POV-Ray"> ]> Lauri Watts

lauri@kde.org

Andreas Zehender

zehender@kde.org

Olivier Saraja

olivier@linuxgraphic.org

&FDLNotice; 2002-09-07 1.00.00 &kpovmodeler; is a graphical 3D modeler, which can generate scenes for &Povray; KDE KPovModeler &kpovmodeler; is a 3D modeling application to generate &Povray; scenes. While it is not necessary to fully understand the &Povray; application in order to make good use of &kpovmodeler;, it is highly recommended that you read and try to understand the &Povray; documentation. To find out more about &Povray; go to www.povray.org. When you start &kpovmodeler;, the default layout is as follows: The default view layout The default view layout Menubars (1) Toolbars (2) The object tree (3) The object properties view (4) The wireframe and camera views (5) The object tree displays the objects inside the scene and their hierarchy. The object tree In the object tree you can select objects. Once you select an object, its attributes are displayed in the properties view and rendered yellow in the wireframe views. You can select multiple objects. However, you cannot select a child of an already selected object, because all children are selected indirectly with the parent. If only one object is selected, it is referred to as the active object from now on. To add a new object to the object tree, select the object where you want to insert the new object and either click the icon in the toolbar or choose a menu entry in the Insert menu. There are three possible positions for new objects: As the first child of the active object As the last child of the active object As a sibling of the active object If there is more than one position possible, the following popup menu prompts you to select the correct position: The insert position popup To remove objects, select them and select Delete from either the Edit menu or the &RMB; context menu. To move objects, drag and drop the selected objects on to the object tree. You can cut the object and insert it at the new position as well. The properties view displays the attributes of the active object. The properties view If you changed some properties, click the Apply button to make the changes permanent. If you entered invalid data, a message box will show up with an error description. You can then adjust the properties and press Apply again, or revert your changes with the Cancel button. If you set the path to your &Povray; user documentation in the settings dialog, you can open the &Povray; reference page for the displayed object with the Help button. You need the &Povray; 3.1g or 3.5 HTML user documentation in order to use this feature. If your distribution does not contain this documentation you can download it here. The &Povray; 3.5 package contains the html user documentation. If you edit a texture or a part of a texture, you can preview it inside the properties view. The properties view, texture preview Press the Preview button inside the properties view and a small sample scene with the selected texture will be rendered. By default the whole texture will be rendered, even if not the top item is selected. If you want to render only a part of the texture (for example a texture inside a texture map and not the whole texture map), check the local check box. The orthographic wireframe views show the scene as an orthographic projection on one of the coordinate planes. The top wireframe view There are six types of orthographic wireframes views: Top Bottom Left Right Front Back Each type renders the scene from a different perspective. In the orthographic views you can change object attribute properties graphically with the mouse. The control points of the camera object The above screenshot shows the control points of the camera. You can drag the control points around to change the camera's position and direction. If a transformation is selected, the control points are removed and a small cross is displayed in the wireframe view. The cross marks the center for scaling and rotation, as well as the position for translations. You can change the transformation with the mouse by dragging inside the whole view. Some objects like the bicubic patch support selection and modification of multiple control points. &LMB; Selects one control point and deselects all others &Ctrl;Left Mouse Button Selects or deselects one control point &Shift;Left Mouse Button Drag a rectangle. All control points inside the rectangle are selected, the others deselected &Shift;&Ctrl;Left Mouse Button Drag a rectangle. All control points inside the rectangle are selected You can zoom and translate the view to change the display window. &MMB; Translates the view wheel Zooms the view around the mouse position Left, Right, Up, Down Translates the view CtrlLeft, CtrlRight Zooms the view The camera view displays the scene from the camera's point of view. The camera view The blue box displays the field of view when the scene is rendered. You cannot change control points in the camera view. By default all objects are displayed in the wireframe views. Each object with a wire frame has a visibility level. You can specify a visibility level relative to the parent's visibility level or an absolute value. Objects are only displayed if they are selected or their visibility level is smaller or equal the chosen scene visibility level in the toolbar. &kpovmodeler; comes with a default view layout: The object tree and the object properties view to the left and four graphical views to the right. If