Lab 11: POV-Ray

In this lab you will become familiar with the computer ray-tracing software program call POV-Ray. In POV-Ray, you specify the location and direction of a camera, the location and color of lights, and the location and surface characteristics of shapes in the scene. There is excellent on-line documentation that you can refer to for information about the types and syntax of the commands.

Do the following:

• Open up POV-Ray and click on the "? Scene" to open up the documentation. In the Table of Contents, click on the section Beginning Tutorial. Read the tutorial describing how to make your first image. Run POV-Ray on the example that they give. Experiment with changing the camera, lights, and sphere. Add a second sphere as well.
• Continue to read the tutorial at least as far as Plane Object . As you read, experiment with the difference shapes (boxes, cones, cylinders, and planes).
• Once you feel fairly familiar with using POV-Ray, design a simple scene using these shapes. For example, you can create a sofa and table sitting on a floor (plane). If you are ambitious, you can also use planes to represent walls.
• When you run POV-Ray, the picture that is created is saved to an image file. The default image file is a bit-map (extension bmp). In order for you to display your image on a web page you will need to save it in a format the browser understands. POV-Ray cannot save to gif or jpg files, however, it can save to png files. To have your image saved in png format, click on the menu Render and choose Edit/Settings Render. This will open up a window. In the Textbox labeled Command line options, type the following:

  +FN

  Then render your image again. POV-Ray sometimes places this image in a funny place. If you can't find where your image is, use the find in Windows (in the start menu). If your POV-Ray file is called room.pov, then search for a file named room.png. Once the image is found, copy and paste it into your public_html folder. Display the image on your web page using the normal html tags for displaying images

This lab is due the last day of class. In class, we will take a look at what everyone has done.

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