How to increase quality in POV-Ray?

[Doc_Brown]

I have searched and searched, and just can't find much info on increasing the quality in POV-Ray, can anybody please help?

Mostly I just want to increase the Anti-alias amount.

I have added lines of code, but they do nothing, I just don't understand. Under the quickres.ini.

[1920x1200 16:9 AA 0.7]

Width=1920

Height=1200

Antialias=On

Antialias_Threshold=0.7

Antialias_Depth=4

Antialias_Threshold=3.3

Can someone please help?

Thanks in advance.

[C3POwen]

This is from the current POV-Ray documentation on anti-aliasing options, specifically the Antialias_Threshold value:

The RGB values are in the range from 0.0 to 1.0 thus the most two pixels can differ is 3.0. If the anti-aliasing threshold is 0.0 then every pixel is super-sampled. If the threshold is 3.0 then no anti-aliasing is done. Lower threshold means more anti-aliasing and less speed. Use anti-aliasing for your final version of a picture, not the rough draft. The lower the contrast, the lower the threshold should be. Higher contrast pictures can get away with higher tolerance values. Good values seem to be around 0.2 to 0.4.

The gist of this is that Antialias_Threshold=0.0 is the highest-quality setting. Antialias_Threshold=3.0 means no anti-aliasing is done.

Your problem above is that you've entered two different values for Antialias_Threshold, and POV-Ray will always work with the last option defined, which in this case is a value of 3.3 (and 3.0 is the maximum value it can actually utilise).

I've not had a lot of experience with the Antialias_Depth, but I believe that the higher the number, the better the quality. For this option, the highest value you can set is 9.

You can also specify a jitter option using Jitter=On, although I've not used this option before. By default this sets a jitter value of 1.0, which is the highest value available.

In light of the above, the settings you're probably after are as follows:

[1920x1200 16:10 AA 0.0]

Width=1920

Height=1200

Antialias=On

Antialias_Threshold=0.0

Antialias_Depth=9

Jitter=On

POV-Ray does have an alternate sampling method for anti-aliasing, but the above should be good enough.

[Doc_Brown]

Thank you very much! Worked fantastic.

Just one more question, the trans-clear and trans-orange texture I used shows up very dark with black lego under them. Is there a way to brighten them up?

Thanks in advance.

[C3POwen]

Thank you very much! Worked fantastic.

No problem!

Just one more question, the trans-clear and trans-orange texture I used shows up very dark with black lego under them. Is there a way to brighten them up?

Thanks in advance.

This is something I've been meaning to fix for a little while, but just haven't gotten around to it. Ultimately, the transparency settings are not right for POV-Ray 3.7, and transparent parts are too transparent.

If you'd like to fix this yourself, just open the "lg_color.inc" file in Notepad and locate the following section:

/*************************************/
/* VARIABLES FOR TRANSPARENT COLOURS */
/*************************************/

// NORMAL TRANSPARENT
#declare TransFilter = 0.9;
#declare TransTransmit = 0.1;

// NEON TRANSPARENT
#declare NeonFilter = 0.5;
#declare NeonTransmit = 0.3;

Just change the TransTransmit value to 0, save the file, and then try rendering again. You could also adjust the TransFilter option a bit -- maybe to something like 0.95 -- if it looks too bright.

Alternatively, I've made a small update to my LGEO-Update.zip file, so you could just download and install that. The "lg_color.inc" file contained also has some minor updates to the metallic colours.

It's not perfect, and I think I need to spend some more time tinkering with some of the colour options.

[Dilvish]

You've renamed some materials. For instance, "lg_gold_chrome" is now "lg_chrome_gold". This is causing my renders to stop. What should I do?

Also, I think you should add the "#version 3.7" declarative to the top of your files. Without the declarative, POV-Ray still tries to operate in POV-Ray 3.6.2 legacy mode.

POV-Ray 3.7

LDView 4.2 Beta 1

[edit]

The renamed materials worked OK after properly installing your parts.

However, the colors still look too washed out to me. What kind of results are you getting? Have you tried using a script like the following?

#macro gamma_color_adjust(in_color)
#local out_gamma = 2.2;
#local in_color = in_color + <0,0,0,0,0>;
color rgbft
<
pow(in_color.red, out_gamma),
pow(in_color.green, out_gamma),
pow(in_color.blue, out_gamma),
in_color.filter,
in_color.transmit
>
#end
// 1
#declare lg_blue = texture {
pigment { gamma_color_adjust(<0/255, 51/255, 178/255>) }
finish { lg_solid_finish }
}

Disregard that. You have already taken care of things by switching from "color rgb" to "color srpg". I do still think the new colors are washed out, though.

Edited July 16, 2014 by Dilvish