1.4 Questions and Tips

This section contains answers to frequently asked questions about POV-Ray as well as many useful tips not covered in other parts of this documentation.

While it was current at the time that this POV-Ray documentation help file was created, it will almost certainly be out of date by the time you are reading this. So, if you do not find an answer to your question here, please check out the current version on the internet.

If you have some question not answered in this FAQ, do not be afraid to contact the TAG or ask in the proper group of the POV-Ray news-server.

Section Contents

• 1.4.1 Language Tips and tricks to achieve useful things
  • 1.4.1.1 How do I make a visible light source?
  • 1.4.1.2 How do I make bright objects?
  • 1.4.1.3 How do I move the camera in a circular path?
  • 1.4.1.4 How do I use an image to texture my object?
  • 1.4.1.5 How can I generate a spline?
  • 1.4.1.6 How can I simulate motion blur?
  • 1.4.1.7 How can I find the size of a text object?
  • 1.4.1.8 How do I make extruded text?
  • 1.4.1.9 How do I make an object hollow?
  • 1.4.1.10 How can I fill a glass with water or other objects?
  • 1.4.1.11 How can I bend a object?
  • 1.4.1.12 Can I get non-grainy focal blur?
• 1.4.2 Language Things that don't work as one expects
  • 1.4.2.1 Using several transparent objects makes them black?
  • 1.4.2.2 I'm getting color banding in the image
  • 1.4.2.3 Rotation behaves very strangely
  • 1.4.2.4 The image gets distorted when rendering a square image
  • 1.4.2.5 Why are there strange dark pixels or noise on my CSG object?
  • 1.4.2.6 Why won't the textures in stars.inc work with my sky_sphere?
  • 1.4.2.7 When I use filter or transmit with my .tga image map nothing happens.
  • 1.4.2.8 Isosurface not rendering properly?
• 1.4.3 Language related things
  • 1.4.3.1 How do I turn animation on?
  • 1.4.3.2 Can POV-Ray use multiple processors?
  • 1.4.3.3 Can I get a wireframe render of my scene?
  • 1.4.3.4 Can I specify variable IOR for an object?
  • 1.4.3.5 What is Photon Mapping?
• 1.4.4 File Formats
  • 1.4.4.1 Saving the image to disk.
  • 1.4.4.2 Can I convert my POV-Ray scenes to another format?
  • 1.4.4.3 How can I convert my scenes from format X to POV-Ray format?
  • 1.4.4.4 How do I import all of my textures I created in 3DS Max into POV-Ray?
  • 1.4.4.5 How can I avoid artifacts and still get good JPEG compression?
  • 1.4.4.6 Why are there no converters from POV to other formats?
  • 1.4.4.7 Why are triangle meshes in ASCII format?
• 1.4.5 Utilities, models, etc.
  • 1.4.5.1 What is the best animation program available?
  • 1.4.5.2 Creating/viewing MPEG-files.
  • 1.4.5.3 Where can I find models/textures?
  • 1.4.5.4 What are the best modellers for POV-Ray?
  • 1.4.5.5 Any POV-Ray modellers for Mac?
  • 1.4.5.6 Is there any user gallery of POV-Ray images?
  • 1.4.5.7 Any good heightfield modellers?
  • 1.4.5.8 Any easy way of creating trees?
• 1.4.6 Rendering speed
  • 1.4.6.1 Will POV-Ray render faster with a 3D card?
  • 1.4.6.2 How do I increase rendering speed?
  • 1.4.6.3 CSG speed
  • 1.4.6.4 Does POV-Ray support 3DNow?
• 1.4.7 Miscellaneous questions
  • 1.4.7.1 Where do I suggest new features?
  • 1.4.7.2 I'm getting a "Illegal grid value in dda_traversal()"
  • 1.4.7.3 No beep when finished?
  • 1.4.7.4 POV-Ray viruses?
  • 1.4.7.5 GUI for Unix POV-Ray?
• 1.4.8 The shadow line artifact
  • 1.4.8.1 What is the problem?
  • 1.4.8.2 What causes the problem?
  • 1.4.8.3 Can this problem be solved?
  • 1.4.8.4 Possible solutions?
• 1.4.9 Smooth triangle artifact
  • 1.4.9.1 What is the problem?
  • 1.4.9.2 What causes the problem?
  • 1.4.9.3 Can this problem be solved?