POV-Ray reads in your scene file and processes it to create an internal model of your scene. The process is called parsing. As your file is parsed other files may be read along the way. This section covers options concerning what to parse, where to find it and what version specific assumptions it should make while parsing it.
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Sets input file name to file |
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Same as |
You will probably always set this option but if you do not the default input filename is object.pov. If you do not have an extension then .pov is assumed. On case-sensitive operating systems both .pov and .POV are tried. A full path specification may be used (on MS-DOS systems +Ic:\povray3\mystuff\myfile.pov is allowed for example). In addition to specifying the input file name this also establishes the scene name.
The scene name is the input name with drive, path and extension stripped. In the above example the scene name is myfile. This name is used to create a default output file name and it is referenced other places.
If you use "-" as the input file name the input will be read from standard input. Thus you can pipe a scene created by a program to POV-Ray and render it without having a scene file.
Under MS-DOS you can try this feature by typing.
type ANYSCENE.POV | povray +I-
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Add path to list of library paths |
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Same as |
POV-Ray looks for files in the current directory. If it does not find a file it needs it looks in various other library directories which you specify. POV-Ray does not search your operating system path. It only searches the current directory and directories which you specify with this option. For example the standard include files are usually kept in one special directory. You tell POV-Ray to look there with...
Library_Path=c:\povray3\include
You must not specify any final path separators ("\" or "/") at the end.
Multiple uses of this option switch do not override previous settings. Up to twenty unique paths may be specified. If you specify the exact same path twice it is only counts once. The current directory will be searched first followed by the indicated library directories in the order in which you specified them.
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Set initial language compatibility to version n.n |
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Same as |
As POV-Ray as evolved from version 1.0 through 3.1 we have made every effort to maintain some amount of backwards compatibility with earlier versions. Some old or obsolete features can be handled directly without any special consideration by the user. Some old or obsolete features can no longer be handled at all. However some old features can still be used if you warn POV-Ray that this is an older scene. In the POV-Ray scene language you can use the #version directive to switch version compatibility to different setting. See section "The #version Directive" for more details about the language version directive. Additionally you may use the Version=n.n option or the +MVn.n switch to establish the initial setting. For example one feature introduced in 2.0 that was incompatible with any 1.0 scene files is the parsing of float expressions. Setting Version=1.0 or using +MV1.0 turns off expression parsing as well as many warning messages so that nearly all 1.0 files will still work. Naturally the default setting for this option is Version=3.1.
NOTE: Some obsolete or re-designed features are totally unavailable in POV-Ray 3.1 REGARDLES OF THE VERSION SETTING. Details on these features are noted throughout this documentation.