3.2.2 Starting a Render Job

Starting POV-Ray rendering any scene file is as simple as selecting the file through the menu (Render/Select File and Render) or dragging and dropping it from Windows Explorer. This will work with either a POV file or an INI file (as long as it has an associated POV file). See Understanding File Types. The scene is rendered with the current POV-Ray 3 options (see Command-Line Options). Note that you can tell POV-Ray for Windows to open a file in the editor instead of rendering it if you drag and drop it into the program (this is in fact the default setting now). See the Options Menu for more information.

N.B. One of the most common errors new users make is turning off the display option. The Display option (+d) is ON by default. If you turn this OFF in the INI file or on the command line, POV-Ray will not display the file as you render, no matter how many times you press the Show Render Window button.

Please also note that POV-Ray for Windows will write the output file to a .BMP by default. There is no way to 'save the render window' after rendering is completed. If you turned file output off before starting the render, and change your mind, you will have to start the rendering all over again. We recommend that you just leave file output on all the time.

More about "Understanding File Types"

• 3.2.5 Understanding File Types in 3.2 Getting Started
• 5.5 Understanding File Types in 5 POV-Ray for Unix

More about "Command-Line Options"

• 2.1.2 Command-line Options in 2.1 Introduction
• 3.3 Command-Line Options in 3 POV-Ray for Windows
• 4.6 Command-Line Options in 4 POV-Ray for Mac OS