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1996-08-17
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Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer V3.00
Copyright POV-Team (see Docs.POVLegal for details)
RISC OS port V0.03 (14th August 1996)
This is a RISC OS port of The Persistence of Vision(tm) Ray Tracer v3.00a.
It was compiled using the Unix text only version of the source code.
This document assumes that the user is familiar with RISC OS terminology.
It is designed to explain the changes that were necessary to POV-Ray so that
it could be used under RISC OS. The rest of the documentation contained in
this package is the original. Any references in that documentation to
platform specific information should be ignored unless the RISC OS equivalent
is given here.
Output file type
----------------
24bit colour Targa files are the standard output file type and can be viewed
using ChangeFSI. If your intention is to create FLC/FLI animations using
ppm2fli, then you should ensure that the output file type is PPM (option
+FP).
Filenames
---------
In this RISC OS version, filenames containing MS-DOS style extensions are
converted so that the extension becomes a directory name. For example, a
scene file called atmos1.pov will become pov.atmos1. If the same file is
referred to as pov.atmos1 then no conversion takes place. POV-Ray will then
look for the scene named atmos1 in the directory called pov. The following
extensions are common and therefore should exist as directories, where
necessary, for the scenes you wish to trace:-
pov - contains scene description files
ini - contains option files
tga - output directory for targa files
png - output directory for Portable Network Graphics files
gif - input directory for gif files (not output)
inc - contains include files
The standard include directory contains most of these and a few more.
Unfortunately, due to the fact that the directory separator character is now
the same as the MSDOS extension separator there is a small restriction on
filenames. POV-Ray assumes that any filename that is three characters or less
in length is an extension, therefor it is wise to ensure that all scene names
are longer than this.
Before attempting to run POV-Ray
--------------------------------
• you should double-click on the obey file called !SetPaths to initialise a
number of system variables. This performs the following actions:-
• it sets up a path variable that can be used to reference any special
files with minimal typing, for example, POV:Res800.ini. This is
unlikely to be required, but is provided just in case.
• it adds the directory containing POV-Ray to your run path so that POV-Ray
can be run from within any work directory without specifiying it's full
pathname.
• Lastly, a special system variable called POV$ini is optionally set that
contains the name of an .ini file that will be read in by POV-Ray on
startup. If this is not required, then the line can be commented out by
prefixing it with a | after which the file should be double-clicked again
to make the change occur.
• POV-Ray expects to find a directory, named after the MS-DOS extension of
the output file, within the Currently Selected Directory (CSD). For
example, for Targa files, you should make sure that there is a directory
called tga, otherwise POV-Ray will stop with the message 'Error opening
output file - Not found'.
• You should alter any path names in povrayrc so that they correctly point to
the relevant directories on your hard disc. Any path names used in the
Library_Path option should be RISC OS style ones. If your editor supports
it (as do !Edit, !Zap and !StrongEd), path names of directories can easily
be pasted into a file by shift-dragging it to it's window where it will
be inserted at the cursor position.
• You should set the CSD to be the one that contains the input directory
(usually pov) and the output directory of the scene(s) you wish to trace,
for example,
DocsDemo (This should be set as the CSD)
|
+ pov (input dir.)
| |
| atmos1 (scene file)
|
|
|
+ tga (output dir.)
|
atmos1 (image file)
It is quite easy to set a directory to be the CSD from a task window by
typing into it:-
dir<SPACE>
and then shift dragging the directory into the task window where it's full
path name will be added to the command. Pressing RETURN will then execute
the command.
It is possible to supply path names of scenes to trace such as:-
ADFS::HardDisc4.$.Graphics.DocsDemo.pov.atmos1
or
if the CSD is the Graphics directory then:-
DocsDemo.pov.atmos1
but in these cases you must also supply the output filename as well,
because POV-Ray will strip the path name from the input filename completely
and construct an output filename from what's left. This means that it will
attempt to write the file to:-
tga.atmos1 instead of DocsDemo.tga.atmos1 (assuming Targa file output).
Explicitly specifying an output filename using the +O switch will override
this effect.
Examples
--------
From within a task window:-
*dir ADFS::HardDisc4.$.ProgDev.povray3.DocsDemo
*povray +IAtmos1
This will create a Targa image of the scene named pov.atmos1 where the
directory pov exists in the CSD. The image will be stored as tga.atmos1 where
the directory tga also exists in the CSD.
*dir ADFS::HardDisc4.$.ProgDev.povray3.POV3Demo.Anim.Ambient
*povray Ambient
This will read in the .ini file named ini.Ambient (from the CSD) and ray
trace ten frames of animation. The input file name is taken from the .ini
file and the output filenames are generated automatically. Each is numbered
so that it is different from the last.
Start up options
----------------
At startup, the system variable POV$ini (POVINI in the original
documentation) is read to find a default .ini file from which many POV-Ray
options can be set. An error will be generated if the file given (if
any) cannot be found. Alternatively, the file povrayrc, in the same directory
as POV-Ray, is searched for and it's contents used as the default settings.
If povrayrc is not found then the file povray.ini from the current directory
is used. If this does not exist then no error is given and POV-Ray uses it's
own set of defaults.
Bug reports
-----------
Any bugs can be reported to me at the Email address below, but please note
that if the bug is in a complicated, 3D raytracing type algorithm from the
original source code then I may not be able to understand it, never mind fix
it :-), but I'll try (such bug reports should be directed to the POV-Team
anyway).
Acknowledgment
----------------
Thanks to:
The POV-Ray Team for making the source code so portable.
Rosemary Miskin for testing this RISC OS port.
Lee Noar
<leenoar@argonet.co.uk>