Descriptions and Examples for the POV-Ray Raytracer by Friedrich A. Lohmüller
    Include files with POV-Ray
How they work and How to make your own include files
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Home
- POV-Ray Tutorial

  - POV-Ray Details

  - About Variables

  - A Short
    Include File Tutorial
      Why Include Files?
      Self-made Include Files
          and how to call them.
      Special Notations, ".inc"
          "#local / #declare"
    >Where to store
      Design of Include Files
      Adding a new item
        to the 'Insert Menu'

                                                       

Where to store our Self-made Include Files.

Different Methods with Pros and Cons:

1) Keeping the Include File together with the Scene File:
  The easiest place to store an own include file is to save it in the same directory as the scene file for which it is made.
But this is only good for very scene-specific include files (like parts of a bigger project).
It may be also the only practicable way to use own include files, if you work on a temporary workstation i.e. at school, where you should not edit the file 'povray.ini' individually!
Normally we put things to include files of more general importance (like objects or textures), which we want to re-use also in other scenes. Here the next are much better ways.

2) Storing in the POV-Ray Include File Directory:
Problem here: there are about 59 files still there - very crowded!
So it's not easy to keep an overview of all there!

3) Own Include Files Directory:
Here we make an special directory (in the POV-Ray documents directory or somewhere else!) were we collect all our self-made include files.
For this we need to specify an according 'Library_Path' to our own include files in the POV-Ray program ini file 'povray.ini'. This will tell POV-Ray were to find our include files. (Up to 20 such paths may be specified!).
If we want POV-Ray to find our self-made include files i.e. in the directory 'povray_inc', we have to add to 'povray.ini' the following line:
        Library_Path="C:\MyFiles\povray_inc\"

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© Friedrich A. Lohmüller, 2011
www.f-lohmueller.de