Hi everyone,

I found POVRay last night, and it's making a strange sort of sense to me.
However, I'm having some problems rendering.  I'm going through the
documentation and trying various snippets that I find in there, and I'm
currently working on the classic "red sphere".  When I first tried it, it
would render very dark, so I thought I would try moving the light source
around.  Now I can't render it at all.

The "Render 'sphere'" menu item is grayed out.  I can add the file to the
render queue, then start the queue, but POVRay brings the code window
forward and beeps at me, and no rendering takes place.

I have a feeling that POVRay doesn't know where my includes folder is.  In
the preferences window (Scenes tab), I specified the path to the folder:
"Dave's iBook:Applications:POV-Ray 3.6:include:", but I still can't render.

Any ideas on how to continue?

Thanks!

Dave

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In article <web.42987e8cea563922f492a3430@news.povray.org>,
 "Dave" <dav### [at] davedelongcom> wrote:

>>Hi everyone,
>>
>>I found POVRay last night, and it's making a strange sort of sense to me.
>>However, I'm having some problems rendering.  I'm going through the
>>documentation and trying various snippets that I find in there, and I'm
>>currently working on the classic "red sphere".  When I first tried it, it
>>would render very dark, so I thought I would try moving the light source
>>around.  Now I can't render it at all.
>>
>>The "Render 'sphere'" menu item is grayed out.  I can add the file to the
>>render queue, then start the queue, but POVRay brings the code window
>>forward and beeps at me, and no rendering takes place.
>>
>>I have a feeling that POVRay doesn't know where my includes folder is.  In
>>the preferences window (Scenes tab), I specified the path to the folder:
>>"Dave's iBook:Applications:POV-Ray 3.6:include:", but I still can't render.
>>
>>Any ideas on how to continue?
>>
>>Thanks!
>>
>>Dave

hum... have you an error message ?

perhaps, look carefully at this path :
  "Dave's iBook:Applications:POV-Ray 3.6:includes:"

klp

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kurtz le pirate <kur### [at] yahoofr> wrote:
> hum... have you an error message ?
>
> perhaps, look carefully at this path :
>   "Dave's iBook:Applications:POV-Ray 3.6:includes:"

That path was auto-generated by pushing the "Choose" button, selecting the
includes folder, and clicking "OK".  If it's wrong, then POVRay is
incorrectly  handling the path.

I try to render the benchmark from the Render menu (that's the only option
available to choose), and the Message window says:
 "Possible Parse Error: Could not find file 'functions.inc'
File benchmark.pov line 3

Parse Error: Cannot open include file functions.inc.
File benchmark.pov line 3"

But even when I don't have any include statements and just have:
camera {
 location <0,-10,10>
 look_at <0,0,0>
}
light_source {
 <0,-11,-11>
 pigment { color rgb <1,1,1> }
}
sphere {
 <0,0,0> 5
 pigment { rgb <1,1,1> }
}

I still can't render.  This is driving me nuts!  This looked so promising,
but I'm about ready to give it up as useless.  =P

Thanks,

Dave

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"Dave" <dav### [at] davedelongcom> wrote in message 
news:web.4298d3a0feeef0b5f492a3430@news.povray.org...
>
> I still can't render.  This is driving me nuts!  This looked so promising,
> but I'm about ready to give it up as useless.  =P

Hey Dave, try not to worry too much about it. Somebody will probably have a 
solution to the problem.

You might want to read through the messages at povray.macintosh, perhaps 
posting your trouble about this there. I took a quick look there and noticed 
you hadn't. K.E. Ayers seems to have had a similar problem, I think, in the 
message with subject line: Mac OS X File Open Dialog. But I don't know 
enough about Apple to fill a thimble!

Wish you luck. If POV-Ray stuff caught your attention I think it would be 
awful if you didn't get it going.

Bob

Post a reply to this message

Are you saving your files as *.pov files?

Under Edit... Preferences... Files tab you can chose to render
non *.pov files (a check-box).

When you set the include path are you using the
Edit... Preferences... Scenes tab to set the Global Include Path?

