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PERSISTENCE OF VISION RAY TRACER(tm) POV-Ray(tm) VERSION 3.0 PLATFORM SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS FOR MS-Dos This file contains the documentation that is specific to the MS-Dos version of POV-Ray. It is not the full documentation for the program. Other documentation you will need is: USER_???.DOC This contains technical info about memory usage, how to configure the memory manager and other info that is specific to the compiler that was used to create the program. The ??? may be WAT for Watcom, BCC for Borland or GCC for DJGPP Gnu Compiler. POVHELP.EXE This is a dos program for reading hypertext help files for POV-Ray. Run this program to read the full reference guide for POV-Ray. It covers all features in detail. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ------------------- POV-Ray requires a 386 or better CPU with at least 4 meg of ram. Faster 486-DX or Pentium processors are recommended. A 386 or 486-sx does not have built-in floating point math capability so it will run very slow. Adding a 387 or 487 co-processor will increase speed 7 to 10 fold. This version runs in MS-Dos or as an MS-Dos application under Windows 3.x, Windows 95, Windows NT and OS/2. A Windows specific version is also available. While it is working, POV-Ray can display the image on a VGA or SVGA graphics system. Older CGA, EGA or Mono video cannot use the graphics preview but it can still create an image file. In addition to the programs supplied in this package, you will need a text editor or word processing program that can read, edit and save plain, unformatted ASCII text files. The EDIT program that comes with MS-Dos will work for moderate size files. You will need some sort of image viewer to see the images. One that supports TGA, GIF, and PNG formats is recommended. If you want to turn TGA files into animations we recommend a program called Dave's Targa Animator (DTA.EXE) and an animation viewer such as AAPLAY or Trilobyte PLAY. Such programs are available at www.povray.org or are usually available where you obtained POV-Ray. These instructions assume you have a basic knowledge of how to work with directories and files under dos. It assumes you know what the dos path is; what an environment variable is; and how to edit your AUTOEXEC.BAT file to change the path or environment. The install program will offer to edit the path for you but if something goes wrong you may need to change it yourself. If you do not have knowledge about directories, paths, batch files or editors, your local bookstore has many tutorial books available that will help you. Don't be intimidated by the insulting titles of such books. The only true "dummies" are those who give up trying. BASIC USAGE ----------- NOTICE! IF YOU DID NOT INSTALL THE PROGRAM USING THE INSTALL.EXE SYSTEM, THE EXAMPLES AND INSTRUCTIONS GIVEN HERE MAY NOT WORK! THE INSTALLATION PROCESS CONFIGURES POVRAY.INI AND SEVERAL IMPORTANT BATCH FILES. WITHOUT THESE FILES CONFIGURED, THE EXAMPLES HEREIN MAY NOT WORK. POV-Ray's basic purpose is to read a scene description written in the POV language and to write an image file. The scene files are plain ASCII text files that you create using a text editor. Dozens of sample files are included with this package to illustrate the various features. You invoke POV-Ray by typing a command at the MS-Dos prompt. The command is "POVRAY" and it must be followed by one or more command line switches. Each switch begins with a plus or minus sign. Blanks separate the switches. The switches may be upper or lower case. Note: The examples in this documentation assume you installed POV-Ray in the C:\POVRAY3 directory. The installer will let you install POV-Ray anywhere and will properly configure it for the drive and directory you specified. You just substitute that drive and directory anywhere we tell you to use C:\POVRAY3. Change to that directory now. Then type the following command line and press [ENTER] POVRAY +ISHAPES +D1 The +I command (that's "i" for "input") tells the program what file to read as input. If you don't give an extension on the file name, .POV is assumed. Thus +ISHAPES tells it to read in SHAPES.POV to be rendered. The +D switch (for "display") tells the program to turn the graphic preview display on. A "-D" would turn it off. The number "1" tells it what type of display to use. Type 1 is the old fashioned standard generic VGA at 320 by 200 resolution and just 256 colors. This is pretty much guaranteed to work on any VGA video system. There are other options in effect besides those you typed on the command line. They are stored in a file