you don't like the default layout, or need another layout, you can freely configure it. You can even save multiple view layouts and switch between them on the fly. You can move the existing views by dragging the handle on top of the views around. The dock widget handle To dock a widget above or below an existing view, drag the handle to the top or bottom of a view. A rectangle will indicate the new position. To create a new column, drag the handle to the right or left side of another view. The view will then dock to the left or right side of the view and span the full height. If you want multiple views sharing the same space, drag the handle to the center of another view. You can then switch between the views by clicking the corresponding tab on top of the views. The tabbed view layout The last layout possibility are floating views: views that are not docked into the main view. To undock a view, drag the handle to the desktop or press the little arrow in the view handle that points to the top left side. To close a view, click the little cross in the handle. To prevent closing, click the little box between the arrow and the cross. You can add additional views to the main window. The View menu contains entries for each type of view. New views will be created floating, which you can dock wherever you like. You can save the current view layout with View Save View Layout... A dialog opens that lets you select an existing layout or create a new one. You can then fine-tune your view layout in the settings dialog. You can switch to a saved view layout by selecting the entry in the ViewView Layout menu. Once you have created a scene, you will want to render it. &kpovmodeler; uses &Povray; 3.1g to render the scene, so you need a correct installation of &Povray;. At the time of writing &Povray; 3.5 was released. This version is not supported in the &kpovmodeler; 1.0 version. Go to www.povray.org to get a version of &Povray; and for installation instructions. To render the current scene, press the render icon The render icon in the toolbar, or select the ViewRender menu entry. A render mode is similar to &Povray;s ini file entries. It specifies the image size and quality levels for rendering. If you would like to render your scene with different qualities and sizes, you can add as many render modes as you need, from quick previews to fullscreen high quality images. When you press the render settings icon The render settings in the toolbar or select the ViewRender Modes... menu icon, the following dialog opens: The render modes selection dialog This dialog shows the list of all available render modes. Add Adds a default render mode to the list. Remove Removes the selected render mode. Edit Opens a dialog to edit the selected render mode. Up Moves the selected render mode one position up. Down Moves the selected render mode one position down. The Edit Button opens the following configuration dialog: The render modes size tab Each render mode has a description. You can enter any description, but it should reflect the render mode's properties. In the Size tab you can enter the width and height of the rendered image. If you want to render only a small part of the image, check the Subselection check box and enter the part of the image in the fields below. The render modes quality tab In the Quality tab you can select various quality levels for the rendered image. In the Quality combo box you can select the features &Povray; uses while rendering. The possibilities range from a very simple coloring and lighting model, to one which has complex diffuse inter-reflection lighting. See the &Povray; user documentation for a detailed description of the rendering features. If an image is rendered with only one sample per pixel, various errors can occur. These images often have moiré or stepped effects in curves and lines, and details can get lost if they are smaller in appearance then one pixel. This effect is called aliasing. &Povray; uses a technique called anti-aliasing to reduce the impact of these errors. In general images will look smoother with this feature. If you enable anti-aliasing, &Povray; will calculate and combine more then one sample per pixel. This is called super-sampling. &Povray; supports two methods of super-sampling. The default is an adaptive non-recursive method; adaptive because the super-sampling depends on the local neighborhood of the pixel. Not every pixel is super-sampled with this method. The second method is an adaptive recursive one; recursive because every pixel is divided and sub-divided recursively, and adaptive because the recursion depth depends on the computed color values. When you select the first method, povray traces one ray per pixel. If the difference between its color value and that of its neighbor exceeds the given threshold, both pixels are super-sampled by tracing a fixed number of additional rays. If you set the depth value to 4, a 4x4 grid of additional points will be calculated, a depth value of 5 will result in 5x5 (25) samples per pixel. The difference between two pixels is computed as follows: r1, g1 and b1 are the red, green and blue values of the first pixel; r2, g2 and b2 are the red, green and blue values of the second pixel. The difference is then: diff = abs(r1-r2) + abs(g1-g2) + abs(b1-b2) The recursive method starts with 4 samples per pixel. If the resulting color values differ more than the given threshold, the pixel is sub-divided into 4 sub pixels that are separately