═══ 1. Help ═══ Help ═══ 2. Disclaimer ═══ This software is provided without any guarantee for its usefulness for any purpose. I will not take responsibility for any damage that its use, invalid or not, may cause. No liability for consequential damages. In no event shall I be liable for consequential, incidental or indirect damages of any kind arising out of the delivery, performance or use of the software, even if I have been advised of the possibility of such damages. IF YOU CAN NOT ACCEPT THESE CONDITIONS,DELETE THIS SOFTWARE IMMEDIATELY. ═══ 3. What is this program for ? ═══ A GUI to POV-Ray 3.0 . ═══ 4. Limitations ═══ Just play around to see the limits.... There is less help text up to now, i will change this in ?possible? future versions. ═══ 5. Configuration ═══ The first thing to do, is the path configuration. Then you can start to play around and see what is possible and what not. The toolbar can be customized. It allows you to define the ordering of menu items and visual representation of menu items. Just click with the right mousebutton on the toolbar! The parameter field of the toolbar allows you to enter additional parameters for the program that you want to call. There are some substitution variables that you can set: %O - Substitute with the output filename,e.g. C POVRAY SHAPES.TGA %I - Substitute with the input filename,e.g. C POVRAY SHAPES.POV %S - Substitute with the scene filename, e.g. SHAPES %W - Substitute with the picture width, e.g. 320 %H - Substitute with the picture height, e.g. 200 ═══ 6. License ═══ This version of the program is FREEWARE. ═══ 7. Problems ═══ A lot of, please report bugs and problems to: Martin_Schulz@ibm.net ═══ 8. Copyright ═══ This program is copyrighted (C) 1997 by Martin Schulz ═══ 9. Version ═══ - Version 0.2 * Added some POV Ray parameter e.g. Internal Animation. * Added an Animation option to view the result of the Internal Animation. * Added a project file support. * Added an internal picture viewer with some basic editing functions. * Added Pre- and Postscene Commands. * Some bugfixes. * And more.... - Version 0.1 ═══ 10. Thanks to... ═══ Andy Key, for providing GBM, the Generalised Bitmap Module. OS/2 Developer magazine Jan/Feb 1995, for the UCMenu. POV-Team(tm) for providing Persistence of Vision(tm) Ray-Tracer ═══ 11. Path's ═══ POV Ray exe - this is the full path and filename of povray.exe Editor - this is the full path and filename of your favorite editor Picture viewer - this is the full path and filename of your favorite picture viewer Include path - library directories which you specify Scene path - this is the full path to your scene files Output path - this is the full path to the image files. The picture is created in the PovFrame directory, and after finishing it is copied to the output path. If you do not provide an output path, the final picture is copied to the root directory of the current drive. ═══ 12. Resize picture ═══ Select the new size for the picture. ═══ 13. Pre- Post commands ═══ PreScene Command - Set command before entire scene PreFrame Command - Set command before each frame PostScene Command - Set command after entire scene PostFrame Command - Set command after each frame Here is the sequence of events in an animation loop. Non-animated scenes work the exact same way except there is no loop. 1) Process all switches just once. 2) Execute PreScene Command if any. 3) Loop through frames (or just do once on non-animation). a) Execute PreFrame Command if any. b) Parse entire scene file, open output file and read settings, render the frame, destroy all objects,textures etc., close output file. c) Copy the output file to output directory d) Execute PostFrame Command if any. e) Go back to 3a until all frames are done. 4) Execute PostScene Command if any. 5) Exit POV-Ray. ═══ 14. The menu ═══ File View Options Help ═══ 15. File ═══ New scene - Create a new scene file. The configuration is recalled from the default configuration file. Open scene - Open an existing scene file. The current configuration is used. Open project - Open a project file. All the configuration values are recalled from this file. The file extention is *.ppj Save project - Save a project file. The current configuration and the name of the scene file are stored to a project file. WARNING: THE STRUCTURE OF THE PROJECT FILES WILL CHANGE IN FUTURE RELEASES. YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO USE OLD PROJECT FILES WITH A NEW VERSION! Exit - Save the current configuration either to the last opened project file or to the default configuration file and exit the program. ═══ 16. View ═══ The View menu Animation Picture Viewer Command Bar ═══ 17. Options ═══ Add own parameter Antialias Field render Internal animation Partial output Path's Pre Post commands ═══ 18. Help ═══ Well, show this help... ═══ 19. Animation ═══ The animation option is enabled after a successful render of an internal animation loop. All the pictures are shown one after the other. This works fine for small pictures. If the pictures are too large, the animation will be very slow. ═══ 20. Internal Animation ═══ Chapter 6.2.1.2 of the POV Ray documentation Initial_Frame=n Sets initial frame number to n Final_Frame=n Sets final frame number Initial_Clock=n.n Sets initial clock value Final_Clock=n.n Sets final clock value +KFIn Same as Initial_Frame=n +KFFn Same as Final_Frame=n +KIn.n Same as Initial_Clock=n.n +KFn.n Same as Final_Clock=n.n The internal animation loop new to POV-Ray 3.0 relieves the user of the task of generating complicated sets of batch files to invoke POV-Ray multiple times with different settings. While the multitude of options may look intimidating, the clever set of default values means that you will probably only need to specify the Final_Frame =n or the +KFF n option to specify the number of frames. All other values may remain at their defaults. Any Final_Frame setting other than -1 will trigger POV-Ray's internal animation loop. For example Final_Frame =10 or +KFF 10 causes POV-Ray to render your scene 10 times. If you specified Output_File_Name = file.tga