OKay, this helped a lot.  But, I need the lighting to be brighter.  It is
hard to see the planets.  I probably need to find a different color
background than black, but, white is not a good choice either.

"Slime" <fak### [at] emailaddress> wrote:
> > Okay, I figure out how to create the spheres using a SQL script
>
> That's "SDL."
>
> > This is all on one plane.  It is a flat map.  So, I want the lighting to
> be
> > the same over the whole map.
>
> Well, I would place all of the objects on the X-Y plane. Then you could
> place a primary light source way off in the distance behind the camera:
>
> light_source {
>     <-.3,.4,-1>*9999
>     rgb 1
> }
>
> And maybe a secondary light source for back lighting from the other side of
> the X-Y plane:
>
> light_source {
>     <.3,-.4,1>*9999 // same as other light's position but negative
>     rgb <0.75, 0.8, 1> // slightly bluish for a darker look; experiment!
> }
>
> (You could experiment with "parallel" light sources rather than just putting
> them really far away as I have. Check the documentation.)
>
> > I want the camera to just be fairly simple,
> > but, the coords are pretty large.
>
> Then you probably want an orthographic camera:
>
> #declare maxdist = 100; // the maximum distance that an object can be from
> the origin and still be visible
>
> camera {
>     orthographic
>     location -z*10
>     right x*maxdist*4/3
>     up y*maxdist
>     look_at 0
> }
>
> > > The goal is to use a database of sometype to store the
> > > coordinate and planet information.
>
> If you have the data in some sort of comma-separated format, then you can
> read it in with SDL using #fopen and #read.
>
> > > Once the
> > > picture is generated, I want to create a coordinate field over the top
> of
> > > it for web use that will show information on the planet when you hover
> over
> > > it.
>
> That's a little more difficult, but it would be possible to use #fopen and
> #write to actually write out an HTML image map corresponding to your image.
> This will have to be accompianied by some JavaScript to display information
> with onmouseover. If you're not familiar with this sort of thing then you
> should probably learn to do it by hand first before worrying about making
> POV-Ray automatically do it.
>
>  - Slime
>  [ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]

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