Description

These are the results of some experimentation with exporting Processing sketches to POV-Ray for final rendering.

Further examples of real output can been seen on the Hyphae project page.

POV-Ray Export

Here is a sample, abeit a somewhat random one, of the same scene rendered in both environments:

via Processing via POV-Ray using this scene file

Why render with POV-Ray? Aside from the pretty shadows, reflections and all the other optical candy that is standard fare in a ray-traced scene, you also get the benefit of being able to render to ridiculously high resolutions - and that was primarily what I was interested in for printing purposes. For example, here's a tiny snippet cropped from a 9000x9000 pixel render of the same scene above (can you spot where it came from?):

Granted, the rendering time for such high-resolution images could stretch into hours, days, or maybe even weeks when very high-quality settings are also used. Still, it's nice to have the option when needed, especially for scenes like interpenetrating triangles where PDF output falls short.

Export Code

The code as is really isn't suitable as a library, mainly because there is SO much you can do with POV-Ray's Scene Description Language. It would take forever to try and map any significant portion of it for library use from Processing, and honestly I'm just not interested in tackling that project. I will probably continue to build on it and expand it as it seems a tremendously useful output option. Perhaps I'll post updated versions from time to time, but I doubt there will ever be a full drop-in ready-to-use version. Still, for limited uses it does work well, and you're welcome to borrow from it and/or customize it further as needed for your own projects.

POV Export Demo Applet 300 x 300

Additional Sample

Sort of as an exercise for myself, but also perhaps useful for anyone else attempting this method, I tried converting someone else's sketch for POV output. I started with the "Complex 3D" example by Marius Watz and used as a sample for PDF export. (see Marius' original posting)

The result is more-or-less accurate, though I did have some trouble converting a few of the geometric constructs used in the original sketch. But for a sketch designed without POV export in mind, I think it did a pretty reasonable job:

via Processing via POV-Ray

Download the complete example here (~1.1M due to big .POV w/ ~39000 objects)

snipped from 3000 x 3000 render