PovRay and ldraw frustration

[Willy Tschager]

Why does the current all-in-one-installer provide outdated, buggy software?

But even with the updated version, the rendering with LDGLite still just crashes when rendering the model, and I never got the PovRay rendering to work, even after hunting for obscure lg_colors and lg_materials files. The only change I got was that instead of staying open and presenting obscure error messages, it now opens and closes povray without producing anything. It still seems to produce an error of some sorts, but it immediately closes the window, so I cannot tell what the problem is, and the stdout_povray and stderr_povray files are empty.

Hunting for the LGEO library (e.g. to look for updates or to find thoses mysterious lg_colors and lg_materials) files only leads to dead ends - looks like el lutzo closed up shop with his website. Why are those mysterious files (and whatever else may be needed for rendering with PovRay) not part of the all-in-one-installer? I finally found those two files somewhere on sourceforge in another projects archive, but I have absolutely no idea if those are the right ones.

Those rendering problems lead to the idea to use L3P and the L3PAddon to attempt a rendering of the model with PovRay. Sorry, but that was a total failure. The program wants to know the location of some files (which cannot be found within the installation, ldraw files, or program installation directories) and a strange tool (ledit.exe, according to google this is a electric circuit/layout program!?!) that it cannot run at all without.

Maybe this all works for some people who have installed numerous updates over time, have some old files still hanging around from 20 versions ago that some current programs still need, but no installer provides, or have tweaked their system over time to cover some of the problems I found. But it just does not work on a freshly installed system.

Please, take a fresh machine, install the AIOI, and try those things yourself if you don't believe me.

Hi Christian,

you might have noticed that the AIOI doesn't provide any paths or settings for POVRay under LPub3D. It is totally up to you to set it up. A smooth installation is currently not doable also because LPub3D relays on L3P for its LDraw2POV conversion. L3P hasn't been updated for 8 years now while the LGEO library has and works fine with LDView generated files. L3P is provided as silent install, but your rant thought me that it is high time to remove L3P from the installer, so that it is clear that you have to provide all the pieces needed.

As for the buggy software included in the AIOI please read: http://www.ldraw.org/article/104.html

Code:

Note that newer version of each application may be available as this installer was created for the release of the latest LDraw parts library update, which happens twice or three times a year.

Bye, w.