# Povray and opengl install and use?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/povray-and-opengl-install-and-use/96659>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [January 24, 2006, 5:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/povray-and-opengl-install-and-use/96659 "2006-01-24T17:10:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![anne001](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/34f0e0/32.png) [@anne001](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/anne001)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2006, 5:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/povray-and-opengl-install-and-use/96659/1 "2006-01-24T17:10:00Z")

</div>

I would like to manipulate a 3D skeleton. On the opengl list, it was  
suggested povray would be easier to learn, and perhaps more powerful  
than opengl.

I did find rupov There are recent books on opengl, but I don’t find any  
book on pov-ray and I don’t see any example of the use of pov-ray with  
ruby. I did not find a library of opengl commands either. How do people  
figure out how to use pov-ray or opengl for ruby?

I have installed opengl for ruby opengl-0.32g, and the examples compile  
fine in that directory, but  
not in other directories? What could have gone wrong in the install of  
opengl for ruby?

I used a modified extconf as per instructions elsewhere  
$ ruby extconf.rb  
$ make

Test it out works, as well as all other examples in the sample  
directory  
$ ruby sample/robot.rb

Install it:  
$ sudo make install

I did not try to install rupov, I don’t know if it works on Tiger or  
what to do to install it.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![anne001](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/34f0e0/32.png) [@anne001](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/anne001)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2006, 5:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/povray-and-opengl-install-and-use/96659/2 "2006-01-24T17:10:01Z")

</div>

Clive Crous on rupov:

rupov is still a baby, meaning, i only started work on it very recently  
and it’s never had any releases. anything that is currently online (  
[http://www.darkarts.co.za/projects/rupov](http://www.darkarts.co.za/projects/rupov) ) can be considered unstable  
and  
the api or even the design may be scrapped at any minute if i think it  
can  
be done better another way.

Povray is very easy, I would also recommend you have a look at it. If  
you  
use a unix operating system (or a unix clone like linux etc) then look  
at  
“kpovmodeller” it’s great 😉

rupov will be designed as an interface to povray, which is a raytracing  
engine. rupov will be usefull for creating rendered scenes that are  
non-interactive. For example I am using it to generate povray scenes  
for  
tiles in an isometric game I am making. rupov generates the graphics  
at  
‘compile time’ which are then just drawn ingame.

Clive Crous on opengl

If you want to learn graphic programming, in the sense that you would  
like  
to create interactive scenes that respond to user interaction, then  
opengl  
is the way to go, and for ruby I reccommend ‘rubygame’:  
[http://rubygame.seul.org/](http://rubygame.seul.org/)

It is also a new project, the latest online version “1.0” does not  
include  
OpenGL, but the OpenGL code is already completed by the author and is  
available through his repository. He has said on his mailing list that  
it  
will be released any day now, for which I am waiting with much  
anticipation 😃