POV-Ray Introduction

Introduction

POV-Ray
Introduction
Gallery
WIP's
Dead End
Links
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PERSONAL
Photos
Gardening

POV-Ray is the short name for the Persistence of Vision Ray-tracer. In short, it is a program that can be used to create 3D scenes that try to depict the complex interaction of light striking a 3D surface. If that still doesn't make sense, then think of it as the same sort of technology behind the movie "Toy Story" and the dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park".

I generally only use POV-Ray for making stills, similar to taking a snap-shot image with a camera, but it can also be used for animations. I've played around with both stills and animations, but since I generally work with things that are very time and RAM intensive, it generally doesn't make sense to animate the scenes, or simply would take too much computing time to ever be accomplished in my life time.

Using POV-Ray is kind of like writing a computer program to create a picture. It involves creating source code which then is compiled and run to create the scene. When the source code is compiled and run, it can take anywhere from seconds or days, weeks, or months (or more!) to create the 2D image to display. But this all depends on the complexity of the scene, what special settings are used, and of course the processing power of the computer involved. This process is called "rendering" the scene.

I started playing with POV-Ray when version 3.5 came out. I was amazed that a free program could produce such stunning images. And given that I am a computer programmer, the idea that I could write a program to create something, rather than clicking and dragging things with a mouse, really appealed to me. One of the first things I ever created was a scene of my basement. It was apparently realistic enough that my brother was fooled into thinking that I had really added a drop-ceiling to my basement, something which is still lacking today in my "real" basement.

I should note that I used The Gimp for Windows to achieve the glare from the lights as well as to make the image slightly blurry, as if I had taken it with my cheap digital camera. Also, the books, book-shelves, and the chair were created by Gilles Tran's POV-Ray objects. At the time I created this scene, I had only been using POV-Ray for about 2 months, and I'm still rather proud of it, given how much I still didn't know. But it really has no artistic value. It was just really just practice for later on.