Tutorial Table of Contents

Program Description

What is Ray-Tracing?

What is POV-Ray?

The Early History of POV-Ray

How Do I Begin?

Notation and Basic Assumptions

Getting Started

Our First Image

The Light Source

Simple Texture Options

Using the Camera

POV-Ray Coordinate System

Setting POV-Ray Options

Advanced Features

Spline Based Shapes

Polygon Based Shapes

Advanced Texture Options

Using Atmospheric Effects

Simple Media Tutorial

Making Animations

While-loop tutorial

SDL tutorial: A raytracer

Questions and Tips

Contacting the Authors

POV-Ray License

Contact Information

Support Library Licenses

Citing POV-Ray in Academic Publications

Contributors to POV-Ray

What to do if you don't have POV-Ray

Suggested Reading

POV-Ray for Unix version 3.8

	Home	POV-Ray for Unix	POV-Ray Tutorial	POV-Ray Reference

Program Description

What is Ray-Tracing?

What is POV-Ray?

Changes and New Features Summary

The Early History of POV-Ray

The Original Creation Message

A Historic 'Version History'

How Do I Begin?

Notation and Basic Assumptions

Getting Started

Our First Image

Understanding POV-Ray's Coordinate System

Adding Standard Include Files

Adding a Camera

Describing an Object

Adding Texture to an Object

Defining a Light Source

Cylinder Object

CSG Intersection

Co-incident Surfaces

The Light Source

The Pointlight Source

The Spotlight Source

The Cylindrical Light Source

The Area Light Source

The Ambient Light Source

Light Source Specials

Using Shadowless Lights

Assigning an Object to a Light Source

Using Light Fading

Simple Texture Options

Surface Finishes

Adding Bumpiness

Creating Color Patterns

Pre-defined Textures

Using the Camera

Using Focal Blur

POV-Ray Coordinate System

Transformations

Transformation Order

Inverse Transform

Transform Identifiers

Transforming Textures and Objects

Setting POV-Ray Options

Command Line Switches

Using INI Files

Using the POVINI Environment Variable

Advanced Features

Spline Based Shapes

Understanding The Concept of Splines

Surface of Revolution Object

Teaching An Old Spline New Tricks

Smooth Transitions

Multiple Sub-Shapes

Conic Sweeps And The Tapering Effect

Sphere Sweep Object

Bicubic Patch Object

Polygon Based Shapes

Smooth triangles and mesh2

UV mapping and mesh2

A separate texture per triangle

Component Types and Other New Features

Complex Blob Constructs and Negative Strength

Height Field Object

Isosurface Object

Simple functions

Several surfaces

Non-linear functions

Specifying functions

Internal functions

Combining isosurface functions

Noise and pigment functions

Conditional directives and loops

Transformations on functions

Improving Isosurface Speed

Creating the polynomial function

Writing the polynomial vector

Polynomial made easy

Superquadric Ellipsoid Object

Setting Up Your Display

Setting Up POV-Ray

Gamma in Output Images

Setting Up Your Scene

Gamma in Literal Colors

Gamma in Input Images

Gamma in Legacy Scenes

Advanced Texture Options

Using Color List Pigments

Using Pigment and Patterns

Using Pattern Modifiers

Using Transparent Pigments and Layered Textures

Using Pigment Maps

Using Basic Normal Modifiers

Blending Normals

Slope Map Tutorial

Slopes, what are they?

Syntax of a slope map

Examples of slope maps

Using Surface Highlights

Using Reflection, Metallic and Metallic

Using Iridescence

Working With Pigment Maps

Working With Normal Maps

Working With Texture Maps

Working With List Textures

What About Tiles?

Average Function

Working With Layered Textures

Declaring Layered Textures

Another Layered Textures Example

When All Else Fails: Material Maps

Limitations Of Special Textures

Using Atmospheric Effects

Creating a Sky with a Color Gradient

Adding Some Clouds

Setting a Minimum Translucency

Creating a Filtering Fog

Adding Some Turbulence to the Fog

Using Ground Fog

Using Multiple Layers of Fog

Fog and Hollow Objects

Starting With a Simple Rainbow

Increasing the Rainbow's Translucency

Using a Rainbow Arc

Simple Media Tutorial

Some media concepts

Simple media examples

Absorbing media

Scattering media

Multiple medias inside the same object

Media and transformations

A more advanced example of scattering media

Media and photons

Radiosity with conventional lighting

Radiosity without conventional lighting

Normals and Radiosity

Performance considerations

Making Animations

The Clock Variable: Key To It All

Clock Dependant Variables And Multi-Stage Animations

The Phase Keyword

Do Not Use Jitter Or Crand

INI File Settings

While-loop tutorial

What a while-loop is and what it is not

How does a single while-loop work?

How do I make a while-loop?

What is a condition and how do I make one?

What about loop types other than simple for-loops?

What about nested loops?

Mixed-type nested loops

Other things to note

SDL tutorial: A raytracer

The idea and the code

Short introduction to raytracing

Global settings

Scene definition

Initializing the raytracer

Ray-sphere intersection

Inner workings of a macro

The ray-sphere intersection macro

The Trace macro

Calculating the closest intersection

If the ray doesn't hit anything

Initializing color calculations

Going through the light sources

Diffuse lighting

Specular lighting

Reflection Calculation

Calculating the image

Creating the colored mesh

The structure of the mesh

Creating the mesh

Creating the vertex points

Creating the textures

Creating the triangles

The Camera-setup

Questions and Tips

Contacting the Authors

POV-Ray License

Contact Information

Support Library Licenses

Citing POV-Ray in Academic Publications

Contributors to POV-Ray

What to do if you don't have POV-Ray

Which Version of POV-Ray should you use?

Microsoft Windows

Apple Macintosh

Where to Find POV-Ray Files

World Wide Website www.povray.org

Suggested Reading