called POVRAY.INI which was created by the install system. POV-Ray automatically looks for this file in the same directory where POVRAY.EXE resides. See "USING INI FILES" below for more information on POVRAY.INI and other INI files. When you enter the command shown above, you will see brightly colored geometric shapes begin to appear as POV-Ray calculates the color of each pixel row by row. You will probably be disappointed with the graphic display results. That is because this is only a preview display. The actual image is in full 24-bit color but we cannot display that high quality using simple VGA with a fixed set of 256 colors. If your hardware supports the VESA interface standard or you have a VESA TSR driver loaded, try running with +DG rather than +D1. This will give you access to all of the various modes your video hardware can use. If you have 15-bit or 16- bit high color capability try +DGH or if you have 24-bit true color capability try +DGT to see the image in all its glory. See "DISPLAY TYPES" below for more information on graphics preview. When the program finishes, you will hear beeps. After admiring the image, press [ENTER]. You will see a text screen of statistics. If the text is too much to fit on the screen you may press cursor up or down keys to read more text. Notice that there are tabs at the bottom of the screen. Press cursor left or right keys to view other interesting text information. Press [ENTER] again to exit POV-Ray. If you do not have high color or true color ability you will have to view the image file to see the real colors. The image file SHAPES.TGA is written to your current directory. By default POV-Ray creates files in TGA format. This is a standard format for storing 24-bit true-color images. You will need an image viewing program to view the file. Such programs are usually available from the same place where you obtained POV-Ray but a viewer is not included in this package. If you cannot view TGA files you may add the switch +FN and POV-Ray will output PNG (Portable Network Graphic) format. If PNG format viewer is not available then type the following: T2G SHAPES and press [ENTER]. This will run a batch file that invokes the TGA2GIF program. The program will read your SHAPES.TGA file, create an optimal 256 color palette and write a GIF format file SHAPES.GIF. Most image viewing programs support GIF. RUNNING FILES IN OTHER DIRECTORIES ---------------------------------- Normally POV-Ray only looks in the current directory for the files it needs. It does not search your MS-Dos path for data files; it only searches for programs. In the sample scene you just ran, file SHAPES.POV was in the current directory so this was no problem. That scene also needed other files but your POVRAY.INI file tells POV-Ray other places to search for necessary files. If you allowed the install system to update your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, then you can change to any drive or directory and can run POV-Ray from that directory. You will also be able to use the batch files and utilities that came with this package in any directory. For future reference let's call the "use-C:\POVRAY3-in-your-path-plan" as "PLAN 1". There are some circumstances where you may not want to put C:\POVRAY3 in your path. There is a limit of 128 characters in your path statement and you may not have room for it. Try rendering the SHAPES example from a different directory. If it doesn't work, then you forgot to re-boot your system so the new path takes effect. If after re-booting it still doesn't work, it probably means your path is too full. You will have to adopt a different plan. Chances are, you already have several directories in your path. Most systems have C:\DOS, C:\WINDOWS or some directory such as C:\UTILITY already in the path. We have provided several small batch files that you can copy to that directory. For future reference we'll call the "put-batch-files-in-a-directory-already-on-the-path-plan" as "PLAN 2". At any dos prompt, type the word PATH and press [ENTER]. It will show you what directories are already on your path. Then copy the following files from your C:\POVRAY3 directory to any of the directories already on your path. The files are: RUNPOV.BAT RERUNPOV.BAT RUNPHELP.BAT T2G.BAT Once you have copied these files, try this example... In this case, do not invoke the program with the command "POVRAY". Instead use "RUNPOV" as follows: cd \POVRAY3\POV3DEMO\SHOWOFF RUNPOV +ISUNSET3 +D1 This changes to the \POVRAY3\POV3DEMO\SHOWOFF directory where the file SUNSET3.POV is found. It runs the file RUNPOV.BAT. That batch file is set up to run POV-Ray even if it is