Do you know KDE4/Qt and like ray traced 3D images? KPovModeler knows most of the Scene Description Language (SDL) of POV-Ray, and as a long time user I can tell you it is easy to use and gives the user a clear and organized scene.

However, the original maintainer, Andreas Zehender, has been looking for a new maintainer for a couple of years now. Andreas ported Kpov to KDE4, and recently Christoph Feck has fixed major bugs in the port, but he is not going to be the new maintainer, the new enhancer. Is that person you?

I'm not a developer, but I use KPovModeler all the time.

Suggested roadmap at the top of my head.
1. KPovModeler supports declaration of objects and surface features, so that you can reuse objects or textures later in other parts of your scene. However, POV-Ray's #declare feature is equally usable for variables, and this is not supported, e.g. #declare GoldenRatio = some calculation;. This enhancement should be easy to fix, but is very important for POV-Ray users.

2. KPovModeler supports height-fields, i.e. to use an image's dark pixels to create low areas and light pixels to create high areas - very suitable for landscapes, the inside of caves or other real irregular surfaces without overhanging features. A great tool exists to create suitable images, called GeoMorph, and this tool gives a live preview of changes like erosion and so on. Porting this tool to KDE/Qt and integrating it into KPovModeler would be a wonderful enhancement. See http://geomorph.sourceforge.net/ for details.

3. KPovModeler supports height-fields, but does not support tracing the surface to find intersecting points. This is very useful to put grass, trees, and bushes all over a landscape. Heighfield compressor is a Java application for doing this in a sensible manner. It supports masks, so you can have spots where grass is not allowed to grow. Porting this and integrating it in KPovModeler would make it so much quicker to work. See http://www.wozzeck.net/images/hfcomp/gazon-en.html for details.

4. Enhancing the support for mesh2 viewing, to be able to see the human mesh from programs like MakeHuman.

5. KPovModeler does not support easy duplication of objects. However, there is supposed to be support for both while loops and animation - it's just not finished. KPovModeler does support adding raw POV-Ray.

If this interests you, take a look at available documentation and links at http://www.kde.org/applications/graphic ... evelopment

Please let me know here.

Yours sincerely,
Haakon Meland Eriksen

I thought it might be helpful to add that if you do decide to help out on KPovModeler, then I will download any updates to the source from Subversion, compile it, and report any problems as soon as possible.

Cheers,
Haakon

hi

i recently use kpov for hobby
unfortunately kpovmodeler.org is out
I have made some changes in kpovmodeler source to add support for 3.7 version.
correct bug in warp
add support for emmission in finish
add #version at start of scene
add simple edit box for povray command before start rendering
If you are interested i can send the source for test

bb

Wow, this is great news! Yes, please do! Thank you!

I have no idea how put changes in kpov-svn.
if you send me a mail (-eticre@tin.it-) i can enable your access at my ubuntuone cloud for download kpovmodeler source
i'm not programmer-developer and kpov source is very old
I do what I can do

i have recently correct geomorph to recompile with new libpng
see here
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=3148

bye

It deeply sorrows me that this beautiful app is just dying...
I am also one of the "lost souls" who prefer a clean, tree based, structured way to construct instead of blender & co.
...and perhaps it's just because i am used to povray since 386-25 MHz ages

For me the major improvement would be the consequent usage of material/texture/interior/... includes as p.e. dropdowns in the related object, as they are already referenced in the settings and therefore should be easily published from the included files to the gui.

What i really not love in kpov is that i either
- can't get a preview of a by-source included material, or
- need to reconstruct it completely inside of kpov to see the preview...

If you want to have a scene with realistic materials, it's a hell of work to finally have all the materials configured inside so that everything looks fine...

Is it really so bad with community interest in kpovmodeler/povray ourdays?

Unfortunately it seems so...

On the other hand it's surely a real months effort for someone to get inside the application source from developers' point of view, so i don't think, this situation will ever change....

hi

i have made some change in kpomodeler and correct some bug
but i have not idea how to commit changes in svn.

added #version at beginning of tree and possibility to change name of rawpovray
correct warp
increase max visual-line in gl-view
added option to hide an object in treeview
added a preview in linking-object
added emission in finish
working around library , this seems complex because .kpm file are not recognized by qt xml

See http://www.kde.org/applications/graphic ... evelopment or http://cia.vc/stats/project/kde/kpovmodeler for people to contact about svn.

hi

if you want to test kpovmodeler try to dowload from here
https://www.box.com/s/88a86963442a0600aac6

Hi,

just wanted to drop by as a user of KPovModeler to encourage you to PLEASE continue your very worthwhile efforts on this package! Working in science KPovModeler has been my one-and-only way to produce 3D technical drawings in a reasonable amount of time without going back to the command-line and povray or getting a second PhD in creative arts to use Blender.

The lack of KPovModeler has been among the very reasons because of which I have hesitated to switch to KDE4 for a long time. I think the discontinuation of support for KPovModeler in the official distros is real pitty and a big mistake.

I've had several 'KPovModeler-KDE4' packages from http://rpm.pbone.net tweaked to compile successfully on SuSE 11.4 but neither, 'Object Links', nor the rendering window, nor the export to graphics worked for me.

I'm using the version posted at https://www.box.com/s/88a86963442a0600aac6 since today and it seems to work much better now.

So thanks for your good work and I very much hope you can pave KPovModeler's way back into future KDEs and distros.

Mark

hi

added tiling (povray 3.7) in pattern selections

https://www.box.com/s/bmwmvlyif6h296pr0u5c

hi

added pigment_pattern in pattern

https://www.box.com/s/f4xie5dnzb1ma40servq

If the source code for KPovModeler is stored in KDE SVN or Git then you may wish to post your patches on KDE Reviewboard instead so that they are seen by other developers.

I would recommend adding the group 'kdelibs' in any case. Reviewboard can be found at https://svn.reviewboard.kde.org for SVN and https://reviewboard.kde.org for Git. You will need an Identity account to login to the Git Reviewboard instance - which you should already have if you used it to login to the forum.

seems that kpovmodeler is "abandoned", there is not review board support.
kpovmodeler.org is closed.
expect a return maintainer...

If you wish to take over maintainership, then I would suggest mailing kde-core-devel@kde.org, and attaching the various patches you have written (and indicating what bugs they fix).