traced and tested for further subdivision. You can specify the maximum recursive depth with the depth value. An additional method to reduce aliasing effects is to add noise to the sampling process, called jittering. If you enable jittering, &Povray; jitters the samples a tiny amount to reduce regular patterns. The last quality setting is radiosity. Radiosity is an experimental &Povray; feature that computes inter-diffuse light reflection. Be patient when rendering a scene with this feature. The render modes output tab In the last tab, you can configure whether or not the alpha channel should be calculated by povray. A pixel will then be transparent if the corresponding ray did not hit a single object. You can select the render mode in the combo box in the rendering toolbar. The render modes toolbar When you started to render a scene, this window will open: The render window It shows the rendered image, the progress and the current rendering speed. Stop Terminates &Povray;. Suspend Suspends rendering. Resume Resumes rendering. Povray Output... Opens another window that displays the &Povray; console output. If &Povray; exits abnormally, you can find the reason in that window. Save... Lets you save the image when it is rendered. Close Closes the render window. You can export a scene to &Povray; with the FileExport Povray... menu entry. The file save dialog will allow you to choose a name and location to save the file. &kpovmodeler; will automatically add the .pov extension. To import a &Povray; scene select the FileImport Povray... menu item and choose a file in the file open dialog. Not the full &Povray; syntax is supported by &kpovmodeler; at the moment. If there are errors or warnings during importing, a dialog will show up that lists all messages. If you want to import unsupported code to &kpovmodeler;, put the source between the two special comments //*PMRawBegin and //*PMRawEnd. You can drag objects from the object tree to an editor to export &Povray; code. This will insert the objects code into the current text file in the editor. To import objects into the scene, simply select the code in your editor and drag it on to the object tree. You can use the copy and paste functionality of &kpovmodeler; and your editor to exchange &Povray; code as well. The povray command is called when &kpovmodeler; renders a scene. Common commands are povray or x-povray. If you press the Help button in the properties view, &kpovmodeler; opens the &Povray; user documentation for the displayed object. Set here the path to your documentation and your documentation version. Supported versions are 3.1g and 3.5. &Povray; searches for external files (height field data as example) in the &Povray; library paths. If you refer to files not in the scene's folder, you have to add the folder to the list. If a file exists in multiple library paths, that one in the first path is used. You can change the order with the Up and Down buttons. The color tab lets you configure the used colors for the graphical views. Background: The background color. Wire frame: The colors for wire frames. The second color is used if the object is selected. Control points: The color for control points. The second color is used if the control point is selected. Axes: The colors for the x-, y- and z-axis. Field of view: The color for the field of view rectangle in the camera view and the view type labels. This page lets you configure the grid in the wire frame views. Color: The grid color. Distance: The minimal distance of two grid lines. You can snap control points to the grid with the context menu in the wireframe views. You can configure the grid for translations, scales and rotations separately here. You can configure the detail levels for various objects here. Higher values lead to a finer wireframe and therefore to a better approximation for the displayed objects, but slow down rendering. For some objects like the sphere you can configure the detail level for two directions separately. Lets you configure the sizes in which infinite objects are displayed in the wireframe views. If you check the High detail for enhanced projections check box, all wire frame lines are subdivided further if the camera uses an enhanced projection. Enhanced projections are all projections except the perspective and orthographic projections. This feature greatly improves the approximation of these projections but slows down rendering. This page lets you configure the texture preview in the properties view. Size: The preview image size. Gamma: The gamma correction. Rendered Objects Defines the small sample scene. At least one object has to be selected. Wall If the Enable wall check box is checked, a wall will be rendered behind the objects. The wall is textured with a checker pattern with the two configurable colors. Floor If the Enable floor check box is checked, a floor will be rendered below the objects. The floor is textured with a checker pattern with the two configurable colors. Anti-Aliasing If the Enable antialiasing check box is checked, the non-recursive antialiasing method will be used for rendering the scene. You can configure the depth and threshold values. See render modes section for a detailed description of the parameters. In this page you can fine-tune existing view layouts or manually create new ones. See section View Layouts how to create and save view layouts. The combo box Default view layout: lists all available view layouts. &kpovmodeler; uses the selected