POV-Ray and Moray
Sometimes a 2D game uses images that are made with 3D tools; these are called “pre-rendered images”. Two tools I sometimes use for this are POV-Ray and Moray. These two programs are usually used together. POV-Ray (Persistence Of Vision Raytracer) uses text scripts for describing 3D objects and scenes, wich is of course not very user friendly. Several graphical front-ends exists wich allow you to do wysiwyg editing. The most popular one is Moray.
But let’s start with Pov-Ray. This application is quite popular and has a huge user base and lots of add-ons and tools. However, creating scenes with it is a very time-consuming process since all work is done with text. Here’s a screenshot:
The program mainly works with primitives. This means you describe objects such as cubes, spheres, cylinders, cones, etcetera, and use boolean operations (add, subtract, intersect) to create custom shapes. Unlike the polygon approach, primitives mean a sphere is actually a sphere with a smooth, curved surface. Polygon meshes, however, are also supported. Lots of tools are available to convert almost any existing 3D file format to a POV-Ray scene.
Of course, 3D modelling through text isn’t exactly user friendly. Several graphical front-ends exist for POV-Ray, and the best one is Moray. This program allows you to draw a 3D scene like you would in any other 3D modelling tool. The scene is then converted to a POV-Ray file and renderered.
Moray was shareware until recently, the development team decided to stop developing it and announced it would be re-released as open source. Since then, the POV-Ray team has been working on the next version, wich will be released together with the next version of POV-Ray itself. The program itself it quite easy to learn. The interface is very intuitive and easy to understand. The same goes for the material editor. Moray already comes with a large material library, wich contains all sorts of realistic materials.
The major shortcoming of Moray, however, is the focus on primitives instead of polygons. Although primitives can be converted to polygon meshes, it doesn’t work that well. I never really got the import functions for triangle meshes to work properly, either. If you want to build polygon-based 3D objects, Moray isn’t really for you. The program can also do keyframe animation, but this can also behave quite unpredictable. When you want to do animation, it’s better to export the scene and do the animation directly in POV-Ray.
Another major shortcoming is texture support. Clearly, the material functionality of POV-Ray and Moray is aimed at solid colors and patterns, not textures. It works, but it’s quite difficult to make them fit properly on objects. For example, trying to wrap a texture properly around a sphere is quite a daunting task!
My final conclusion: POV-Ray and Moray are very useful tools, because they are very easy to use and learn and are capable of producing very impressive graphics. They are, however, aimed at rendering primitives and materials with solid colors and patterns, not polygon meshes with textures. Perhaps future versions will have better support for this. Still a must have!
Positive:
- open source
- easy to use
- huge user base, lots of tutorials and resources
Negative:
- not really suitable for polygon-based modeling
- difficult texture mapping
June 27th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
With regard to free 3D modelling tools, i tend to prefer Blender (http://www.blender3d.org), on account of its pretty much got all the basic tools you need to make a fully fledged animated 3d scene or model. I seem to recall it can export to POV-Ray too, which is neat.
Of course, Blender has problems of its own (the main complaint being the interface), but i don’t think its so bad once you get stuck into it. And of course all 3d modelling tools pretty much suffer from this problem (though you could argue they have much better tutorials and documentation, thus helping greatly).
Sadly though, i’ve not had much time recently to do any 3D modelling, so i still pretty much suck at it.
June 28th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
I have tried Blender out a few times. It is an incredibly powerful tool, but the interface is a bit complicated. It also relies quite heavily on keyboard shortcuts, wich works great once you get the hang of it. I have planned to study it some more for a long time, but it hasn’t happened so far. Until now, however, POV-Ray and Moray have served my needs more than enough. At this point, I only use 3D modeling tools for creating pre-rendered sprites, not for full 3D scenes and complex animations.