not on the dos path. It also passes the switches along to POV-Ray. These batch files have other uses, even if you are using "PLAN 1" as described above or "PLAN 3" as described below. For more on these batch files, see "USING BATCH FILES" below. All of the early examples in this document assumed you were running POV-Ray from the directory where it was installed such as C:\POVRAY3. This approach of always using the installation directory is in fact "PLAN 3". If you are using this method, you need to tell POV-Ray where else to look for files. In the case of SUNSET3.POV you could do this: POVRAY +IC:\POVRAY3\POV3DEMO\SHOWOFF\SUNSET3 +D1 However some scenes need more than one file. For example the directory \POVRAY3\POVSCN\LEVEL3\DRUMS2 contains three files: DRUMS.POV, DRUMS.INC and REDNEWT.GIF all of which are required for that one scene. In this case you should use the +L switch ("L" for "library") to add new library paths to those that POV-Ray will search. You would render the scene with this command. POVRAY +L\POVRAY3\POVSCN\LEVEL3\DRUMS2 +IDRUMS +D1 USING INI FILES --------------- There were more options used in these renderings than just the switches +I, +D, and +L that you specify. When you run the program, POV- Ray automatically looks for the file POVRAY.INI in whatever directory that POVRAY.EXE is in. The POVRAY.INI file contains many options that control how POV-Ray works. We have set this file up so that it is especially easy to run your first scene with minimal problems. The file should be placed in the same directory as POVRAY.EXE and it will automatically be read when POVRAY is run. If you ever move POVRAY.EXE to a different directory, be sure to move POVRAY.INI too. Complete details on all of the available switches and options that can be given on the command line or in POVRAY.INI are given in the hypertext reference guide. You may also create INI files of your own with switches or options similar to POVRAY.INI. If you put a file name on the command line without a plus or minus sign before it, POV-Ray reads it as an INI file. Try this... POVRAY RES120 +ISHAPES +D1 This causes POV-Ray to look for a file called RES120.INI which we have provided. It sets your resolution to 120 by 90 pixels for a quick preview. The following INI files have been provided for you. RES120.INI Sets resolution to 120 by 90 RES320.INI Sets resolution to 320 by 200 RES640.INI Sets resolution to 640 by 480 RES800.INI Sets resolution to 800 by 600 RES1K.INI Sets resolution to 1024 by 768 LOW.INI Sets low quality at 120 by 90 SLOW.INI Turns on radiosity and anti-aliasing; very slow but beautiful. TGAFLI.INI TGAFLC.INI Create an FLI/FLC animation from TGA images PNGFLI.INI PNGFLC.INI Create an FLI/FLC animation from PNG images ZIPFLI.INI ZIPFLC.INI Create an FLI/FLC animation from zipped images See "ANIMATION TIPS" below. ALLSCENE.INI ALLANIM.INI See "RENDERING ALL SCENES" below. You can create your own custom INI's which can contain any command in the reference guide. ALTERNATIVES TO POVRAY.INI -------------------------- The POVRAY.INI file is supposed to hold your favorite global default options that you want to use all the time. You should feel free to edit it with new options that suit your needs. However it must be located in the same directory as POVRAY.EXE or it won't be found. The dos path isn't searched nor will +L commands help because POVRAY.INI is processed before any command line switches. If your POVRAY.EXE resides on a CD-ROM then you can't edit the POVRAY.INI on the CD. There is an alternative. You may use an environment variable to specify an alternative global default. In your AUTOEXEC.BAT file add a line similar to this: set POVINI=D:\DIRECT\FILE.INI which sets the POVINI environment variable to whatever drive, directory and INI file you choose. If you specify any POVINI environment variable then POVRAY.INI is NOT READ. This is true even if the file you named doesn't exist. Note that you are specifying an entire path and file name. This is not a pointer to a directory containing POVRAY.INI. It is a pointer to the actual file itself. Note that the POVRAYOPT environment variable in previous versions of POV-Ray is no longer supported. USING BATCH FILES ----------------- We've already described how the file RUNPOV.BAT can be used as an alternative to running POV-Ray directly. RUNPOV.BAT also has one other use. It uses the +GI switch to create a file called RERUN.INI. This makes it very easy to run the same file over again with the same parameters. When creating your own scene files you will probably make dozens of test renders. This is a very valuable feature. Here is how it works... Suppose you