view layout at program start. The list Available View Layouts shows all available view layouts. You can add a new layout with the Add button and remove the selected layout with the Remove button. The selected view layout is displayed in the box View Layout Each view layout is identified by its name. The name has to be unique and must not be empty. The list below the name displays all views for the selected view layout. You can add new views with the Add button and remove the selected view with the Remove button. The attributes of the views are: Type: The view type. See The &kpovmodeler; Interface for a description of each view type. 3D view type: The projection for wire frame views. You can choose one of the six orthographic projections or the camera mode. Dock position: The position of the view. New Column will create a new column to the right side of the previous views, Below will dock the view below the previous view, Tabbed will create a tabbed view together with the previous one and Floating will not dock the view into the main window but create a separate window. Column width: The width of the column in percent of the main view width. View height: The view height in percent of the main view height. Width: and Height: The size in pixels for floating views. Position x: and y: The position on the desktop for floating views. OK, that's it. You have just installed &Povray; and &kpovmodeler;, and now you already want to start without much knowledge of any of the two softwares. Here we go now: If you follow the steps of this tutorial, you'll be able to set the ultimate simple scene, very widespread among the newbies: A sphere over a plane. At any time you can render your scene using one of the following methods: Using the menu: DisplayRender Using the toolbar: Click on the icon But you should carefully consider the following warnings before complaining if all you get is a black screen. If this is the very first time you use a 3D software, you should be aware of these golden rules: If you set no camera, no rules apply to the render engine which can't render a proper picture, ending in a black picture. If you set no light system, all your scene is in the dark, ending in a black picture. The objects for which no material has been set won't show on the rendered picture, ever. If you got everything installed fine, once &kpovmodeler; is loaded, you discover the following default windows setting: Take a few minutes to explore the menus and icons available. If you have time, please read the documentation in order to get a fair idea of what you can expect from this piece of software. Menubars (1) Toolbars (2) The object tree (3) The object properties view (4) The wireframe and camera views (5) You will have to use each of them intensively from now on, so always keep them and their use in mind. &kpovmodeler; starts with a simple scene. In order to follow this tutorial you first have to remove all objects from the object tree. Select the scene and choose the EditDelete menu entry. You should now have an empty scene. First of all, we will set a camera. In order to do so, two convenient ways are available: Using the menu: InsertCamera Using the toolbar: Click on the icon The wireframe view shows how the camera is set regarding the whole scene we are creating. In particular, we can now see something in the fourth wire frame view (right, bottom): This is the view of the scene from the camera point of view. This is what will be seen when you render the scene. The object tree now shows a new entry, reading camera. If you click on it, it affects the content of the object properties view, where various parameters pertaining to the camera can be found. Referring to the &Povray;'s documentation to learn more about these could be helpful. We will change nothing to the basic settings of the camera, this will be the scope of later tutorials, but please note that in the graphic view, the camera has control points that let you control the point to which the camera points. You just have to left-click on one handle and move it to an appropriate location. The same way we have set a camera, we will now set a light system: Using the menu: InsertLight Using the toolbar: Click on the icon A new entry features now in the object tree. If you click on the light entry, you see that the properties view changes in order to show the parameters available to the lighting system. We will change some parameters in order to set the light higher above the horizon (y=3), slightly on the right (x=1) and in the foreground (z=1). We can also rename the light system (Name=Main Light). Change the values in the object properties view as follows: Once you press the Apply button (or hit Enter), the wire frame view and the object tree immediately change in order to comply to these settings, and here is what now should see the camera. There are many ways to create a ground for our scene. One method could have been to insert a box object (InsertFinite Solid Primitives Box) and resize x to 100, y to 0 and z to 100, for example, but it's a cumbersome way to do this task. In fact, &kpovmodeler; offers you a convenient feature: You can create a infinite plane that will feature the ground: Using the menu: InsertInfinite Solid Primitives Plane Using the toolbar: Click on the icon. Take a good custom: Having the plane selected in the object tree, please change its name in something that is convenient to you and then press the Apply button (or hit Enter). The object tree will