumours are that the StrongARM will indeed have a floating point unit
of DEC production, which means about *everything* will be fast on it :-)
So there is really no need to buy an faster, expensive, (hot:) PC card, because
the chances are that a StrongARMed RiscPC will outperform it.
Cheers,
Frank
Daniel Shimmin
Rik Griffin <mo...@cheesey.demon.co.uk> wrote:
<snip>
>How about we have a mass letter writing session, everyone who reads this
>group can write a letter to Mr. Bondar, and the poor chap will probably have
>a nervous breakdown ...
And then people wonder why Chris Cox and others at Acorn are sometimes
rather less than totally efficient in replying to individual e-mails?
--
Daniel Shimmin (who has always found response from the Clan to be fast enough)
qu9...@sable.ox.ac.uk
Philip Whittaker
I found this in another group about Printer Drivers. What was it doing there?
Anyway I am posting it up in a better place.
At least some people are using Merlin, or so it seems. The problem is the speed.
How slow is slow. Can we havw some staandard files and the time they take to trace.
I'd settle for knowing the speed that the aircraft on the demo disc I got
from the Datafile takes to trace on a Risc PC 600.
Anyone who can tell me about how I can get floating paoint accelerator
on the RISC PC 600 (5Mb RAM) and at what cost, pleawe let me know?
Is anything available now and how much?
Here follows what I found on the other group.
Who is Frank?
Philip Whittaker
p...@sbcmrc.demon.co.uk
**********************************
Philip Whittaker
This speed thing seems to be the real issue with
Ray tracing.
Are there any standard files for ray tracing which
can be considered bench marks.
What is StrongARM? Is it real. Does it exist outside rumourland?
Can I adfford it? (probably not).
Phil
Philip Whittaker
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this group since I started it.
There is now a Demo of Merlin from the Dtafile, (Anson Road, Locking, Bristol) i think.
The demo is one quid plus postage.
The deomo is bery impressive. Really nice wireframes, quick redraw etc. Very impressive.
Very impressive but how long does the tracing take???????
Using QRT my son ran his A4000 for four days solid to produce a completed tracing.
I have learnt from this group that is because of the lack of a floating point accelerator. Even the RISC PC doesn't have one.
What can I expect in terms of speed from Merlin? How long would that lovely wireframe aircarft on the demo disc take to trace on a 5Mb Risc PC?????
That is the real question.
Any answers.
Philip Whittaker
The Melrose Centre
Luke Skywalker
: At least some people are using Merlin, or so it seems. The problem is the speed.
: How slow is slow. Can we havw some staandard files and the time they take to trace.
: I'd settle for knowing the speed that the aircraft on the demo disc I got
: from the Datafile takes to trace on a Risc PC 600.
If you are talking about the Cessna traced by Evolution Computer....it took
4 hours on a RiscPC 600 (40! MHz) to render this scene. Due to an
improvement in Merlin, rendering will now be 5-10 times faster (if there are
much objects in the scene).
Furthermore, MAPPER is now finished. This is an application (included in the
MErlin package) to create colourmaps for the FBM and the marble texture
functions. By using colourmaps you get very impressive pictures. If somebody
is interested, i will upload some examples somewhere in the UK and in
germany.
Kai
Toby Haynes
Philip Whittaker <p...@sbcmrc.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Ray tracing.
>Are there any standard files for ray tracing which
>can be considered bench marks.
>
>What is StrongARM? Is it real. Does it exist outside rumourland?
>Can I adfford it? (probably not).
Strong ARM is the result of a collaboration between DEC (of 433MHz DEC
Alpha technology fame) and ARM (of 400 MIPS/W fame!) The first
StrongARM chips have been announced - named the SA-110 (note the
similarity between the naming conventions of the ARM 6/7/8xx series)
and is compatable with the ARM 6/7/8 series. It comes in three types -
100MHz, 160MHz and 200MHz, and is available in samples now and in
batches of 10,000 units from April-ish! Where does this leave Acorn
you ask? Well, if you read the message from Peter Bondar on
csa.hardware he suggests that processor cards for the Risc PC might
arrive August-ish for the uncached version, and November-ish for a L2
cached version. Expected speed increases over a ARM710/40MHz are 3
times and 5 times respectively. Prices are likely to be around 200ukp
and 350ukp respectively.
Nice eh? Start saving! It's only 40ukp a month until release!
Cheers,
Toby
--
Toby Haynes | "I COULD MURDER A CURRY" - Death
Somewhere in Cambridge | Mort by Terry Pratchett