3DPath is a utility to assist in the creation of animation sequences using the Persistence of Vision ray tracer. With 3DPath you can create animations in which the viewer appear to "fly" through the scene.
3DPath computes a smooth b-spline path through a scene given a set of control point values. 3DPath reads in your POV script file and creates a specified number of output script files that have the viewpoint position and look at directions changed to the smooth path. 3DPath can also create a batch file that can be used to run the generation of the frames with POV.
It includes very basic visualization of the path using DOS VGA graphics (this was written in 1994 don't yeah know!). You can also request a series of spheres be placed in along the camera path and a test frame can be rendered.
It has been ported to the Linux environment by Trace Camp. His web site is no longer available, so I've also made the ported version available below.
| 3dpath.zip | The original DOS release version, it includes all of the below files plus the MS-DOS executable |
| 3dpath.txt | Text documentation |
| 3dpath.cpp | C source code for 3DPath |
| spline.cpp | C source to compute the b-splines. Don't ask me to explain the math, I've long forgotten how it works. |
| pathdemo.mpg | Example animation, 640x480, 100 frames (around 1MB in size) |
| path3d.tar.gz | Version ported to Linux |
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Keith