update the name of the entry. The wire frame view also shows the plane now, even if it looks finite by now. But don't worry, it will spread up to the horizon line when you'll render the scene! If you pay attention to the object tree, you will notice that the ground entry can be expanded if you click on the plus icon standing just before the object. Once done, you see various settings parented to the object. In this case, there isn't much yet, apart from the standard options to any newly created object: Scale, rotate, and translate. Selecting each of these will change the settings available in the object properties view. In this scene, we will arbitrary translate the ground one unit lower than the horizon line, just for you to tweak some of these parameters. Select translate, and adjust the parameters as follow: Your scene should now look like the following picture. Please select the ground prior to adding any material properties to it. Many possibilities await us, but we will stay close to something quite easy for now. Using the menu: InsertTextures Pigment Using the toolbar: Click on the icon. In both cases, a popup window will prompt you to choose the way the object should be inserted. Please choose First Child. The pigment now appears in the object tree. You can change its name in the properties view (Name=Ground Pigment), and click on the Preview button in order to see how the pigment looks like for now. Of course, the preview of the pigment shows nothing but a black matte material, because we need to refine the pigment settings. Anyway, keep in mind you always can preview the look and feel of your materials using the Preview button. We will now define the pigment colors. Again, many possibilities await us, but we will choose one of the most straightforward for now. Using the menu: InsertTextures Color List Using the toolbar: Click on the icon If no color shows on the box and the sphere of the preview, click on the Apply button before calling for a preview. The ground material has been successfully set! If you render your picture now, using the render icon, you should get the following result: Of course, these colors are not the ones you could have expected. We still have to see how we can customize them. In the case of the color list, you have to define two new sets of attributes, called Solid Color. In the Object Tree, make sure the color list entry is selected. Then go through this two times (you can't do it more, anyway, as the checkers color list can only afford the use of two solid colors): Using the menu: InsertTextures Solid Color Using the toolbar: Click on the icon. One after another, in the object tree, select the two solid colors and change their color attributes in the object properties view: ...these attributes are for the first solid color (press Apply!), ... and these attributes are for the second (press Apply again!). Of course, a new rendering of our scene will prove that everything has been taken into account accordingly: For this step, we should already be at ease, because we begin to understand &kpovmodeler;'s general behavior. In the object tree, select the scene entry. Creating the sphere is as easy as creating the ground: Using the menu: InsertFinite Solid Primitives Sphere Using the toolbar: Click on the icon. As before, select First Child when asked for. The object properties view offers you immediately to change its settings, which we'll do right now. By setting the Radius value to 1 (don't forget to hit Enter or press Apply), we make sure that the sphere will be in contact with the ground. Otherwise, since we moved the ground one unit bottom, the sphere will look like floating above the ground. Of course, a rendering now will give a strange result: As already seen before, the sphere appears with a black matte material. We will set a proper material in the following step. With the sphere selected, you can now set a material for it. As we already did for the ground, let's give to the sphere a pigment color: Using the menu: InsertTextures Pigment Using the toolbar: Click on the icon Select First Child and rename to Sphere pigment, for example. With the sphere pigment entry selected, insert a solid color and set the parameters as follow: Using the menu: InsertTextures Solid Color Using the toolbar: Click on the icon You already can render the scene and get a first poor result: But there are more interesting effects to achieve if we take time to set some finish attributes: Using the menu: InsertTextures Finish Using the toolbar: Click on the icon. Then change the values according to the following snapshot and press Apply or hit Enter. The Specular and Reflection parameters give particularly good visual effects, perfect for glass or chrome-like effects, even if Metallic hasn't been chosen at this step: You should now have a fair glimpse of what is possible with kpovmodeler. Hopefully, you are already skilled enough to do simple but beautiful things. Raytracing is a method of rendering, that is, creating a 2D image out of a 3D scene or model. When raytracing a scene, the renderer shoots a hypothetical ray from the perspective of the viewer (that is, from the camera you are rendering the scene from) through each pixel in the scene. It calculates how this ray reflects and refracts from objects, the visual effects of the light sources in the scene and how atmospheric effects such as fog affect it. The scene is built up, pixel by pixel. As you may imagine, without a camera, you cannot