render a scene as follows: RUNPOV +IMYSCENE +D1 RES120 This renders MYSCENE.POV at 120 by 90 resolution. (Note there is no such scene. This is hypothetical.) After viewing it, you noticed a mistake which you fixed with your text editor. To rerun the scene type: RERUNPOV and that's all. It will rerun the same scene you just ran. Suppose you want more detail on the next run. You can add more switches or INI files. For example: RERUNPOV RES320 will rerun at higher resolution. Subsequent uses of RERUNPOV will be at 320 by 200 until you tell it differently. As another example, the +A switch turns on anti-aliasing. Typing "RERUNPOV +A" reruns with anti- aliasing on. All subsequent reruns will have it on until you do a "RERUNPOV -A" to turn it off. Note if you do another "RUNPOV" it starts over from your POVRAY.INI defaults and it overwrites the old RERUN.INI. Two other batch files are included. RUNPHELP.BAT is only used as an alternative way to run POVHELP from another directory. If you used installation PLAN 2 then use RUNPHELP.BAT rather than POVHELP.EXE. This batch file serves no other purpose. Finally T2G.BAT invokes the TGA2GIF.EXE program for converting TGA files to GIF files. You could run TGA2GIF directly but its default parameters do not generally produce the best results. If you use T2G instead, it adds some command line switches which work better. For a full list of switches available for TGA2GIF, type "TGA2GIF" with no parameters and it will display the available switches and options. DISPLAY TYPES ------------- You have already seen how to turn on graphics preview using +D1. Here are details on other variations of the +D switch. Use -D to turn the display off. If you use -D then you will probably want to add the +V switch to turn on "v"erbose status messages so you can monitor the progress of the rendering while in progress. The number "1" after the +D tells it what kind of video hardware to use. If you use +D alone or +D0 then POV-Ray will attempt to auto detect your hardware type. Use +D? to see a message about what type of hardware POV-Ray found. You may also explicitly tell POV-Ray what hardware to use. The following chart lists all of the supported types. +D0 Auto detect (S)VGA type (Default) +D1 Standard VGA 320x200 +D2 Standard VGA 360 x 480 +D3 Tseng Labs 3000 SVGA 640x480 +D4 Tseng Labs 4000 SVGA +D5 AT&T VDC600 SVGA 640x400 +D6 Oak Technologies SVGA 640x480 +D7 Video 7 SVGA 640x480 +D8 Video 7 Vega (Cirrus) VGA 360x480 +D9 Paradise SVGA 640x480 +DA Ahead Systems Ver. A SVGA 640x480 +DB Ahead Systems Ver. B SVGA 640x480 +DC Chips & Technologies SVGA 640x480 +DD ATI SGVA (older version) 640x480 +DE Everex SVGA 640x480 +DF Trident SVGA 640x480 +DG VESA Standard SVGA Adapter +DH ATI XL display card +DI Diamond Computer Systems SpeedSTAR 24X The most common type is a VESA standard card which uses +DG. VESA is a standard software interface that works on a wide variety of cards. Those cards which do not have VESA support directly built-in, generally have a video driver that you can load to provide VESA support. The program UniVBE is a high quality universal VESA driver that may work for you. It can be found at www.povray.org or possibly other POV-Ray sites. The options listed above had been tested and worked under earlier versions of POV-Ray but there have been many changes in the program and we cannot guarantee these all still work. If you can use VESA then do so. It has been well tested and will give you the most flexibility. After the +D and the type, you may specify a 3rd character that specifies the palette type. +D?3 Use 332 palette with dithering (Default and best for VGA systems) This is a fixed palette of 256 colors with each color consisting 3-bits of red data, 3-bits green and 2-bits blue. +D?0 Use HSV palette option for VGA display This is a fixed palette of 256 colors where colors are matched according to hue, saturation and intensity rather than the amount of red, green and blue. +D?G Use fixed gray scale palette option for VGA display +D?H Use HiColor option. Displays 32,000+ colors with dithering. Supported on VESA, SpeedSTAR 24X, ATI XL HiColor and Tseng 4000 based cards with high color 15 or 16 bit options. +D?T For Truecolor 24 bit cards. Use 24 bit color. Supported on the Diamond SpeedSTAR 24X and cards with 24bit VESA support only. Here are some examples: +D0H Auto detect the VGA display type and display the image to the screen as it's being worked on. Use the 15-bit HiColor chip and dithering to display more than 32,000 colors on screen. +D4 Display to a TSENG 4000 chipset VGA using the 332 palette option. +D4H Display to a TSENG 4000 chipset VGA using the