"Greg Williams" <gre### [at] comcastnet> wrote:
> ... I would like the whole thing to
> be a little sharper, but don't know what to try next to accomplish that.
> The render quality is set at the maximum value (9).

The render quality setting does not affect sharpness. It is intended to save
development time by disabling specific POV-Ray features, such as radiosity,
refraction, and shadows. Sharpness is controlled by antialias settings and
overall image resolution. Contrast and radiosity add to the illusion of
sharpness by enhancing the visibility of the objects.

Antialiasing is best with sampling method 2 (+AM2), which is *not* the
default. In scenes with simple, flat-colored objects such as yours, i find
the default antialias threshold to be inadequate, and lower it to 0.1
(+A0.1).

Contrast can be adjusted with the ambient light setting, which someone has
already addressed.  This can be done with global_settings or with #default;
i prefer #default for technical reasons.  However, the image appears (to me)
to use radiosity.  If that's the case, then the ambient should be set to
zero. Radiosity is essential for details in shadowed areas anyway, unless
you use special lighting tricks.  (See Tek's hdr post for an example.)
Ambient light enables you to see shadowed areas, but still leaves them
deadly flat, giving the whole image that cheesy "Hi, i'm computer
generated!" look.

And don't forget that JPEG compression quality can heavily compromise your
image quality.  Be sure to shut off color supersampling.

Post a reply to this message