PovRay - Beginning Tutorial

This section describes how to create a scene using POV-Ray's scene description language and how to render this scene.

Note: this is the Povray-tutorial of the Povray-Team. I just made the html-version and added the pictures. You can find the complete povray-documentation here. In that directory, you will also find the rest of the povray-distribution.

4.1 Your First Image

Let's create the scene file for a simple picture. Since ray tracers thrive on spheres, that's what we'll render first.

4.1.1 The POV-Ray Coordinate System

First, we have to tell POV-Ray where our camera is and where it's looking. To do this, we use 3D coordinates. The usual coordinate system for POV-Ray has the positive Y axis pointing up, the positive X axis pointing to the right, and the positive Z axis pointing into the screen as follows: 
    ^+Y
    |   /+Z
    |  /
    | /
    |/        +X
    |-------->
The negative values of the axes point the other direction, as follows: 
          ^+Y
          |   /+Z
          |  /
          | /
  -X      |/        +X
  <-------|-------->
         /|
        / |
       /  |
    -Z/   |
          v-Y

4.1.2 Adding Standard Include Files

Using your personal favorite text editor, create a file called "picture1.pov". Now, type in the following (note: The input is case sensitive, so be sure to get capital and lowercase letters correct): 
      #include "colors.inc"    // The include files contain
      #include "shapes.inc"    // pre-defined scene elements
      #include "textures.inc"

      camera {
        location  <0, 2, -3>
        look_at   <0, 1,  2>
      }
The first include statement reads in definitions for various useful colors. The second and third include statements read in some useful shapes and textures respectively. When you get a chance, have a look through them to see but a few of the many possible shapes and textures available. You may have as many include files as needed in a scene file. Include files may themselves contain include files, but you are limited to declaring includes nested only 10 "deep". Filenames specified in the include statements will be searched for in the home (current) directory first, and if not found, will then be searched for in directories specified by any "+L" (library path) options active. This would facilitate keeping all your "include" (.inc) files such as shapes.inc, colors.inc, and textures.inc in an "include" subdirectory, and giving an "+L" option on the command line to where your library of include files are.

4.1.3 Placing The Camera

The camera declaration describes where and how the camera sees the scene. It gives X, Y, Z coordinates to indicate the position of the camera and what part of the scene it is pointing at. You describe X, Y, Z coordinates using a 3-part "vector". A vector is specified by putting 3 numeric values between a pair of angle brackets and separating the values with commas. Briefly, "location <0, 2, -3>" places the camera up two units and back three units from the center of the ray tracing universe which is at <0, 0, 0>. Remember that by default +Z is into the screen and -Z is back out of the screen. Also "look_at <0, 1, 2>" rotates the camera to point at X, Y, Z coordinates <0, 1, 2>. A point 5 units in front of and 1 unit lower than the camera. The look_at point should be the center of attention of your image.

4.1.4 Describing An Object

Now that the camera is set up to record the scene, let's place a red sphere into the scene. Type the following into your scene file: 
      sphere {
        <0, 1, 2>, 2
        texture {
          pigment {color Yellow}  // Yellow is pre-defined in COLORS.INC
        }
      }
The first vector specifies center of the sphere. In this example the X coordinate is zero so it is centered left and right. It is also at Y=1 or 1 unit up from the origin. The Z coordinate is 2 which is 5 units in front of the camera at Z=-3. After the center vector is a comma followed by the radius which in this case is 2 units. Since the radius is 1/2 the width of a sphere, the sphere is 4 units wide.

4.1.5 Adding Texture To An Object

Now that we've defined the location and size of the sphere, we need to describe the appearance of the surface. The texture {...} block specifies these parameters. Texture blocks describe the color, bumpiness and finish properties of an object. In this example we will specify the color only. This is the minimum we must do. All other texture options except color will use the default values. The color you define is the way you want it to look if fully illuminated. If you were painting a picture of a sphere you would use dark shades of a color to indicate the shadowed side and bright shades on the illuminated side. However ray tracing takes care of that for you. You pick the basic color inherent in the object and POV-Ray brightens or darkens it depending on the lighting in the scene. Because we are defining the basic color the object actually IS rather than how it LOOKS the parameter is called "pigment". Many types of color patterns are available for use in a pigment {...} statement. The keyword "color" specifies that the whole object is to be one solid color rather than some pattern of colors. The word "Yellow" is a color identifier which was previously defined in the standard include file "colors.inc". If no standard color is available for your needs, you may define your own color by using the color keyword followed by "red", "green" and "blue" keywords specifying the amount of red, green and blue to be mixed. For example a nice shade of pink can be specified by: 
      color red 1.0 green 0.8 blue 0.8
The values after each keyword should be in the range 0.0 to 1.0. Any of the three components not specified will default to 0. A shortcut notation may also be used. The following produces the same shade of pink: 
      color rgb <1.0, 0.8, 0.8>
Colors are explained in more detail later.

4.1.6 Defining A Light Source

One more detail is needed for our scene. We need a light source. Until you create one, there is no light in this virtual world. Add the following text to your scene file: 
      light_source { <2, 4, -3> color White}
The vector specifies the location of the light as 2 units to our right, 4 units above the origin and 3 units back from the origin. The light_source is invisible, it only casts light, so no texture is needed. That's it! Close the file and render a small picture of it using this command: 
      POVRAY +W160 +H120 +P +X +D0 -V -Ipicture1.pov
If your computer does not use the command line, see the executable docs for the correct command to render a scene. You may set any other command line options you like, also. The scene is output to the image file DATA.TGA (or some suffix other than TGA if your computer uses a different file format). You can convert DATA.TGA to a GIF image using the commands listed in the docs included with your executable.

And here's what you get.

Jürgen Hüttner <huette@fu-berlin.de>

Note: this is the povray-tutorial of the Povray-Team. I just made the html-version and added the pictures. You can find the complete povray-documentation here. In that directory you will also find the rest of the povray-distribution.

Last modified: Tue Oct 8 12:29:08 1996