In 1990 I got interested in computer graphics. I had a brand new 80386 computer with a math coprocessor in it, and the DKBTrace ray tracer by David K. Buck. Over the years, other developers began to contribute to David Buck's ray tracer and POV-Ray was born. The POV in POV-Ray stands of "Persistence of Vision." It seems that the POV-Ray development team is still somewhat active, and this open-source application has received some very advanced features in recent years. In the hands of artists like Gilles Tran and Jaime Vives Piqueres, this little ray tracer can produce some astonishing images. My interest in ray-tracing waned shortly after my 3rd-place entry was produced for the Internet Raytracing Competition (IRTC) in 2003. I had to pick and choose between numerous interests, with model ships, violins, and philosophy winning out in the end. I wouldn't be surprised if, at some time in the future, I dusted off my POV-Ray skills and produced some more fine scenes. Until then, enjoy my gallery of past creations. Are you interested in POV-Ray? Click here:  I also offer a few of my pictures for sale on Zazzle. If you are interested, follow this link: http://www.zazzle.co.uk/pmccombs |
My POV-Ray artwork can be categorized into three periods. The early productions feature primitives and simple CSG. These scenes were created in a text editor, without the use of modeling tools. I made the only raytraced animations I ever produced in those days and eventually my models became more complex. This period ended when I left for Brazil in the fall of 1994.
After my return in 1996, I became enthusiastic about the new features of POV-Ray and the great improvements in processing power that had come about during my absence. I began to tinker with various modeling programs, eventually settling for the inexpensive yet excellent Moray modeler. My most colorful and intricate work comes from this period. There were a couple of renders done with the interesting MegaPov that foreshadowed my future work.
Sometime around 1998, I made a mistake that resulted in the complete loss of my POV-Ray scene code and all of the models I had made in Moray or anywhere else. It was lucky that I had uploaded the images to my XMission home page, or I would have lost those too. I did not make backups in those days. This marked a period of famine in my pursuit of computer graphics.
I regained interest in POV-Ray for a short time in the early 2000s, and the resulting productions are the most advanced in terms of technical merit. These make use of macro programming, more advanced object types and textures, and mixed object composition. They have lost much of the saturated, colorful, and painted qualities that I was interested in early on.
Compared to the best CGI artists of the day, my renders qualify me as an inferior upstart. ;) To those excellent artists, I am as the painter Salomon Rysdael was to his famous brother, Jacob. Like Salomon, perhaps I can capture a few small points with "surprising exactness" (as Alexander Chalmers put it in 1866), but there is nothing out of the ordinary to set my work apart from other enthusiasts of a mediocre stripe. It is nothing that a bit of practice couldn't solve...