(By the way, the Preferences in POV-Ray are not under the application
name as is common for OS X programs, it's under the Edit menu.)

The code snippet you wrote has an error in the light_source, this is
probably what you want:

light_source {
 <0,-11,-11>
 color rgb <1,1,1>
}

If the above tips don't help, post more info (such as where the
"choose" button is - I don't see that) and I'll try to help.

-Mark

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"Renderdog" <slo### [at] hiwaaynet> wrote:
> Are you saving your files as *.pov files?
I don't know what they're getting saved as.  To make a file, I choose "New"
from the File menu and then "Save" when I'm ready.  There isn't an option
to choose what kind of file to save it as, that I've found.

> Under Edit... Preferences... Files tab you can chose to render
> non *.pov files (a check-box).
Aha!  I had that checked.  So evidently my files aren't getting saved as
....pov files, or I would've been able to render them.

Perhaps what's happening is that POVRay only checks the display name of the
file "#1" instead of the full name of the file "#1.pov"....?

> When you set the include path are you using the
> Edit... Preferences... Scenes tab to set the Global Include Path?
It seems to be working now!  =D

Thanks very much, Mark (and klp and Bob)!  Time to spend a day playing with
this!  =D

Dave

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Dave wrote:
>>Are you saving your files as *.pov files?
> 
> I don't know what they're getting saved as.  To make a file, I choose "New"
> from the File menu and then "Save" when I'm ready.  There isn't an option
> to choose what kind of file to save it as, that I've found.

The extension is added like in all Mac text editors (well, all good ones 
anyway), by the user appending whatever he/she likes.  While it is 
inappropriate in a Mac application to insist on a file extension, in the 
past this has caused some confusion as Mac users did not append a ".pov" 
extension to their files and then had problems exchanging them with users on 
other platforms.  That is why there is the option to enforce the 
restrictions of only rendering files ending with ".pov" by default.

	Thorsten

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"Dave" <dav### [at] davedelongcom> wrote:
> I don't know what they're getting saved as.  To make a file, I choose "New"
> from the File menu and then "Save" when I'm ready.  There isn't an option
> to choose what kind of file to save it as, that I've found.

Odd, when I use "Save" to save a file for the first time OS X asks me what
to call the file and where I want to save it.

> Perhaps what's happening is that POVRay only checks the display name of the
> file "#1" instead of the full name of the file "#1.pov"....?

I don't understand what you're saying here. A file named #1.pov is
different from a file named #1.

Glad you're rolling now, POV-Ray's well worth the initial effort.

Post a reply to this message

"Renderdog" <slo### [at] hiwaaynet> wrote:
> "Dave" <dav### [at] davedelongcom> wrote:
> > I don't know what they're getting saved as.  To make a file, I choose "New"
> > from the File menu and then "Save" when I'm ready.  There isn't an option
> > to choose what kind of file to save it as, that I've found.
>
> Odd, when I use "Save" to save a file for the first time OS X asks me what
> to call the file and where I want to save it.

Yes, it asks me that too, but there's no way to specify what format you want
to save the file as (pov versus txt, for example).  That's what I was
referring to (sorry for being unclear).

>
> > Perhaps what's happening is that POVRay only checks the display name of the
> > file "#1" instead of the full name of the file "#1.pov"....?
>
> I don't understand what you're saying here. A file named #1.pov is
> different from a file named #1.

Not necessarily.  #1 could be #1.pov if you've chosen to hide file
extensions in the Finder.  On Mac OS X, there are two names for a file:
One is the display name (what you see in the Finder), and one is the actual
name.  The actual name contains the full name, including the extension.  If
you have your Finder set up to hide file extensions, then the display name
would only be "#1" even though the full name is "#1.pov".  Likewise, you
could have a "#1.jpg" that would ALSO show up as "#1", and so on and so on.
 I was speculating that perhaps POVRay was only getting the display name
(since I have extensions turned off).

Oh well, it doesn't matter so much anymore, now that it's working!

> Glad you're rolling now, POV-Ray's well worth the initial effort.

So it would appear!  =D

Dave

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