Hello everybody.

I am writing a program that uses POV-Ray for the graphical output. The
geometry that is rendered stays pretty much the same all the time, but with
customizeable textures, labels, and so on. My own program prints a POV file
and then calls POV-Ray to process it.
I would like to know if I can suppress POV-Rays GUI and just have it render
my scene. As POV is originally a command-line program, that should be no
problem, but I couldn't find a switch for that in the help files. I'm using
the Win version.

My second question concerns fonts. When the POV Scene is processed on other
machines but mine, would the fonts I used have to be properly installed
into the Windows system, or is it sufficient if the ttf files are in one of
the library paths?

Third question is about Mesh2 objects. I made like 90% of my scene in 3D
Studio MAX and exported the geometry to POV using 3DWin5. This resulted in
good-looking, but huge Mesh2 objects. Parsing these takes almost as long as
the render itself. Is there any way to speed that up?

Last thing is about shadows. Can I cast them on objects which are otherwise
invisible? I know it's possible in Max. The idea is, for example, having a
background picture that shows a floor, and my object should cast a shadow
on it. So what I would need is a plane that has the same angle and position
as that floor so it receives a shadow as that floor would. That plane would
have to be invisible, though. I only need the shadow on it.
I hope you get the concept, it's difficult to explain in words. :)

Thanks in advance.

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