I'm a new povray user, so please be patient with me.

I want to generate a nice high resolution bitmap of clouds to use in my real
time application. I can generate a sky sphere, but this isn't any good
because it's round. I want a square bitmap. When I try making the camera
orthagonal, the sky sphere doesn't seem to render correctly.

Perhaps I'm doing it wrong. How would I do this? Perhaps I should generate
the clouds on a plane somehow, then use an orthagonal view?

Thanks,

Greg.

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In article <3b6e3547$1@news.povray.org>,
 "Greg Wade" <som### [at] gagacom> wrote:

> I want to generate a nice high resolution bitmap of clouds to use in my real
> time application. I can generate a sky sphere, but this isn't any good
> because it's round. I want a square bitmap.

What do you mean "because it's round"? An ordinary perspective camera 
will give you a square image, the only ones that don't give square 
images are the omnimax and fisheye projections. And this has nothing to 
do with the sky_sphere.


> When I try making the camera orthagonal, the sky sphere doesn't seem 
> to render correctly.

You mean orthographic?
The sky_sphere is just a background effect, a fancy version of 
"background" simulating an infinite sphere glowing the color of the 
pigment you give it (which is applied as if the sphere was of unit 
radius). The only thing that matters is the angle of the rays.
The rays from an orthographic camera are all parallel, so they all hit 
the same "spot" on the sky_sphere, and you get a solid-colored 
background. You could put the pigment on a plane facing the orthographic 
camera instead...or just use a perspective camera. Or are you trying to 
get some sort of 3D panorama? You might try a cylinderical projection, 
or MegaPOV's spherical projection.

-- 
Christopher James Huff - chr### [at] maccom, http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg, http://tag.povray.org/

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