Ok thanks for that - sometimes it seems to work but so far I have not been able to pin down the exact circustances - when and if I do I'll let you know in case it helps you.

Another point - I applied a texture to a surface (tiles texture in fact) and although I can edit the texture in SU especially the scale and obviously SU shows this, when rendered, the pattern remains unaffected by whatever scale I set in SU. Is there a way around this, so that the view in SU comes out exactly the same when rendered? I can search out the definition in the pov file and obviously edit the scale element, but this is tedious and has to be repeated for every new render.

Thanks.

Created a sphere in SU - gave it a colour (or texture makes no difference) but right click over it and I am not offerred "edit pov finish" option - why is that? I'm sure I've just missed something. Yes its been saved and renders with POV succesfully, but I'm just not able to set any of the preset finishes or surface effects. Can do it with a cube so whats wrong?

Thanks.

I may be missing something but maybe not - applied a texture to a surface (tiles in fact) and although I can edit the texture in SU especially the scale and obviously SU shows this, when rendered the pattern remains unaffected by whatever scale I set in SU. Is there a way around this, so that the view in SU comes out exactly the same when rendered?

Thanks.

This may be beyond SU2POV but I'll ask anyway!

White light, piece of (red) coloured glass (50% opacity) yet the shadow that falls on a white card remains neutral - is there any way to get a red shadow or for that matter a colour that mimics the colour of the glass the light is passing through? Or am I missing something?

Regards,
Alan.

Regards
Alan.

Oh right - hadn't realised that! But then again I suppose its obvious in that we don't actually create a sphere rather than rotate a semicircle through 360 degrees, but even then its lines and thus faces that if there are enough of them we get an object that looks like a sphere but made of up to hundreds of flat pieces.

Keep up the good work - most impressed.

One error - there's an image file missing. In the "edit pov-ray finish" option where you get to set finish and surface effect, under surface effect the image for "Minerals: paving pebbles" does not display. I guess this is just a small image file thats missing from the download. But I have had a look and paving pebbles is there as a png, so is there a typo in the main code?

Regards, Alan.

Thanks for those tips Didier - they are very helpful. Also tried the script and thats even faster.

Combining these tips with your earlier comment about spheres generating a lot of code I have been able to achieve a dramatic reduction in .pov file size. One design that produced a 12MB pov file, now produces just 670KB, by purging everything unused and also removing 2 spheres based on 96 segment circles.

Is there any reason why your script does not recognise spheres and thus export them to povray as a simple statement, rather than as a series of (many) faces?

Regards

Ok - good reply - but is there any easy means to delete all unused materials and components? I had thought about moving the materials and components folders away from SU, but this would then mean that although SU would not see them, I would have to generate materials as I went. Nicer would be from within SU so that I could develop a scene, then clearout all unused rubbish before SU2POV.

A ruby script perhaps ??

Regards,

Three surfaces, each with own texture, 1 sphere and a circle, just plain colours, and 2 point lights creates a 5.5Mb .pov file. Any tips as to how this can be reduced? as I notice it contains details of surfaces and textures I am not using in this simple scene.

Another downside of such a huge .pov file is that it takes almost 4 seconds for SU2POV to write it, not unreasonable given its size, but nevertheless an annoying delay before I can click POVrays Run button without getting an error.

I created a similar scene using Bishop3D and this produced a 5Kb .pov file which seems more reasonable.

Regards

Thanks for your speedy reply - a good clear explanation - I'll just steer clear of grouping bulbs full stop! I assume this ruling applies equally to spotlights.

Any chance in the future we might be able to group bulbs along with metalwork and glass to make complete lamp assemblies?

Regards