1.6 Understanding POV-Ray Options
Options are what previous versions of POV-Ray used to refer to as command-line options. The
term is no longer accurate for POV-Ray 3, because the command line is only one way of passing
options to the program. There are now four ways you can pass an option to POV-Ray:
- You can store it in the povray.ini file in the installation directory,
which is normally
/usr/local/share/povray35. This is a
special INI file. Whenever you start up POV-Ray for Unix, the program looks for a
file called povray.ini in this directory. This means POV-Ray for
Unix always starts up with the settings defined in povray.ini. If you want to make
changes to the way POV-Ray works by default, you should make them in povray.ini.
- You can store it in a
povray.ini file in the current directory. POV-Ray looks for a
povray.ini file in the current directory whenever it starts rendering, but after it has
read any povray.ini file in the installation directory. Options in an INI file in the
current directory override options in any copy of povray.ini in the installation directory.
- You can store it in an INI file created for a particular scene. If you drop a specific INI
file into the POV-Ray window, any options set in it will override corresponding options in
previously activated INI files (including
povray.ini). Any options not included in the INI
file will be unchanged, that is to say, they will remain as the master povray.ini set them.
- You can enter it on the command line.
Any command-line option overrides corresponding options in either
povray.ini or any other INI
file loaded during the current session. POV-Ray for Unix interprets the command line from
left to right, so that any option (or INI file) on the command line overrides a corresponding
option (or another INI file) to its left on the command line.