see anything - the camera is your eye into the scene. Furthermore, without any light, you still won't see anything - it would just be dark. Obviously, any scene intended for raytracing must include some light, an object of some kind and at least one camera. For a complete reference to all objects and attributes see the &Povray; user documentation. &Ctrl;N File New Create a new scene. File Import Povray... Import a &Povray; scene created outside &kpovmodeler;. A normal file dialog will open, allowing you to choose your file. Povray files usually have the extensions *.pov or *.inc. &Ctrl;O File Open... Open a file. The standard file dialog will allow you to choose a file you have previously created with &kpovmodeler; File Open Recent Open a file from a list of the files you have been recently working on. Whenever you open or create a new model, it is added to this submenu, replacing the oldest entry in the list. &Ctrl;S File Save Save the currently active scene. If you have already saved this model, it will be saved with the same name. If it is a new file, you will be asked to name it and choose a location to save it. File Save As... Save the currently active scene with a new name. File Export Povray... Export the scene as a &Povray; file. The file save dialog will allow you to choose a name and location to save the file. &kpovmodeler; will automatically add the .pov extension. File Revert Revert the scene to the state it was in the last time you saved it. Changes you have made since the last save will be lost. &Ctrl;P File Print... Printing is not implemented yet. &Ctrl;W File Close Close the current scene without closing &kpovmodeler; &Ctrl;Q File Quit Quit &kpovmodeler;. If you have any unsaved changes, you will be given a chance to save them. &Ctrl;Z Edit Undo Undo the last action you performed. This menu item is not available unless you have unsaved changes to the current scene. &Ctrl;&Shift;Z Edit Redo Redo the last action you undid. This menu item is not available unless you have used Edit Undo. &Ctrl;X Edit Cut Cut the currently selected object(s) from the scene, and store them on the clipboard. &Ctrl;C Edit Copy Copy the currently selected object(s), and store them on the clipboard. &Ctrl;V Edit Paste Paste the contents of the clipboard. Edit Delete Delete the currently selected object(s) from the scene. View New Object Tree Create a new Object Tree. View New Properties View Create a new Object Properties View. View New Top View Create a new Orthographic Wireframe View from the top perspective. View New Bottom View Create a new Orthographic Wireframe View from the bottom perspective. View New Left View Create a new Orthographic Wireframe View from the left perspective. View New Right View Create a new Orthographic Wireframe View from the right perspective. View New Front View Create a new Orthographic Wireframe View from the front perspective. View New Back View Create a new Orthographic Wireframe View from the back perspective. View New Camera View Create a new Camera View. View View Layouts Contains a list of all available view layouts. Switch to the selected layout. View Save View Layout... Save the current view layout. A dialog opens to choose a name for a new layout or to overwrite an existing one. View Render Modes... Open the render modes configuration dialog. View Render Render the scene. View Render Window Show the &Povray; render window. View Redisplay Redisplay the wire frame views. Creation actions for all supported &Povray; objects. This menu provides options for configuring &kpovmodeler;, changing its appearance, shortcuts and standard behavior. Settings Show Statusbar Toggles the statusbar on/off. Settings Show Path Show/hide the path in the caption. Settings Save settings Saves the current settings. Settings Configure Key Bindings... Opens a dialog for changing the key bindings. Using this option you can change the standard key shortcut for &kpovmodeler;'s commands or create new ones. Settings Configure Toolbars... Opens a dialog for configuring the toolbar. You can add and remove toolbuttons for &kpovmodeler;'s commands with this option. Settings Configure KPovModeler... Opens a dialog to configure &kpovmodeler;. &help.menu.documentation; &kpovmodeler; copyright 2001,2002 the &kpovmodeler; authors. Andreas Zehender zehender@kde.org Luis Passos Carvalho lpassos@mail.telepac.pt Phillippe Van Hecke lephiloux@tiscalinet.be Leonardo Skorianez skorianez@bol.com.br Documentation copyright 2002 Lauri Watts lauri@kde.org Documentation copyright 2002 Andreas Zehender zehender@kde.org Documentation copyright 2002 Olivier Saraja olivier@linuxgraphic.org &underFDL; &underGPL; Bump Map A bump map is a way to simulate a rough surface, without having to model every single bump on the surface, and without changing the underlying geometric shape of the object itself. It is common to use the same file as both a bump map and a texture map. Primitives Primitives are the basic geometric shapes that you can use as building blocks. Most complex 3d models are created from many dozens, or even hundreds, of these primitives, which are then edited and manipulated to give a more realistic appearance. Rendering Not yet written Texture Map A texture map is a way of applying color to the surface of an object on a pixel by pixel basis, by applying an image file as a color map. It is common to use the same image file as a bump map. &documentation.index; &install.intro.documentation; &install.compile.documentation;