The Online POV-Ray Tutorial

Quick index:

1. Developing POV-Ray Scenes
2. Being Artistic

Developing POV-Ray Scenes

• Develop a good coding style. (A coding style is the way you format the source code in the file -- where you place the tabs and such). If you ever go back and work on a scene you made a month ago, this can be invaluable. We personally like the one we've used in the examples in this tutorial, but you should feel free to develop one you like... just be consistent!
• Be prepared to spend some time. Not even the fastest computers will be fast enough for you once you really get going. Ray-tracing is a slow process. Make yourself a cup of coffee, or go on a month's vacation (if it's a really complex scene), or, better yet, multitask! (Sorry, DOS users, you're stuck with waiting).
• Low-quality images generate faster; use them.You can save yourself some time when developing a scene by generating low-quality output (see the +Q switch and the +A switch documentation in the Command Line Reference. Generate high quality output for the final scene.
• Make small changes, and render frequently. Although this seems like it will take more time, you will have actually saved yourself time that would have otherwise been spent debugging scenes where many changes have been made. If you rotate the camera, add three more objects, and change the lighting all in one go, the chances of you getting lost are a lot greater than if you render a quick image in between each step.
• Experiment. This tutorial can't teach you everything. Experimenting with objects, textures, and everything else about POV-Ray is the best way to learn. It certainly can't hurt anything. And hey, if you make anything interesting, submit it to the Texture Library or the Object Library for others to see!
• Don't start out with a modeller. Only start using extra tools once you have a firm understanding of POV-Ray and have had plenty of experience just using the text editor -- otherwise, you won't learn some of the most important things and you'll be very stuck down the road.
• Zoom way back if you've lost an object. The best way to find "missing" objects (objects that you put in the source code but that aren't appearing on-screen) is to pull the camera far back. You may be able to find the objects. Another possibility is that the object has no texture. POV-Ray will usually give you a warning in this case, but sometimes it'll just go ahead and color the object black.
• Be aware of the defaults. Sometimes default values for things can mess up a scene. For example, putting "reflection 1.0" in an object's finish statement will not make that object a perfect reflector. You also need to add "ambient 0.0" and "diffuse 0.0". You can use the default directive to change the default behavior of an object.
• Bound complex objects. POV-Ray is only able to do so much with automatic bounds. The automatic bounding algorithm won't even touch really complex objects (like intersections or polynomial objects). You can really speed up rendering by specifying a bounding object for these, if applicable. Of course, if you have an infinite cone (for example), it'll be difficult to find an object which contains it. By far the best objects for bounding are boxes and spheres. See bounded_by.

Being Artistic

• Surrealism is easy. Because of the way ray-tracers work, scenes tend to come out looking a little surrealistic. Try maximizing this effect. Use it to your advantage.
• Try adding some fog. Just a little bit of fog can make your scene look a lot more three-dimensional, and it's not very computationally expensive. Try it.
• Use your light sources wisely. Lighting can make and break a scene -- especially if you're working with glass or mirror-like objects. Bad lighting can make your image seem flat and two-dimensional, too dark, too bright, or just plain boring. Experiment, and find just the right configuration for each scene you create. Remember, if your light source color is <2,2,2>, it will be twice as bright (this trick can save you a lot of time).
• Avoid infinite ground planes. Planes which stretch or appear to stretch off to infinity will give your scene an empty feeling. Unless you can find a way to populate this space with something, your scene will feel unbalanced. Of course, we've broken this rule many times throughout the Tutorial... but only when we're not trying to be artistic. Really.
• How something appears is more important than how it is. A scene needs to look right. If something is mathematically correct but doesn't look like it, that doesn't help you much. This is art -- the ends justify the means!
• Concentrate on what can be seen. This is related to the above tip. Don't agonize about perfecting things the viewer is never going to be able to see. As stated above, things only need to look right.
• Use a sky sphere. In scenes where you're going to have a visible "sky", a sky sphere is very effective. This is a sphere of a very large radius (the edge is maybe 1000 times further than any object in the scene), which you can texture to give a sky-like appearance. To keep things from casting a shadow on the sky sphere, use only ambient lighting on the sphere; turn off all the diffuse lighting. If you just want a sky that's a single color, you can just use the background directive.

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