then each frame would be output as file01.tga , file02.tga , file03.tga etc. The number of zero-padded digits in the file name depends upon the final frame number. For example +KFF 100 would generate file001.tga through file100.tga . The frame number may encroach upon the file name. On MS-Dos with an eight character limit, myscene.pov would render to mysce001.tga through mysce100.tga . The default Initial_Frame =1 will probably never have to be changed. You would only change it if you were assembling a long animation sequence in pieces. One scene might run from frame 1 to 50 and the next from 51 to 100. The Initial_Frame =n or +KFI n option is for this purpose. Note that if you wish to render a subset of frames such as 30 through 40 out of a 1 to 100 animation, you should not change Frame_Initial or Frame_Final . Instead you should use the subset commands described in section "Subsets of Animation Frames" . Unlike some animation packages, the action in POV-Ray animated scenes does not depend upon the integer frame numbers. Rather you should design your scenes based upon the float identifier clock. By default, the clock value is 0.0 for the initial frame and 1.0 for the final frame. All other frames are interpolated between these values. For example if your object is supposed to rotate one full turn over the course of the animation, you could specify rotate 360*clock*y . Then as clock runs from 0.0 to 1.0, the object rotates about the y-axis from 0 to 360 degrees. The major advantage of this system is that you can render a 10 frame animation or a 100 frame or 500 frame or 329 frame animation yet you still get one full 360 degree rotation. Test renders of a few frames work exactly like final renders of many frames. In effect you define the motion over a continuous float valued parameter (the clock) and you take discrete samples at some fixed intervals (the frames). If you take a movie or video tape of a real scene it works the same way. An object's actual motion depends only on time. It does not depend on the frame rate of your camera. Many users have already created scenes for POV-Ray 2 that expect clock values over a range other than the default 0.0 to 1.0. For this reason we provide the Initial_Clock =n.n or +KI n.n and Final_Clock =n.n or +KF n.n options. For example to run the clock from 25.0 to 75.0 you would specify Initial_Clock =25.0 and Final_Clock =75.0. Then the clock would be set to 25.0 for the initial frame and 75.0 for the final frame. Inbetween frames would have clock values interpolated from 25.0 through 75.0 proportionally. Users who are accustomed to using frame numbers rather than clock values could specify Initial_Clock =1.0 and Final_Clock =10.0 and Frame_Final =10 for a 10 frame animation. For new scenes, we recommend you do not change the Initial_Clock or Final_Clock from their default 0.0 to 1.0 values. If you want the clock to vary over a different range than the default 0.0 to 1.0, we recommend you handle this inside your scene file as follows... #declare Start = 25.0 #declare End = 75.0 #declare My_Clock = Start+(End-Start)*clock Then use My_Clock in the scene description. This keeps the critical values 25.0 and 75.0 in your .pov file. Note that more details concerning the inner workings of the animation loop are in the section on shell-out operating system commands in section "Shell-out to Operating System" . ═══ 21. Partial Output ═══ Chapter 6.2.2.1.2 of the POV Ray documentation Start_Column=n Set first column to n Start_Column=0.n Set first column to n percent of width +SCn or +SC0.n Same as Start_Column Start_Row=n Set first row to n pixels Start_Row=0.n Set first row to n percent of height +SRn or +Sn Same as Start_Row=n +SR0.n or +S0.n Same as Start_Row=0.n End_Column=n Set last column to n pixels End_Column=0.n Set last column to n percent of width +ECn or +EC0.n Same as End_Column End_Row=n Set last row to n pixels End_Row=0.n Set last row to n percent of height +ERn or +En Same as End_Row=n +ER0.n or +E0.n Same as End_Row=0.n When doing test rendering it is often convenient to define a small, rectangular sub-section of the whole screen so you can quickly check out one area of the image. The Start_Row , End_Row , Start_Column and End_Column options allow you to define the subset area to be rendered. The default values are the full size of the image from (1,1) which is the upper left to (w,h) on the lower right where w and h are the Width =n and Height =n values you have set. Note if the number specified is greater than 1 then it is interpreted as an absolute row or column number in pixels. If it is a decimal value between 0.0 and 1.0 then it is interpreted as a percent of the total width or height of the image. For example: Start_Row =0.75 and Start_Column =0.75 starts on a row 75% down from the top at a column 75% from the left. Thus it renders only the lower-right 25% of the image regardless of the specified width and height. The +SR , +ER , +SC and +EC switches work in the same way as the corresponding INI-style settings for both absolute settings or percentages. Early versions of POV-Ray allowed only start and end rows to be specified with +S n and +E n so they are still supported in addition to +SR and +ER . NOTE: Values that result in percent of the total width or height are currently not implemented in PovFront. ═══ 22. Texturize ═══ Hmmm, maybe the name does not describe this function very well so try it out: The Texturize function allows you to append a mirrored copy of the picture to the right or to the top of the picture. This makes it possible to use a picture as an endless background picture. ═══ 23. Internal Picture Viewer ═══ The Internal Picture Viewer shows the picture in its real size and allows you do do some basic edit functions to the picture. See the Internal Picture Viewer Menu for all the functions. ═══ 24. Internal Picture Viewer Menu ═══ File Edit Help ═══ 25. Greyscale ═══ If you select this item, the picture is mapped to a greyscale palette. ═══ 26. Map palettes dialog ═══ You can map the finished picture to various pixel depths and palettes.