POV-Ray : Documentation : 3.3.2 Adding New Resolutions
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3.3.1 Special Command-Line Options   3.4 Windows

3.3.2 Adding New Resolutions

The 'Preset Rendering Options' drop-down combobox on the toolbar provides a quick way of choosing previously specified sets of rendering options. The contents of this combobox can be modified. Here's how to do it.

All the resolution and rendering options that are available in the combobox mentioned above, are in fact loaded from an INI file. The INI file is called QUICKRES.INI by default, and is located in the directory <InstallDir>\Renderer (where '<InstallDir>' is where you installed POV-Ray for Windows). This file is known as the 'secondary INI file' (or 'resolution INI file') because it is loaded after the main POVRAY.INI (see INI Files for more information). You can also change the current secondary INI file selection from the Render Settings dialog.

An easy way to edit the secondary INI file is to select 'Edit Resolution INI File' from the Tools menu. Each section (delimited by '[' and ']') in this file will, once POV-Ray for Windows is restarted, be loaded into the resolution combobox for you to choose. Of course, you are not limited to resolutions; the sections can contain any valid POV-Ray INI file options, such as output file type, anti-aliasing, radiosity settings, etc.

To add a new resolution, just add a new section and re-start POV-Ray. Here's an example of what you could add to insert the new resolution 1600 x 1200 with AA 0.3. The entry will appear on the resolution list with the name 'Big and Slow' -

[Big and Slow]
Width=1600
Height=1200
Antialias=On
Antialias_Threshold=0.3

The name of the section between the square brackets ('Big and Slow') is what you see in the resolution list.

One more thing - you don't need to add a new resolution to the INI file if you don't want to. You can still, as always, specify an arbitrary resolution on the command-line via the Render Settings Dialog mentioned above or via the toolbar command-line.

One occasional mistake made by users of previous versions of POV-Ray for Windows was to assume that the list of resolutions available in the above toolbar combobox was fixed and unable to be changed (some even thought that POV-Ray could not render any resolutions other than those listed in the combobox ... despite the documentation saying otherwise). This is a good illustration of the need to read documentation.

More about "INI Files"

3.3.1 Special Command-Line Options   3.4 Windows


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