File Properties

The File Properties provides a number options for the appearance of the scene including background color, image and fog properties..

Scene

Background

An image may be selected that will be rendered as the background to your scene.

You may disable the background image from being rendered by de-selecting Button-Image.gif (171 bytes) on the Main Toolbar.

Color

You may alternatively select a background color to be rendered as the background to your scene.

Raytracing (Available with 3D Canvas Pro)

Radiosity Level (Available with 3D Canvas Pro  when using raytraced rendering)

Radiosity lighting produces much more life-like lighting than standard raytracing provides.

The quality of radiosity light can be adjusted. A value of zero means do not render radiosity lighting.

Atmosphere

You may disable fog (atmosphere) from being rendered by de-selecting Button-Fog.gif (158 bytes) on the Main Toolbar.

Mode

You may select the mode in which fog will be rendered. The general options are Linear, Exponential and Exponential Squared. If you are a 3D Canvas Pro user and are rendering with POVRay you can also choose to disable standard fog and only render atmospheric effects created by particles (See below).

Color

The color of the fog may be selected by clicking on the current color.

Raytracing Particles (Available with 3D Canvas Pro  when using raytraced rendering)

This simulates the effect of light reflecting off of particles in the air. It is useful for producing "visible light" such as Spotlights in fog.

Note that there are a few tricks to getting a good effect with this in POVRay:

  1. To enable "visible light" it is necessary to enable Render Atmosphere on the primary toolbar.
  2. You will need at least one spotlight in your scene or you will not see any "visible light".
  3. "Visible light" is only visible if there is something behind the "visible light". This is easy for any scene that takes place in the interior of a room. But if you want to have "visible light" in "space" you will need to create a giant sphere and place your spotlight and camera inside it. This appears to be a bug in the current version of POVRay. It may be repaired in the future.
  4. You may need to add additional lighting to your scene since "atmosphere" acts like fog reducing the amount of light in a scene.
  5. Making the Atmosphere's Linear: Max. (see below) large helps make the scene brighter.
  6. All point lights and parallel point lights in your scene must be set to NOT cast a shadow. You can do this by right clicking on the lights and de-selecting Cast Shadow. This appears to be a bug in the current version of POVRay. It may be repaired in the future.

Color

The color of the particles. Black disables raytracing particles.

Scatter Freq.

The portion of the light that is scattered by the particles rather than being absorbed. A larger value will result in more visible light.

Linear

The start and maximum distance for linear rendered fog.

Density

The density of exponential rendered fog.

Textures

A number of texture rendering options are provided. Linear is the default because it produces good results at good rendering speeds. If you have a fast system, you may find that Linear MipMap Linear will produce the best results. Point sampled produces the worst results, and should only be chosen if you are running without 3D Acceleration.