Pov-Ray is pretty standard. What kinds of output does Sketch-Up provide? Pete Shirley (formerly Utah, now Nvidia) was working on GPU ray tracers. There is also an example of a WebGL fragment shader ray tracer in WebGL Beginners Guide. If you have Obj files, there are Obj to JS converters so you could use the data with WebGL.
Ed __________ Ed Angel Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico 1017 Sierra Pinon Santa Fe, NM 87501 505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel On Apr 2, 2013, at 1:52 PM, Steve Smith wrote: > Bruce - >> What about Pov-Ray (povray.org)? > Sounds promising... I'm familiar wtih POV-ray and should have looked for the > option. It wasn't listed (I should look again!) on the Sketchup Plugin site > because the method is an external converter (though Maxwell does the same, > only with hooks to fire it off automatically inside SkUp). > > Have you (or anyone else?) used it with SketchUp? > > Material definition is the biggest challenge. The Maxwell converter seems to > make some reasonable assumptions about transparent materials in SketchUp and > has a method for assigning Maxwell material properties to SketchUp geometry > (though it is a little odd). Most of my current interest is in diffusive > and reflective (rather than diffractive) surfaces. Unfortunately I don't > see any way to actually model *solids* in SkUp, just surfaces, so no lenses > or prisms! > > Thanks! > - Steve >> >> >> 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 >> >> >> >> ============================================================ >> 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 > > ============================================================ > 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
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