Bishop3D Features

Bishop3D is an interactive modeler and animation tool dedicated to the popular freeware raytracer POV-Ray™.

Highlights:

• Native animation support via key framing
  Currently only float valued object parameters can be animated but this will change in the future versions.
• Native POV-Ray™ script import capability
  Bishop3D can read a descent subset of POV-Ray scene description language (more details).
• Ambidextrous coordinate system
  You can choose to work with right-hand or left-hand coordinate system.
• Almost complete material editor with thumbnail preview
  Except for the object and function patterns, all texture related stuff is supported.
• Objects cross reference
  Scene items may reference each other and the dependencies issues are handled automatically.
• CSG evaluation
  Including support for the inverse keyword
• Translation, Rotation, scaling and Inverse kinematics manipulators
  Place and orient the objects by simply dragging the manipulator in the viewports.
• Direct manipulation of geometric attributes with the mouse
  Just drag the respective control point to adjust inner object parameters.
• Direct manipulation of the scene trees
  Scene objects can be copied, pasted or dragged and dropped directly on the scene trees.
• Direct Manipulation of the time line trees
  Tracks, sequences and keys can be copied, pasted or dragged and dropped directly in the time line trees
• Full undo/redo support
  Virtually every action can be undone and posteriorly redone via an action buffer
• Support for many POV-Ray primitives
1. bicubic_patch
2. blob
3. box
4. camera (partially implemented - only orthographic and perspective)
5. cone
6. cylinder
7. difference
8. disc
9. fog (partially implemented - no preview)
10. height_field
11. intersection
12. lathe
13. light_group
14. merge
15. mesh
16. mesh2
17. plane
18. polygon
19. prism
20. rainbow (partially implemented - no preview)
21. sky_sphere (partially implemented - no preview)
22. smooth_triangle
23. sor
24. sphere
25. sphere_sweep
26. superellipsoid
27. text
28. torus
29. triangle
30. union
• Full Integration with POV-Ray™

Current Limitations

As the project is still at its very first stages that are several points that need improvements

• The user interface is almost non-configurable.
• Texture items currently cannot be animated.
• The CSG evaluator works on the polygonal approximation of objects' boundary representation and it sometimes leads to unpleasant visual artifacts.
• The modeler only recognizes one font face per true type font file and - even worse - it can only work with the file if the font face name matches the file name.
• The object and function pattern are not currently supported.
• There are still many POV-Ray primitives not currently supported, namely
1. cubic
2. isosurface
3. julia_fractal
4. parametric
5. poly
6. quadric
7. quartic