News
Discontinuity discontinued
2007-04-12 19:20
Some time ago, I started the Discontinuity project, a program to help making animations in POV-Ray with key-frames. Unfortunately, at the time I did not receive too much support, and the project did not get too far off the ground. I also haven't had time myself to work on it. I realized that I should officially discontinue the project.
However, there are other solutions for making animations in POV-Ray. For example, take a look at http://www.geocities.com/ccolefax/clockmod.html. On this website, you can download the Automatic Clock Modifier Macro file which has an easy syntax to embed key-frame animation directly into a POV-Ray source file. If anyone is still interested in taking up this project, feel free to contact me.
Discontinuity Animation System Ready for Development
2004-05-27 22:16
Discontinuity is a tool written in Java to help make non-linear animations using the POV-Ray raytracer. The project is now looking for developers and other team members to help transform it from its current half-formed state into a user-friendly, powerful program.
Quite some time ago, I started working on Discontinuity to help ease the cumbersome efforts required to hand-code a POV-Ray animation. Unfortunately, I no longer have time to work on the project. I have, therefore, put it up on Sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/) in the hope that others will take up this worthwhile project.
I am a bit of a lazy programmer, so even though I tried to keep Discontinuity's code in a readable form, considering its large size, it was still somewhat of a mess. However, I've changed it considerably since version 0.0, especially in the organization of the underlying code. The current CVS version is now (somewhat) nicely organized, contains Javadoc (although that needs to be greatly improved), and contains Open, Save, and Export dialog boxes instead of defaulting to my home directory (Oh no! If you look at the 0.0 code, you'll be able to find my username!). Additionally, the generated Javadoc is available from the project website.
However, there's still lots of work to do. Many (if not most) of Discontinuity's professed features do not even exist. It would be quite difficult to actually make a useful animation with the current version. My GUI-building skills aren't so great (although I don't feel too guilty; from my experience with most software made entirely by programmers, most programmers can't design either), so it would be nice if people could fix up the NetBeans-created user interface and the website. Documentation is badly needed (though I don't know how anyone can explain how to use a program that they themselves don't know how to use, since I'm so bad at explaining). Perhaps most importantly, I am moving in a couple of months and will have to leave the position of project administrator.
So, what's in it for you? Truthfully, absolutely nothing. I have no idea why I wrote Discontinuity, or, in fact, why any open source programmers do what they do. Obviously, some people find it rewarding. If you are one of those people, Discontinuity is a very worthwhile project to work on (assuming you are into POV-Ray). As a side point (*cough* *cough*), on the rare chance someone donates to the project, those that contribute significantly to Discontinuity will get a share...
Please look at http://discontinuity.sourceforge.net/ and http://discontinuity.sourceforge.net/contribute for more information.
First release of Discontinuity
2004-02-19 17:39
Discontinuity, a tool to help make animations with the POV-Ray raytracer (http://www.povray.org), has finally had its first release. The first release is meant to give a taste of what Discontinuity will eventually do.
POV-Ray, a powerful tool for making stunning 3D graphics, has always had the capability of creating animations. However, the process was always combersome and difficult. In an effort to make it easier, I started writing a keyframe-based program to ease the process.
However, I never got around to finishing the program. In an effort to allow the project to continue, I decided to put it up on SourceForge and hope that other people will finish it off.
I am still in the process of cleaning up and commenting the code, but it's not too bad and I would like to hear some initial reactions to the program. Do people think its a worthwhile project? Would anyone be willing to work on it? I don't have much time these days, and though I am willing to adminstrate the project for the next few months, I will have to stop in the near future.
Take a look at http://discontinuity.sourceforge.net
Discontinuity first release and web site coming soon
2004-02-13 13:28
The first release and web site of Discontinuity are on there way! I haven't had much time to get it up and going, but the web site is about half-way done and the code is in releaseable form. I had been busy editting the comments of the code (including full Javadoc), but I decided that I should release the current version, even with its bad comments. This is so that people can have a look at it, though it isn't fun to program with its current comments. Keep an eye on http://discontinuity.sourceforge.net, though there's nothing there yet.
Discontinuity has been registered
2004-01-05 23:02
I started writing discontinuity, a program to help create animations in POV-Ray, a while ago, and I never finished it. So I decided to submit it to Sourceforge where other open source developers can work on it. I need to clean up the code a bit, create a web site, etc., but it shouldn't take me too long to do that.
POV-Ray, a raytracer which can create stunning, photo-realistic images, does have some support for creating animations, but its quite difficult to create anything more than a simple spinning object. Discontinuity provides a graphical interface to design an animation with keyframes and variable substitution to help generate the code necessary to animate a POV-Ray scene.
I never finished the program, but it is quite far along in development, so it shouldn't be too long before it can reach an alpha stage. Stay tuned for a powerful, easy-to-use tool to make POV-Ray animations.