1. Brickvention 2006 Advanced POV-Ray

2. Brickvention 2006 ‘Duckbot’ rendered with default settings

3. Brickvention 2006 What we’re aiming for

4. Brickvention 2006 What we will cover. Setting up lights in MLCAD Setting up the camera in L3PAO Creating area lights Global settings Modifying textures (reflective floor)

5. Brickvention 2006 Setting up lights in MLCAD Add lights to your model by adding the part ‘light.dat’ Make sure the colour is set to white.

6. Brickvention 2006 Use the front and top view to position the light

7. Brickvention 2006 Add as many lights as you want Three is usually sufficient.

8. Brickvention 2006 Save the file and open L3PAO Default L3PAO settings

9. Brickvention 2006 Let’s change some stuff Select ‘light sources from.DAT’ and deselect any other lights Run L3P, open the file in POV-Ray and render.

10. Brickvention 2006 The result so far Not very different to the default settings yet.

11. Brickvention 2006 Modifying lights. If the lighting arrangement is unsatisfactory - Move the light.dat parts in MLCAD Save the file Rerun L3P Rerender When you are happy with the light’s positions, close MLCAD

12. Brickvention 2006 Setting Up The Camera For a more natural viewpoint set the camera angle to a lower value. Use ‘Radius’ to change the framing of the image. Use ‘Camera Look At’ to set the target of the camera.

13. Brickvention 2006 The Camera 45° 0° 15° Camera ‘Look At’ point. (x,y,z coordinate) Latitude Longitude Radius (ldu)

14. Brickvention 2006 Looking better already

15. Brickvention 2006 Creating ‘Area Lights’ in POV-Ray Open the file created by L3PAO, in this case, duckbot.pov

16. Brickvention 2006 It’s not all that bad… At the bottom of the file there is always something like this. Add an area light just above the existing lights.

17. Brickvention 2006 A bit of C ‘n’ P later

18. Brickvention 2006 Global Settings The render is still a little dark… At the top of the file add these global settings.

19. Brickvention 2006 The finishing touch Add reflection to the floor, and play with the ‘ambient’ and ‘diffuse’ settings.

20. Brickvention 2006 Recap Add light.dat parts in MLCAD for greater control over light positioning. Keep in mind the camera angle when placing lights. Adjust the camera in L3PAO. Use the light’s coordinates to create area lights, which soften the shadows. Use the global settings to make fine adjustments to the brightness and contrast of the image. Add reflection to the floor for a nice finishing touch. Do lots of test renders at a low resolution. The POV-Ray help file is brilliant. Use it.

21. Brickvention 2006 Examples