MHVLUG is proud to announce our November meeting: -------- POV-RAY AND THE RELATIVITY TRAIN ------------------------------------
The Persistence of Vision Raytracer [1] (POV-Ray, "povray" to its fans) is a multiplatform, ray tracing program. Because it was developed before the GPL by an international team of individuals, some of whom are no longer available, povray is currently "copyrighted freeware", although the development team plans to release a future version under GPL. Povray has been used for creating stunning three dimensional graphics [2] by showing off different light sources, photon mapping, photo blur and other photorealistic capabilities. Greg will give a brief history of the program and then give an advanced tutorial by explaining, line by line, the code used in one of his more advanced projects. This animation, /The Relativity Train/, is a humorous demonstration about how the speed of light is constant from all points of reference. While GUI modelers are available for povray, this project is all code ... editing text with no GUI. Video and audio recording of the lecture is of course welcome, but the files for the whole project will not be released electronically. Greg M. Johnson is a failure analysis engineer at IBM's 300 mm semiconductor fab. He has been using povray since 1996 and is the author of some scene files that ship with the program. As a hobbyist, he has participated in several animation competitions and was the winner (and sole entrant) to the January 2009 TC-RTC [3] competition. This entry, /The Relativity Train [4]/, made use of some of the advanced features of a povray fork called MegaPov [5]. .... Lightning Talks * Etherpad-lite - Sean Dague Before the main talk we will do a series of lightning talks (up to 3), each 10 minutes or less, on something Open Source related. It could be a fun new program, a book, a blog post, or really anything you think the wider MHVLUG community would find some interest in. People that have posted their talk subject to the website in advance have priority. Time permitting, we'll also take impromptu lightning talks from the floor. The meeting space opens up at 5pm for pre meeting general discussion, question asking, show and tell, and setup. All are welcome to join. If you are planning on using the projector for your lightning talk, please arrive at 5:30 to ensure we can work out any kinks with the projector prior to the meeting. The meeting will take place at Mid Hudson Library System Auditorium on Wednesday, November 2 at 6 pm. All meetings are free and open to the public, and everyone from all levels of expertise and interest in Linux and Open Source Software are encouraged to attend (and bring a friend or two)! After each meeting ends everyone is welcome to join in on an informal dinner gathering at the Palace Diner on Washington St. This is a great opportunity to interact with members of the local Linux community, and a forum where questions and comments are strongly welcomed. For more details, including maps and directions, please see http://mhvlug.org/meetings/2011/pov-ray-and-the-relativity-train [6]. [1] http://www.povray.org/ [2] http://hof.povray.org/ [3] http://www.tc-rtc.co.uk/competition/animation/2009-January-display25-ratingidtotal.html [4] http://www.vimeo.com/4205262 [5] http://megapov.inetart.net/ [6] http://mhvlug.org/meetings/2011/pov-ray-and-the-relativity-train
_______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Nov 2 - POV-Ray and The Relativity Train Dec 7 - An Intro to Chef Jan 4 - Recovering the Brownfield: Revitalizing Open Source Projects
