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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Ansgar nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 12/08/2006 16:49:
> 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.
Not possible with the windows version. It's possible to start it minimised if 
you pass by a shortcut instead of a direct call.
The windows version is not command line. The linux/unix version is.

> 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?
They can be in the general font folder of the machine, they can also reside in 
the same folder as the scene file or in the include folder.
It's also possible to place them elsewhere, but you need to edit 2 ini files to 
make them available.

> 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?
Not easy or acceptable, mesh2 are already optimised. You can use croaser mesh, 
less faces = smaller file = faster parcing, but can result in facetting. It may 
be possible to save place by sacrifiyng precision, use less decimal places. It 
may be acceptable or not depending on your case. Both can be combined.

> 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.




-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
EVERYTHING HAS A GENDER

You may not know this but many nonliving things have a gender...

A Hot Air Balloon is Male, because, to get it to go anywhere, you have to light 
a fire under it, and of course, there's the hot air part.

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Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> Not possible with the windows version. It's possible to start it minimised if
> you pass by a shortcut instead of a direct call.
> The windows version is not command line. The linux/unix version is.

Hmm, too bad. But not critical.


> They can be in the general font folder of the machine, they can also reside in
> the same folder as the scene file or in the include folder.
> It's also possible to place them elsewhere, but you need to edit 2 ini files to
> make them available.

Which ini files would that be?


> Not easy or acceptable, mesh2 are already optimised. You can use croaser mesh,
> less faces = smaller file = faster parcing, but can result in facetting. It may
> be possible to save place by sacrifiyng precision, use less decimal places. It
> may be acceptable or not depending on your case. Both can be combined.

I have already optimised the mesh to use fewer polygons, but I haven't
looked into cutting down the precision yet, that might be worth trying
indeed.
Is there a POV-internal way to do it or would I have to cook up something
myself to truncate the floats?


Thanks for the answers so far!
Does anyone have an idea about the shadow problem? I have tried no_image,
but it kills the shadow along with the object.

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I'd just like to say thanks again for the tip about reducing the mesh2 size.

I removed uv data for all parts that don't get image-maps and wrote a
program that reduces the precision of all vectors from 6 decimal digits to
4, at the same time removing all spaces (from the vectors). I ended up with
a reduction from 11.3 to 6.6 MB. Not too shabby considering the rendering
result looks exactly like before. :)

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