HiColor option. +DG0 Display to a VESA VGA adapter and use the HSV palette option. +DG3 Display to a VESA VGA adapter and use the 332 palette option. +DGH Display to a VESA VGA adapter and use the HiColor option for over 32,000 colors. +DGT Display to a VESA VGA adapter and use the TrueColor option for over 16 million colors. Note that your VESA BIOS must support these options in order for you to use them. Some cards may support HiColor &/or TrueColor at the hardware level but not thru their VESA BIOS. ANIMATION TIPS -------------- The section above on USING INI FILES lists six files for creating animations. The FLI versions create 320 x 200 FLI files and the FLC versions create FLC files at whatever resolution you specify. These files use POV-Ray's new command shell-out feature which allows you to execute a dos command before or after any render or before or after each frame. Full details on these commands are in the reference guide. They also require DTA.EXE which is not included in this package but is available at www.povray.org and many other places. If you have DTA, try this example: RUNPOV +D1 +IFLOAT1 +L\POVRAY3\POV3DEMO\ANIM\FLOAT1 TGAFLI RES320 +KFF10 The +KFF10 command tells POV-Ray to render a 10 frame animation. TGAFLI firsts looks to see if FLOAT1.FLI exists. It uses a handy program called EXISTS.EXE which we have provided. (Note if you are using installation plan 2, you must also copy EXISTS.EXE to a directory on your path. It is a very small program and not worth creating a batch file.) You may interrupt and restart this rendering using RERUNPOV and it will pick up where it left off. When finished, it calls DTA to assemble MYSCENE.FLI from the TGA files. Because lots of TGA files take up space, you may choose to use PNG which is a compressed file format. PNGFLI.INI is provided for such rendering. Note versions of DTA prior to 2.2 beta 24 did not properly handle PNG or did not support PNG at all. Finally if you have the utility PKZIP.EXE (not included) you can use the file ZIPFLI.INI to zip your TGA or PNG files together and create a FLI from it. The zip method is more efficient to use if you are going to have to interrupt and restart rendering. This is because files are moved to the archive only when 100% complete. This let's you test to see if a frame is complete without re-parsing the scene. RENDERING ALL SCENES -------------------- A set of batch and INI files have been provided to help you render all of the sample scenes and animations. These files must be run in your C:\POVRAY3 directory or whatever directory in which you installed POV-Ray. The file ALLSTILL.BAT renders all still scenes using parameters from ALLSTILL.INI. It creates a \POVRAY3\ALLSCENE directory and puts all the resulting GIF files there. ALLANIM.BAT creates animations in that same directory. It assumes that you have the utilities pkzip.exe and dta.exe available in your installation directory or via your dos path. ALLANIM.INI contains the parameters for the animations. You may edit these INI files to suit your taste. THE POV-Help(tm) SYSTEM ----------------------- The main documentation for POV-Ray is a hypertext help data file called POVHELP.PHE. You can read this file using a reader called POVHELP.EXE. Simply run this program or use the RUNPHELP.BAT to run it. Other options for using POVHELP are in the "Help on Help" section of the program itself. If you prefer a text copy of the reference guide in POVHELP.PHE then the utility PHE2TXT.EXE is provided. To use it type: PHE2TXT -IPOVHELP.PHE and press [ENTER]. This will create a plain ASCII text file named POVRAY.DOC which contains the full POV-Ray reference documentation. To see other options for this utility, type PHE2TXT with no parameters and it will show you other options. If html format is more to your liking, try PHE2HTML.EXE which is also included. From the \POVRAY3 directory type these commands: md HTML PHE2HTML -IPOVHELP.PHE -OHTML\INDEX.HTM -PPOV Then use your favorite internet browser to look at the local location "file://c:\povray3\html\index.htm". For other PHE2HTML options type PHE2HTML with no parameters and it will show you other options. The POV-Team hopes to release other PHE2???? utilities soon. The format of the POV-Help database is documented and freely available. Visit www.povray.org for more information. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POV-Ray, POV-Help, and Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer are trademarks of the POV-Team. MS-Dos and Windows, Windows NT and Windows 95 are trademarks of Microsoft. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- This document (c) Copyright 1996 - POV-Team.