Hi everyone!

I just started with POV-Ray & Moray and I would really appreciate it if
someone could help me with a few problems (I'm sorry if this is wrong place
to post).

First: When I render a normal image with POV-Ray, it turns out to be OK.
There's just one problem. For example if I render sphere and map it with
some kind of material, for example blue Azurite stone (I'm using Moray)
everything looks Ok, except the fact that there's dithering in the sphere.
It looks like if there would be only like 16 shades of blue or something,
not 256 as it should be. I wonder what's wrong? I don't have 256 color
desktop or anything...

My other problem concerns Moray & POV-Ray co-work. When I render a scene
from Moray, POV-Ray opens normally, but it displays an error message when
trying to render the image. It says: Command line error: Unrecognized
output file format X. However, when i load the scene in POV-Ray after this,
it renders it completely normally. What should I do??

Thanks in advance, J.K.

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Lunaxx wrote:
>Hi everyone!
>
>I just started with POV-Ray & Moray and I would really appreciate it if
>someone could help me with a few problems (I'm sorry if this is wrong place
>to post).
>
>First: When I render a normal image with POV-Ray, it turns out to be OK.
>There's just one problem. For example if I render sphere and map it with
>some kind of material, for example blue Azurite stone (I'm using Moray)
>everything looks Ok, except the fact that there's dithering in the sphere.
>It looks like if there would be only like 16 shades of blue or something,
>not 256 as it should be. I wonder what's wrong? I don't have 256 color
>desktop or anything...
>
>My other problem concerns Moray & POV-Ray co-work. When I render a scene
>from Moray, POV-Ray opens normally, but it displays an error message when
>trying to render the image. It says: Command line error: Unrecognized
>output file format X. However, when i load the scene in POV-Ray after this,
>it renders it completely normally. What should I do??
>
>Thanks in advance, J.K.
>


SORRY!

It seems that this message should have been in Moray-section. Well anyway, I
managed to fix to second problem (Moray&Pov co-work), but now there's just
a new problem :-(. Great. When POV-Ray is starting render it shows a alert
box, which says StretchDIBits () failed (Windows error). What the hell this
might be? In addition to this the background of my rendered image is
chequered like a chess board????

Sorry about this hassle...

J.K

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"Lunaxx" <jka### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message
news:web.3db85b808c57011486cf4c6f0@news.povray.org...

> It looks like if there would be only like 16 shades of blue or something,
> not 256 as it should be. I wonder what's wrong? I don't have 256 color
> desktop or anything...
>

Hmm, define "shades of blue" - all POV output is 16million+ colours, and you
should make sure that your monitor is set up to support this or you will see
dithering (the actual image will still be high colour - this will only affect
the display).

> My other problem concerns Moray & POV-Ray co-work. When I render a scene
> from Moray, POV-Ray opens normally, but it displays an error message when
> trying to render the image. It says: Command line error: Unrecognized
> output file format X. However, when i load the scene in POV-Ray after this,
> it renders it completely normally. What should I do??
>

Basically, Moray, for some reason, is specifying an unknown or unsupported
output image format. I don't know moray well enough to know what you need to
change, but dig around in the manual or the options menu and see what you can
find relating to image-output.


> Thanks in advance, J.K.
>
>

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 24 Oct 2002 16:43:44 EDT, "Lunaxx" <jka### [at] hotmailcom>
wrote:

>For example if I render sphere and map it with
>some kind of material, for example blue Azurite stone (I'm using Moray)
>everything looks Ok, except the fact that there's dithering in the sphere.
>It looks like if there would be only like 16 shades of blue or something,
>not 256 as it should be. I wonder what's wrong? I don't have 256 color
>desktop or anything...

Are you sure you are running in a true-color video mode (24-bit or
32-bit)? If you run in high-color (16-bit), banding will occur on
screen. The image POV-Ray produces as a file will in all cases be
smooth, but if your monitor can not show its full potential, POV is
not to blame :)


Peter Popov ICQ : 15002700
Personal e-mail : pet### [at] vipbg
TAG      e-mail : pet### [at] tagpovrayorg

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On Thu, 24 Oct 2002 17:11:36 EDT, "Lunaxx" <jka### [at] hotmailcom>
wrote:

>It seems that this message should have been in Moray-section. Well anyway, I
>managed to fix to second problem (Moray&Pov co-work), but now there's just
>a new problem :-(. Great. When POV-Ray is starting render it shows a alert
>box, which says StretchDIBits () failed (Windows error).

That's a Windows error indicating that the standard Windows function
for resizing images (which POV uses to fit the image into the window)
has failed. It may be a limitation of your hardware, your drivers, or
the function itself - but not in POV.

>In addition to this the background of my rendered image is
>chequered like a chess board????

This is the more or less standardized way to display transparency. The
checker box shows where the image will be transparent - so you can use
it in a paint program to collage it with other images. If you do not
want this behavior, you should turn the alpha channel off (+ua in POV,
I don't know about Moray)

Hope this helps - and maybe try reading the docs :)


Peter Popov ICQ : 15002700
Personal e-mail : pet### [at] vipbg
TAG      e-mail : pet### [at] tagpovrayorg

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On Thu, 24 Oct 2002 16:43:44 -0400, Lunaxx quoth:

> Hi everyone!

> My other problem concerns Moray & POV-Ray co-work. When I render a scene
> from Moray, POV-Ray opens normally, but it displays an error message
> when trying to render the image. It says: Command line error:
> Unrecognized output file format X. However, when i load the scene in
> POV-Ray after this, it renders it completely normally. What should I
> do??

As I recall, this error message occurs if you try to use an old version
of Moray with POV-Ray 3.5.  The solution is to upgrade to the latest
version of Moray.

-- 
Mark

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