What about Pov-Ray (povray.org)? Bruce
On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 12:03 PM, Steve Smith <sasm...@swcp.com> wrote: > Folks - > > I finally bit the bullet that I've been rolling around in my mouth for > some time and tried to find a good ray tracing engine that coupled > (somehow) with SketchUp. The only one I have been able to get to work at > all (there are dozens) is Maxwell. > > The main problems I have are: > > 1) It depends on MS's Silverlight and on OSX the latest version (5.x) > doesn't work with Maxwell at all. On Winderz, it is very flaky.... so > Maxwell recommends downgrading to Silverlight 4.x which I have done and > been successful at running Sketchup/Maxwell. Unfortunately this breaks > other things (notably Netflix) that depend on Silverlight. Netflix > *insists* on upgrading to the latest release of Silverlight before it will > run any video content. I'm sure there are other Silverlight dependencies > I haven't considered that will break the same way. > > 2) Maxwell's documentation is loaded with obscure terminology which may or > may not be standard among modern raytracers. I understand most of the > concepts around ray tracing in the abstract and even wrote my own simple > one 30 years ago (imaging to 4Kx3K 35mm film overnight!), but naturally 30 > years and a plethora of subtleties later, I am struggling. > > > I also got Caravaggio running but the docs English translation end right > after installation and introduction... Google translate (bless their dark > little souls) works well enough but technical jargon seems to get > translated quite literally when the terms are typically figurative. > > What I want more than anything is a ray tracer where I can manually sample > rays and make the ray path visible, or even better (also) show "flow > lines", essentially isocontours of wavefronts... which give a much better > feel for the "optical flow" in a complex set of reflection/diffraction > elements. > > Anyone else have a favorite Raytracer? Especially one that can run with > or import Sketchup models? Or even a simple raytracer in Ruby? > > I'm doing some esoteric optical path design and wanting to double-check my > hand-cut geometric and trigonometric calculations. > > I have had many times I wanted a ray tracer working with Sketchup anyway > (like to demonstrate the cross-splash problems encountered with > AnySurface/Ambient, and the bowtie/pincushion exaggeration of a projector > against a curved surface, or the effect of different levels of diffusive > screen coatings, in these circumstances). > > My work with Fred Unterseher in holography also includes Holographic > Optical Elements (HOEs) and we aspire to designing them in CAD and > implementing them via digital multi-channel recording. > > Etc. ad infinitum. > > - Steve > > ==============================**============================== > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/**listinfo/friam_redfish.com<http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com> >
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