Sketchup and POV-Ray Assignment

I did not get terribly excited about either Sketchup or Pov-Ray. I did have a good bit of trouble going through POV-RAY; I thought I was following everything very closely (such as when it came to simple things like camera placement and placing objects), yet I ended up putting my objects out of view. I was actually drawing things (my objects and camera) visually on a piece of paper beforehand on top of a coordinate grid so I knew I had my coordinates correct, and yet, at times, I was not seeing my objects. It was quite frustrating! I did learn some by inspecting the contents of the 'include' files.

As for Sketchup, I also had ongoing problems: I was drawing objects with the rectangular tool, for instance, but they kept appearing with one edge far longer than the other and I could not figure out why. On POV-RAY, I wanted to draw an “8” on my pool table 8 Ball, but, for the life of me, could not reason out how to do this. This probably says something more about my conceptual abilities than about the intuitiveness of POV-RAY. Perhaps our K-12 children would surprise us with this program and have great success…but I know I would not be a very good guide for them.

Sketchup 7.0 design: My Family Room




POV-RAY design: Game of 8-Ball






POV-Ray source Code for design above:




#include "shapes.inc"



#include "colors.inc"



#include "textures.inc"




global_settings { assumed_gamma 1 }




camera { location <-15, 8, -10> look_at <0,> }




sky_sphere{



pigment{



Bright_Blue_Sky



}




}



plane{y, 0



pigment{color Green}



}




sphere{5*y, 5



pigment{ color rgb 0}



}

sphere{<0,>, 5



texture {



pigment{color White}



finish {Shiny}



}



}



cone{<0,> 1 60*z 3



pigment{



wood



}
}