Short: Shows use of heightfields for 3d letters Type: pix/pov Author: Andre BEck Uploader: From arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de!vmxa.hrz.uni-oldenburg.de!TREARN.BITNET!DKB-L Thu Nov 26 11:52:57 1992 Return-Path: Received: by faramir.Informatik.Uni-Oldenburg.DE (Smail3.1.22.1) id ; Thu, 26 Nov 92 11:52 CET Received: by arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de (smail3.1.18 + xalias); Thu, 26 Nov 92 11:52 CET Message-Id: Received: from VMXA.HRZ.UNI-OLDENBURG.DE by vmxa.hrz.uni-oldenburg.de (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 0097; Thu, 26 Nov 92 11:45:19 CET Received: from DEARN by VMXA.HRZ.UNI-OLDENBURG.DE (Mailer R2.08) with BSMTP id 0419; Thu, 26 Nov 92 11:45:12 CET Received: from DEARN by DEARN (Mailer R2.08) with BSMTP id 3040; Thu, 26 Nov 92 02:13:08 MET Date: Wed, 25 Nov 92 19:22:25 +0100 Reply-To: "DKB/POV Ray Tracer Development List" From: Andre Beck Subject: PoV & Fonts Comments: To: dkb-l%trearn.bitnet@rcms1.urz To: Multiple Recipients of Status: RO Hi folx, some time ago there were some questions about how to use fonts with PoV and the only real advertisment made was a commercial one. But PoV lives from beeing free, and so there is another way to make neat results without the HUGE work of objectizing a vectorfont, what is of course a pain and so not done for free. I tried around with heightfields some hours and came to the following solution, which HAS disadvantages BUT is free. 1st step: Make up a Black on White gif picture of the text to be shown. The bigger the final trace will be, the higher the resolution of the gif. One can use some paint prg, or (better) a PostScript interpreter as f.i. GhostScript or dpsexec. Use whatever grabber you have to get a gif of it ... I used dpsexec and gave him: PS>/Times-Roman findfont 96 scalefont setfont PS>20 100 moveto (ABPSoft) show (if you are not firm with PS, THIS you CAN understand :) Than I grabbed it using xv and saved it to abp.gif 2nd: In PoV I set up: object { height_field { gif "abp.gif" } texture { color Red } translate <-0.5 0 -0.5> //center rotate <-90 0 0> // rotate upwards scale <10 5 200> // scale bigger and thicker translate <0 2 0> // final placement } what should also be easy to understand. The disadvantages of this are: - fixed raster size of heightmap - no easy way of beveling (and GOOD 3d fonts ARE beveled) - some handworx, too. - The characters are OPEN on the backside. REMEMBER this when using mirrors or rendering animations. May be one could close them using a plane and some CSG ?? But CSG with heightfields is a hazard... uuuuhhhh... written a lot. now look at this: begin 644 abp.jpg [...picture is abp.jpg..] end ,------------------------+---------------------------------------------. | Andre' Beck (ABPSoft) | TCP/IP-Mail: beck@freia.inf.tu-dresden.de | | HG R 142 | VMS : hermes::beck | +------------------------+---------------------------------------------+ | Windows is the best placebo against MS-DOOF headaches ! | `----------------------------------------------------------------------' From arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de!vmxa.hrz.uni-oldenburg.de!TREARN.BITNET!DKB-L Thu Nov 26 12:26:33 1992 Return-Path: Received: by faramir.Informatik.Uni-Oldenburg.DE (Smail3.1.22.1) id ; Thu, 26 Nov 92 12:26 CET Received: by arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de (smail3.1.18 + xalias); Thu, 26 Nov 92 12:26 CET Message-Id: Received: from VMXA.HRZ.UNI-OLDENBURG.DE by vmxa.hrz.uni-oldenburg.de (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 0283; Thu, 26 Nov 92 12:08:52 CET Received: from DEARN by VMXA.HRZ.UNI-OLDENBURG.DE (Mailer R2.08) with BSMTP id 1119; Thu, 26 Nov 92 12:08:51 CET Received: from DEARN by DEARN (Mailer R2.08) with BSMTP id 4291; Wed, 25 Nov 92 20:14:09 MET Date: Wed, 25 Nov 92 20:07:39 +0100 Reply-To: "DKB/POV Ray Tracer Development List" From: Andre Beck Subject: Fonts continued Comments: To: dkb-l%trearn.bitnet@rcms1.urz To: Multiple Recipients of Status: RO Yep. How to close a height-fielded font ? ==> why not use object { union { height_field { gif "abp.gif" } height_field { gif "abp.gif" scale <1 -1 1>} } texture { color Red } [...] } It worx :) CSG wont, I think. I only got core dumps of it... ,------------------------+---------------------------------------------. | Andre' Beck (ABPSoft) | TCP/IP-Mail: beck@freia.inf.tu-dresden.de | | HG R 142 | VMS : hermes::beck | +------------------------+---------------------------------------------+ | Windows is the best placebo against MS-DOOF headaches ! | `----------------------------------------------------------------------' 320x256 ColorJPEG.