Another thought...

Is it possible to make the Spheres themselves light sources?  I need them to
stand out, but, because they are so small and so far away, I am not seeing
some of them well.  The background color is hurting me as well.

"Fyretrohl" <fyr### [at] ccgheavencom> wrote:
> 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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