MegaPOV
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New! MegaPOV 1.0, which is based on POV-Ray 3.5, is now available.  You can download it from the new MegaPOV website:

http://megapov.inetart.net

NOTE: MegaPov 0.7 is based on POV-Ray 3.1 (an old version of POV).  Most of the features of MegaPov 0.7 are available in POV-Ray 3.5.  However, I'm leaving this old version here because it contains some features (such as motion blur and post processing) that are not yet available in the latest version of MegaPov.

 

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Converting Photons

WinMegaPov 0.7

Page last updated January 01, 2003.

[OVERVIEW] [NEWS] [KNOWN ISSUES] [DOWNLOAD]

demo_mega.jpg (52704 bytes)

Overview

MegaPov (formerly UVPov, SuperPatch, and MultiPatch) is a cooperative work by members of the POV-Ray community.  This is an unofficial compile of POV-Ray.  Do not ask the POV-Team for help with this.  You will also need to get the official version of POV-Ray 3.1 from www.povray.org.

This is an OLD version of MegaPOV.  I'm leaving it here because it has a few features (such as motion blur and post processing) that are not available yet in the newest version of MegaPOV.

Enabling MegaPov Features

MegaPov features are enabled by using:

#version unofficial MegaPov 0.7;  // version number may be different

The new features are disabled by default, and only the official version's syntax will be accepted.  The above line of POV code must be included in every include file as well, not just the main POV file.

This modification represents a potential future change in the wording of POVLEGAL.   It is intended to remove any confusion about which files (POV and INC) are intended for use with unofficial versions, and thus should reduce the amount of time that the POV-Team spends responding to questions related to unofficial versions.

Features:

See Smellenbergh's MegaPov Demo Area for pictures.

MegaPov Features
cut-away textures for CSG
pigment_pattern
Fast Macros
Post-Processing (updated in 0.7)
Blinn highlighting
Photon mapping
Radiosity improvements
Reflection energy balancing for variable and Fresnel reflection
Fixed bugs with normals
Motion Blur
Persistent scenes and persistent variables for animations
Media improvements
Image Pattern
Reset Children Warp
Double Illuminate
Solid Triangle Meshes
Dispersion (thanks to Daren Wilson)
New fractal patterns (thanks to Nieminen Juha)
New Mesh Syntax
UV (surface) Mapping (updated in 0.7)
glows  (updated in 0.7)
clock_on
df3 output
transformation enhancements (updated in 0.7)
inverse transformation patch
Isosurface object (updated in 0.7)
Function patterns
Parametric object
Sphere sweeps
Rational bezier surface
New bicubic_patch evaluation
Splines (updated in 0.7)
Slope-dependent textures
Variable, blurred, metallic, and fresnel reflection
Spherical, cylindrical, toroidal, and planar warps
Light groups
Isosufrace pigment funciton
Unicode font support and bugfixes
min_extent, max_extent
trace() function
new crackle features
facets pattern
projected_through modifier (virutual lights)
#set directive (new in 0.7)
atan_wave
vwarp
noise_pigment
displacement warp  (updated in 0.7)
blob pattern
speed optimizations
eval_pattern & eval_pigment
chrono and date
proximity pattern
Smooth-texture triangle mesh
object pattern patch
Sphere camera
area_light improvements
Isoblob object
Isosurface enhancements
Another kind of spline
no_image and no_reflection modifiers
Text object alignment
New patterns (blotches, cells, bands, and sheet)
Polarical pattern
Trianglular pattern
Clock keywords
Image size keywords
Turbulence vector
vtransform()

Go get 3ds-to-Pov - convert 3DS files to POV files with surface textures intact!  This utility requires this patched version of POV.

News and Updates

February 5, 2001 - WinMegaPov 0.7
  1. Fixed bug in media method 3 (by J. Berger) (9.2.9)
  2. Fixed bug in isosurface causing a crash when parsing exp without braces (9.2.9)
  3. Fixed bug in isosurface intersections. Spherical containers were not translated correctly (9.2.9)
  4. Fixed bug in isosurface difference, where the differencing object enclosed the original completely: left a ghost shadow (9.2.9)
  5. Fixed the stars post_process filter; it now adds to the background instead of replacing it (12.16)
  6. Fixed bug with ellipsoid, removed artifacts that appeared in some cases (by J. Grimbert) (9.2.9)
  7. Fixed a bug, reported by Nicolas Calimet, in the TransformPatch (9.2.9)
  8. Fixed bug with uv_mapping when uv_vectors were not specified (9.2.9)
  9. Input files for idat_3D can be in all library paths. Previously they had to be located in the same folder as the scene file. All paths are searched now just like it is done for any include file
  10. Fixed memory problems when using functions in animations: They are now destroyed after every frame (9.2.9)
  11. Fixed bug that caused a crash when PostProcess was running out of memory: error given now
  12. Fixed bug in copy_splines
  13. Fixed some bugs in spline, added SPLINE_IDENT(T, TYPE) syntax
  14. Fixed some glow bugs("size" should work properly now).
  15. Added the sample_spacing patch in media (by J. Berger) (4.2)
  16. Added a new type of emitting media to be used on clear backgrounds (by J. Berger) (4.3)
  17. Added new post_process filters: "curves" (12.4), "limit_brightness" (12.9) and "raw_color" (12.14)
  18. Added a new directive #set to change variables (by Chris Huff) (9.22)
  19. Added ability to apply transforms to warps.
  20. Added "spline_wave" waveform for patterns.
October 15, 2000 - WinMegaPov 0.6a
  1. Demo scene images are available online, so you can see what MegaPov has to offer.   They can be viewed at Smellenbergh's site.  Click on the "Demos" link in the nav bar on the left.   Direct link is here.
  2. Fixed a bug in the proximity patch. If no sample_weight vector was given it was filled with random values, giving different results for each rendering.
  3. In isosurface statistics, max gradient is reported again
  4. Fixed more memory leaks in isosurface
  5. julia sqr and power (^) now allowed without version unofficial xx specifier: it is a legal keyword in POV-Ray 3.1
  6. In the manual updated section 8.9 displace warp
  7. In the manual corrected  9.20: the formula used is: Red*0.3+Green*0.59+Blue*0.11
  8. In DoPostProcess() in postproc.c give an error if for some reason the input file could not be opened. Previously MegaPOV would crash.
  9. density file is now positioned from 0 to 1 again. We changed that in 0.6 but obviously this was incorrect. It crashed MP often too. Files written by the df3 patch are now flipped so that the result is correct.
  10. df3 in i_dat3d now works again. This was listed as fixed in MP 0.6 but only now in 0.6a this is realy fixed!
  11. Updated the displacement warp patch to MP+0.3.2. This adds the type keyword.
  12. Fixed bug in transform when used like this:
          transform { DeclaredMyTrans}
  13. Fixed bug with photons+dispersion if no color_map specified for light_source (this fix only in the Windows version currently)

Complete History

Known Issues

I've fixed a bug with normals, so that when you scale normals/textures/objects, the depth of the normal scales with it.  This sometimes happened in the official version, and sometimes did not.  This fix will be included in the next official release of POV-Ray, too.

Be careful when using Unix or Macintosh POV files with this custom compile.  There is apparently a bug in Visual C++ which causes macros to not function properly.  This may be fixed by the Fast Macro Patch, but if you run into a problem, try converting your file to a DOS/Windows text.   I use PFE (Programmer's File Editor) to do my conversions.

This page was last updated January 01, 2003.
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If you have any comments, please email me. My email address is "contact at nkopp dot mailshell dot com".