It's already mentioned many times that the changes in the camera syntax
in the more recent 3.5 beta versions gives rise to some confusion. I'm
not at all an advanced Povray user. 
I use Povray to produce pictures and animations to illustrate some of my
mathematical oriented pages, in this case mostly about polyhedra.
So I think the best choice for the camera is the orthographic one. Now I
have to put this type of camera as the first item in the camera
definition, but unitl now I didn't find a systematic way to define the
next items: what items are necessary (right, look-at, direction,
angle...) and what combinations don't work. So most times it's trial and
error. I think there must be a rather simple way to define my camera,
also because the object in most cases are centered around the origin.
My second problem concerns light. For my illustrations it't not at all
needed to use sophisticated lights. Also for this case it's most trial
and error. I put several lights and also use "shadowless". Is there a
possibility to obtain some uniform lighting in a simple way?
The sort of pictures I produce can be found on my website (see
signature).
I hope somebody can help me or give me a hint where to find useful
information.
Greetings and thanks! 
-- 
Herman Serras
Gent (Belgium)
http://cage.rug.ac.be/~hs/

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I would use this setup for geometry visualisation. Unit object
at origin with pigment{rgb 1}.


#declare c=50;
light_source{<0,1,-1>*100  rgb<0.3,1,0.3>*1 shadowless rotate c*z}
light_source{<0,1,-1>*100  rgb<0.3,0.3,1>*1 shadowless rotate (120+c)*z}
light_source{<0,1,-1>*100  rgb<1,0.3,0.3>*1 shadowless rotate (240+c)*z }

camera {
  orthographic
  location -10*z
}

http://www.luxlab.com/3pt_light.jpg


_____________
Kari Kivisalo

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> I use Povray to produce pictures and animations to illustrate some of my
> mathematical oriented pages, in this case mostly about polyhedra.

Interesting.

> and error. I put several lights and also use "shadowless". Is there a
> possibility to obtain some uniform lighting in a simple way?

I'm also not an advanced user but I think any hints might be interesting?
For the lights I think it is the best to place a light_source on each axis
or exactly halfways between them. If the shadows are too high in contrast,
try to decrease the illumination of the light source (e.g. color rgb 0.5 or
less) and increase the ambient light factor for the entire scene (in the
global settings global_amient_light or so). This shoulod soften the shadows.

I'm talking of 3.1g, so sorry if the syntax has changed compared to 3.1g!
But something comparable should be there....

hope that helps!
regards
SY

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