Arnold the Aardvark wrote:

> I have previously used POV unders Windows and got on quite well with it.
> I am new to Linux and thought having POV on it would encourage me
> to use it. I installed the system following the instructions provided.
> 
> I created very simple scene (copied from 'Ray Tracing Creations') and
> ran this command line:
> 
>   x-povray +W120 +H90 +Ifirst.pov +Ofirst.tga +V (also from the book)
> 

This looks fine so far...

> Everything appeared to work but the resulting TGA could not be opened
> with any image viewers under Linux or Windows. The same appears to be
> true of PNG and JPG. I didn't try anything else.

... but my guess is that POV-Ray actually did not save the image in TGA 
format. If you do not especially specify the file format with the command 
line or an .ini file POV-Ray takes the 'system default'... and this is PPM 
with unix OS. You can set the output file format using the swith +F... e.g. 
+FT or +FC for getting un/compressed targa. See the docs about this. Also 
note that the -o switch just specifies the name and has nothing to do with 
the file format; actually you better leave it away, then POV automatically 
sets the appropriate file format extension.

> 
> Also, is x-povray supposed to give me a nice image to look at while its
> working? Perhaps my test was too small/quick for this.

Yes, it is. Maybe you need to set the '+D' switch. It's best to make a 
default .ini file with the basic settings, e.g. I have a file 'pov31.ini' 
which contains:

Display_Gamma = 2.4
Library_Path=/home/micha/povsources/include/
Output_File_Name= /home/micha/povpics/
-w320
-h240
+D
+FC

and then use on the command line:
x-povray pov31.ini -i myscenefile.pov

> 
> Thanks for any help.

Hope this helps.

- Micha

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