The <NORMAL> vector defines the surface normal of the plane. A surface normal is a vector which points up from the surface at a 90 degree angle. This is followed by a float value that gives the distance along the normal that the plane is from the origin (that is only true if the normal vector has unit length; see below). For example:

This is a plane where straight up is defined in the positive y-direction. The plane is 4 units in that direction away from the origin. Because most planes are defined with surface normals in the direction of an axis you will often see planes defined using the x , y or z built-in vector identifiers. The example above could be specified as:

The plane extends infinitely in the x- and z-directions. It effectively divides the world into two pieces. By definition the normal vector points to the outside of the plane while any points away from the vector are defined as inside. This inside/outside distinction is only important when using planes in CSG and clipped_by .

A plane is called a polynomial shape because it is defined by a first order polynomial equation. Given a plane:

it can be represented by the equation

Therefore our example plane {y,4 } is actually the polynomial equation y=4. You can think of this as a set of all x, y, z points where all have y values equal to 4, regardless of the x or z values.

This equation is a first order polynomial because each term contains only single powers of x, y or z. A second order equation has terms like x^2, y^2, z^2, xy, xz and yz. Another name for a 2nd order equation is a quadric equation. Third order polys are called cubics. A 4th order equation is a quartic. Such shapes are described in the sections below.

where ORDER is a whole number from 2 to 7 inclusively that specifies the order of the equation. T1, T2, ... Tm are float values for the coefficients of the equation. There are m such terms where

An alternate way to specify 3rd order polys is:

Also 4th order equations may be specified with:

Here's a more mathematical description of quartics for those who are interested. Quartic surfaces are 4th order surfaces and can be used to describe a large class of shapes including the torus, the lemniscate, etc. The general equation for a quartic equation in three variables is (hold onto your hat):

  a00 x^4 + a01 x^3 y + a02 x^3 z+ a03 x^3 + a04 x^2 y^2+
  a05 x^2 y z+ a06 x^2 y + a07 x^2 z^2+a08 x^2 z+a09 x^2+
  a10 x y^3+a11 x y^2 z+ a12 x y^2+a13 x y z^2+a14 x y z+
  a15 x y + a16 x z^3 + a17 x z^2 + a18 x z + a19 x+
  a20 y^4 + a21 y^3 z + a22 y^3+ a23 y^2 z^2 +a24 y^2 z+
  a25 y^2 + a26 y z^3 + a27 y z^2 + a28 y z + a29 y+
  a30 z^4 + a31 z^3 + a32 z^2 + a33 z + a34 = 0

To declare a quartic surface requires that each of the coefficients (a0 ... a34) be placed in order into a single long vector of 35 terms.

As an example let's define a torus the hard way. A Torus can be represented by the equation:

 x^4 + y^4 + z^4 + 2 x^2 y^2 + 2 x^2 z^2 + 2 y^2 z^2 -
 2 (r_0^2 + r_1^2) x^2 + 2 (r_0^2 - r_1^2) y^2 -
 2 (r_0^2 + r_1^2) z^2 + (r_0^2 - r_1^2)^2 = 0

Poly, cubic and quartics are just like quadrics in that you don't have to understand what one is to use one. The file shapesq.inc has plenty of pre-defined quartics for you to play with. The syntax for using a pre-defined quartic is:

A quadric is defined in POV-Ray by

where A through J are float expressions that define a surface of x, y, z points which satisfy the equation

  A x^2   + B y^2   + C z^2 +
  D xy    + E xz    + F yz +
  G x     + H y     + I z    + J = 0

Different values of A, B, C, ... J will give different shapes. If you take any three dimensional point and use its x, y and z coordinates in the above equation the answer will be 0 if the point is on the surface of the object. The answer will be negative if the point is inside the object and positive if the point is outside the object. Here are some examples:

  X^2 + Y^2 + Z^2 - 1 = 0  Sphere
  X^2 + Y^2 - 1 = 0        Infinite cylinder along the Z axis
  X^2 + Y^2 - Z^2 = 0      Infinite cone along the Z axis

The easiest way to use these shapes is to include the standard file shapes.inc into your program. It contains several pre-defined quadrics and you can transform these pre-defined shapes (using translate, rotate and scale) into the ones you want. You can invoke them by using the syntax:

The pre-defined quadrics are centered about the origin \langle 0,0,0> and have a radius of 1. Don't confuse radius with width. The radius is half the diameter or width making the standard quadrics 2 units wide.

Some of the pre-defined quadrics are,

  Ellipsoid
  Cylinder_X, Cylinder_Y, Cylinder_Z
  QCone_X, QCone_Y, QCone_Z
  Paraboloid_X, Paraboloid_Y, Paraboloid_Z

For a complete list, see the file shapes.inc .

Given any point in space you can say it's either inside or outside any particular primitive object. Well, it could be exactly on the surface but this case is rather hard to determine due to numerical problems.

Even planes have an inside and an outside. By definition, the surface normal of the plane points towards the outside of the plane. You should note that triangles and triangle-based shapes cannot be used as solid objects in CSG since they have no well defined inside and outside.

CSG uses the concepts of inside and outside to combine shapes together as explained in the following sections.

Imagine you have to objects that partially overlap like shown in the figure below. Four different areas of points can be distinguished: points that are neither in object A nor in object B, points that are in object A but not in object B, points that are not in object A but in object B and last not least points that are in object A and object B.

Two overlapping objects.

Keeping this in mind it will be quite easy to understand how the CSG operations work.

Note that the difference operation is performed by intersecting the first object with the negation of the second object.

The union of two objects.

Unions are simply glue used to bind two or more shapes into a single entity that can be manipulated as a single object. The image above shows the union of A and B. The new object created by the union operation can be scaled, translated and rotated as a single shape. The entire union can share a single texture but each object contained in the union may also have its own texture, which will override any matching texture statements in the parent object.

You should be aware that the surfaces inside the union will not be removed. As you can see from the figure this may be a problem for transparent unions. If you want those surfaces to be removed you'll have to use the merge operations explained in a later section.

The following union will contain a box and a sphere.

The intersection between two objects.

For example:

The results is a subtraction of the 2nd shape from the first shape as shown in the figure below.

The difference between two objects.

For example:

The merge operations can be used to avoid this problem. It works just like union but it eliminates the inner surfaces like shown in the figure below.

Merge removes inner surfaces.

The different types of light sources and the optional modifiers are described in the following sections.

The other keywords will be explained later.

The spotlight is identified by the spotlight keyword. It is located at LOCATION and points at POINT_AT. The following illustration will be helpful in understanding how these values relate to each other.

The geometry of a spotlight.

You should note from the figures that the radius and falloff angles interact with the tightness parameter. Only negative radius angles will give the tightness value full control over the spotlight's appearance as you can see from the figure below. In that case the falloff angle has no effect and the lit area is only determined by the tightness parameter.

Intensity multiplier curve with a negative radius angle and different tightness values.

Spotlights may be used anyplace that a normal light source is used. Like any light sources, they are invisible. They are treated as shapes and may be included in CSG shapes. They may also be used in conjunction with area lights.