POVray / Methods

Tips on a few common POV-Ray programming pitfalls.

Aspect Ratio

One of the problems I used to have was that I wanted to render an image at different aspect ratios, but kept having to re-adjust the camera.  With the image_width and image_height variables you can keep your image from being distorted when changing rendering resolutions.

camera {
    location<0, 0, -100>
    look_at<0, 0, 0>
    right <image_width/image_height, 0, 0>
    up y
}
    

Focal Blur

Focal blur give an image the professional look.

camera {
    location <0,0,-60>
    look_at lookAt
    right 
    up y
    #if (use_blur)
        focal_point lookAt
        aperture 1.5 // > more blurry
        blur_samples use_blur
        variance 0
    #end
}
    

Fog

Add some, softens the image.

fog {
  color White
  distance 2000
}