DINO and POVray Tutorial

DINO & POVray

Scene Settings: Background

DINO Homepage

General

- Introduction

- Exporting from DINO

- File contents

- Rendering the scene

Scene Settings

- Camera

- Light Sources

- Background

- Depth Effect

Material Settings

- Predefined Textures

Patch

- Overview

- Detail

last updated 14 Sep 2016
dino-biozentrum@unibas.ch

The default background is simply the background color from DINO, specified with the line:

background {color rgb <0.000,0.000,0.000>}

To use a white background, for example, use:

background {color rgb <1,1,1>}

The three floating point values are RGB triplets ranging from zero to one. Due to the nature of a raytracer, however, much nicer backgrounds can be constructed. Two examples shall be given here: a backdrop and an infinite plane. The bounding box information written out by DINO is used, such as:

// bounding box
// -24.978 -30.817 -20.448  26.820 26.427 18.574

These additional objects can be placed anywhere in the .pov file, or they can be included from an additional file. A good place to put them is below the bounding box information.

Backdrop

An infinite plane is placed behind the objects, at least as much as the third value given for the bounding box, and assigned a texture. In this case, roughly twice the minimal z-value was choosen. Also, depth-cueing was off.

plane {z, -40 texture { pigment {color rgb 1} normal {agate 0.9 agate_turb 10 scale 0.5} finish { ambient 0.0 diffuse 0.5 brilliance 0.01 specular 0.3 roughness 0.05 } scale 100 } }

Infinite Plane

An infinite plane is placed below out scene, using the second (min y) value from the bounding box - actually a little less. Also, an additional light is placed directly above the scene, to add some dramatic illumination. There is a little depth cueing in the scene.

light_source { <0,100,0> color rgb 1 spotlight radius 100 point_at <0,0,0> } plane {y, -31 texture { pigment {checker color rgb 1 color rgb 0} finish { reflection 0.7 } scale 10 } }

If you have generated a nice background for a scene and would like to share it, please drop me an email with the background code and an example image.