The exercises presented at Wire Frame University were designed for the IBM DOS version of the POVRAY ray-tracer. You can obtain the latest version of POVRAY and many support programs at www.povray.org.
I assume since you are interested in graphics that you already have software for viewing image files on your PC. If not, there are many programs available at any of the SimTel archives.
You will also need a recent version of the PKUNZIP decompression program. Many web files are PKZip compressed and must be extracted before the software can be used. All major on-line services, such as CompuServe and AOL, offer PKUNZIP.
As with all downloaded software, you should invest the time and effort to virus scan every program BEFORE executing it.
cd \ mkdir newzip cd newzip pkunzip \new.zipWhenever you pkunzip without the -d switch, all files are decompressed into the current directory regardless of the original directory structure. Look for any README, READ.ME, etc. files for detailed installation instructions and virus scan any new executable files.
When you are sure how you want to install the new files, delete the previously unloaded files and use the -d switch to make sure all sub-directory structures are created properly.
Example:
cd \ mkdir dta cd dta pkunzip -d \dta204.zip cd \
My first ray-tracings were done in POV and seemed absolutely incredible at the time. For a freeware program, POV is a very powerful 3D rendering system that continues to grow better with age.
POV supports many modeling techniques including CSG, polygon face, and even blobs. The built in texturing features still out class some of the commercial packages being marketed today. There are many POV user groups and information sources available. POV is a great place to start learning 3D art.
POV does have one major flaw. All input to POV consists of ASCII text files. There is no facility for real time graphic editing of objects and scenes. Despite this disadvantage, many early POV images achieved a high degree of complexity. Users of POV today have access to several "front-end" programs that allow interactive scene editing. The scene is then exported as POV readable text for rendering. MORAY and POVLAB are excellent examples of this type of program.
The latest POVRAY version can be obtained at www.povray.org.
If you have trouble getting these files from povray.org, try searching the CNet Virtual Software Library for a more convenient archive.
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If you have Windows, you may already have Media Player, a handy program capable of playing many kinds of animations including DTA output. If you don't have Media Player, download a copy of PLAYFLC, a simple to use DOS based animation player.
Download PLAYFLC (24K).