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# Introduction

This document details the use of the Persistence of Vision ™ Ray-Tracer (POV-Ray ™). It is divided into five parts:

1) This introduction which explains what POV-Ray is and what ray-tracing is. It gives a brief overview of how to create ray-traced images.

2) A "Beginning Tutorial" which explains step by step how to use the different features of POV-Ray.

3) A complete reference on "Scene Description Language" in which you describe the scene.

4) A complete reference on "POV-Ray Options" which explains options (set either by command line switches or by INI file keywords) that tell POV-Ray how to render the scenes.

5) And in our "APPENDICES" you will find some tips and hints, where to get the latest version and versions for other platforms, information on compiling custom versions of POV-Ray, suggested reading, contact addresses and legal information.

POV-Ray runs on MS-Dos, Windows 3.x, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Windows 95, Windows NT, Apple Macintosh 68k, Macintosh Power PC, Amiga, Linux, Sun-OS, UNIX and other platforms.

We assume that if you are reading this document then you already have POV-Ray installed and running. However the POV-Team does distribute this file by itself in various formats including online on the internet. If you don't have POV-Ray or aren't sure you have the official version or the latest version, see appendix "What to do if you don't have POV-Ray".

This document covers only the generic parts of the program which are common to each version. Each version has platform-specific documentation not included here. We recommend you finish reading this introductory section then read the platform-specific information before trying the tutorial here.

The platform-specific docs will show you how to render a sample scene and will give you detailed description of the platform-specific features.

The MS-Dos version documentation contains a plain text file `POVMSDOS.DOC` which contains its specific docs. It can be found in the main directory where you installed POV-Ray such as `C:\POVRAY3`.

The Windows version documentation is available on the POV-Ray program's Help menu or press the F1 key while in the program.

The Mac platform documentation consists of a self-displaying document called "`POV-Ray MacOS Read Me`" which contains information specific to the Mac version of POV-Ray. It is best to read this document first, to learn how to set up and start using the Mac version of POV-Ray. This document is in the "`Documentation`" folder in the main "`POV-Ray 3`" folder.

The Amiga version documentation is made up of Html documents, stored in the same place of general POV-Ray docs; the 'root' document is "POVRAY3:POV-Reference/AmigaPOV.html" when the program is installed following the instruction given. Amiga specific documentation and POV-Ray general docs are available pressing Help key in the POV-Gui program; this feature is available in POV-Gui since version 2.1

The Linux version documentation contains a plain text file `povlinux.doc` which contains its specific docs. It can be found in the main directory where you installed POV-Ray such as `/usr/povray3`.

The SunOS version documentation contains a plain text file `povsunos.doc` which contains its specific docs. It can be found in the main directory where you installed POV-Ray such as `/usr/povray3`.

The generic Unix version documentation contains a plain text file `povunix.doc` which contains its specific docs. It can be found in the main directory where you installed POV-Ray such as `/usr/povray3`.

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