POV Ray 3.7rc3 Console Edition

Sometime at work, colleague start discussing about the new renderman (v17) and the would it be fit for architectural pipeline musing, it's been a while since I tested PRMan (pirated edition of course :), that time I already accustomed with V-Ray's "one click render" way and thus feeling upset with what PRMan produce by default (speed and quality).

It's only when I found pov-ray (again not used in architectural) that I finally realized the power behind both renderers, their scene description language: RI and RSL for Renderman and SDL for POV-Ray. Sure they are two different thing just about how both are different too. But comparing any of the two with the rest (older V-Ray, KT, LuxRender, Yafaray, etc) is even bigger mistake and obviously unfair. But people usually only care the result and leaving the "how" question subjective to user's skill.

Revisiting povray site is a little worrying, I think it was 2008 the first time povray support multi-threading (v3.7) and yet final version still not arrived. However considering their novel idea behind povray it maybe not as easy to accomplish than other renderers (which usually already multi-core aware since inception). I mean imagine how those procedural models, CSGs and all different exotic primitives blend in the threads? they aren't plain meshes, even Maya use post rendering for PFX.

So there I go try dig more about SDL (still personally not much interested) using Scite which has pov api/syntax support and try to find non interactive way to do batch rendering, yeah using python I could do stealth subprocess, but I want a pure one :). If I'm not mistaken povray for linux is a console app, so I tried to build that one from its unix source (which somehow more updated than windows' source) but failed when using mingw... continuing with VS2008 express way and surprisingly there is a project called "console" which turned out the one I'm looking for.

povconsole32.exe

notes:
- exr support is disabled, I can build static openexr 1.7.1 with VS (need a little change) and completing its tests but somehow with povray, it crashed during writing.
- this is just the renderer, standard libraries (includes) files still needed (point that in POVINC environment) but no installation required (portable), no registry nor settings files.

How to enable DWG import in SketchUp 8 Free

As an architect living in Indonesia I (and many others) faced one same dreaded problem in my workflow: DWG dependency.
I've post list of applications that I use before, though I must share this info too (a bit too late actually).

So how to enable DWG Import in your Free SketchUp 8?

We all know Google stop supporting DWG Import feature starting from SketchUp 8 (free). The last one (7.1) have additional add-on http://dl.google.com/sketchup/gsu7/AllowDWGImportInSketchUp7.msi to enable it.

Then another way is: You can install SketchUp 8 Pro trial for 8 hours of usage if you want a temporary solution.

Or.. you can just stick with SketchUp 7.1 and ask your partners to downgrade save as sketchup 7 format for file exchange. Which is what I choose, after all there are not much important features in version 8.

Now.. do you know that actually there is no difference between both version?

Blender 2.4 Documentation in CHM

This is my first attempt to create CHM format of Blender's Wiki pages. I use HTTrack with some deliberate scan rules (filter) to only include Manual, Reference, Books and Tutorials in english. Later I use some simple regex to trim and strip unnecessary part.

However I want to keep the navigation feature to aid the poor bookmark so I need several regexes to be applied. Once completed, I start to realize that it was too big, the images alone consume 180MB.
I've managed to optimize images file to almost half of original. Now it's 100MB CHM (with images)
PNG: First, files > 50KB converted to 8bit depth, then all PNG optimized with optipng
JPG: Optimized with jpegoptim 75%
GIF: Optimized with gifsicle

Here is how I fetch it from blender's wiki using HTTrack
At first, I don't know how the sitemap looks like so I start it without filter and downloading only html pages. After some hours HTTrack finished with very messy result. I browse it quite a while to find out which important, which should be included etc. And here is the scan rules for English documentation:

+*.png +*.gif +*.jpg +*.css +*.js -ad.doubleclick.net/* -mime:application/foobar -*title=* -*BlenderWiki:* -*Category:* -*Org:* -*Meta:* -*Talk:* -*User:* -*-Flag-* -*Special:* -*File:* -*:2.5/* -*action=* -*section=* -*stylish.swf* -*Attic:* -*Robotics:* -*Dev:* -*index.php/BlenderDev* -*Template:* -*/invalid_files/* -*Help:* -*index.php/AR/* -*:AR/* -*index.php/BG/* -*:BG/* -*index.php/BR/* -*:BR/* -*index.php/CA/* -*:CA/* -*index.php/CZ/* -*:CZ/* -*index.php/DE/* -*:DE/* -*index.php/DK/* -*:DK/* -*index.php/EL/* -*:EL/* -*index.php/ES/* -*:ES/* -*index.php/FA/* -*:FA/* -*index.php/FI/* -*:FI/* -*index.php/FR/* -*:FR/* -*index.php/ID/* -*:ID/* -*index.php/IT/* -*:IT/* -*index.php/KO/* -*:KO/* -*index.php/MN/* -*:MN/* -*index.php/NL/* -*:NL/* -*index.php/PL/* -*:PL/* -*index.php/PT/* -*:PT/* -*index.php/RO/* -*:RO/* -*index.php/RU/* -*:RU/* -*index.php/SV/* -*:SV/* -*index.php/TH/* -*:TH/* -*index.php/TR/* -*:TR/* -*index.php/ZH/* -*:ZH/*

The language filter could be much simpler if HTTrack support regex...
After refetch the wiki for second time, I have relatively clean dump.

Here is the files: (dedicated to all users who CAN'T afford internet connection, somebody please mirror but only with direct links not rapidshit, ziddumb or other craps)

Preview

Blender249Man.chm Contain manual in English, 30MB (This is the main file and linked to 4 files below)
Blender249Books.chm Books that converted to html, 32MB
Blender249Tuts.chm Tutorials and Theory, 31MB
Blender249API.chm Python API and Game Engine API for Blender 2.49, 1MB
Blender249Ref.chm Contain Reference, FAQ and Scripts Catalog, 6MB

To decompile use 7zip or run hh -decompile [chmfile]

Blender249Doc.chm (july 13, 2010) the whole text only version and very basic, 6.8MB

Enjoy!

Blender 2.5 Optimized 32bit (with QuickTime support)

This weekend is the last day in October and Blender 2.5 will not finalized any soon considering BGE & Player still broken. I try for the first time to build the latest SVN. After reading building guide at Blender.org, my first impression is I need python 2.6 or 3.1 to build. I'm lol'd to find out that it's actually about the blender runtime which is the latest version only support python 3.1. In fact while I build using 2.6 using latest beta scons I found strange errors with MSVC compiler while GCC done its job. I try switch back to Python 2.5 with stable scons, now it's the opposite that happened. MSVC finished and GCC failed but I still got both compiled :)

GCC version is very odd one, even at its default -O2 flag it is crash-prone binary. So I need to apply -Os instead to compensate thus GCC version runs much slower than MSVC in many test.

September 18 2010
Updated: Blender 2.54.0 Beta Win32 SVN r32000 with OpenMPJuly 27 2010
Updated: Blender 2.53.0 Beta Win32 SVN r30777 with OpenMP

Blender 2.5 snapshot CHM Documentation (5.84MB)
Get Blender 2.4 Manual PDF by Marco Ardito here
Blender 2.4 Complete CHM Manual by me here
Find other Blender stuff here 



To build with OpenMP support without buying M$ VisualStudio you could use WDK 7.0 that available for free and contain Visual C++ 2008 Standard Edition (Compiler only)


Oh, my svn client really fucked up, this page won't updated until I get less intrusive svn client.