The location is simply the x, y, z coordinates of the camera. The camera can be located anywhere in the ray-tracing universe. The default location is <0, 0, 0>. The look_at vector tells POV-Ray to pan and tilt the camera until it is looking at the specified x, y, z coordinates. By default the camera looks at a point one unit in the z-direction from the location.

The look_at specification should almost always be the last item in the camera statement. If other camera items are placed after the look_at vector then the camera may not continue to look at the specified point.

This tells POV-Ray to roll the camera until the top of the camera is in line with the sky vector. Imagine that the sky vector is an antenna pointing out of the top of the camera. Then it uses the sky vector as the axis of rotation left or right and then to tilt up or down in line with the sky vector. In effect you're telling POV-Ray to assume that the sky isn't straight up. Note that the sky vector must appear before the look_at vector.

The sky vector does nothing on its own. It only modifies the way the look_at vector turns the camera. The default value for sky is <0, 1, 0>.

If you are using the ultra wide angle, panoramic or cylindrical projection you should use a unit length direction vector to avoid strange results.

The length of the direction vector doesn't matter if one of the following projection types is used: orthographic, fisheye or omnimax.

The necessary calculations to convert from one method to the other are described below. These calculations are used to determine the length of the direction vector whenever the angle keyword is encountered.

The viewing angle is converted to a direction vector length and vice versa using the formula The viewing angle is given by the formula

  angle = 2 * arctan(0.5 * right_length / direction_length)

where right_length and direction_length are the lengths of the right and direction vector respectively and arctan is the inverse tangens function.

From this the length of the direction vector can be calculated for a given viewing angle and right vector.

From this the length of the direction vector can be calculated for a given viewing angle and right vector.

  direction_length = 0.5 * right_length / tan(angle / 2)

or the look_at parameter (in combination with location) . The directions of an explicitly specified right and up vector will be overridden by any following look_at parameter.

While some camera types ignore the length of these vectors others use it to extract valuable information about the camera settings. The following list will explain the meaning of the right and up vector for each camera type. Since the direction the vectors is always used to describe the orientation of the camera it will not be explained again.

Most computer video modes and graphics printers use perfectly square pixels. For example Macintosh displays and IBM S-VGA modes 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768 all use square pixels. When your intended viewing method uses square pixels then the width and height you set with the +W and +H switches should also have the same ratio as the right and up vectors. Note that 640/480 = 4/3 so the ratio is proper for this square pixel mode.

Not all display modes use square pixels however. For example IBM VGA mode 320x200 and Amiga 320x400 modes do not use square pixels. These two modes still produce a 4/3 aspect ratio image. Therefore images intended to be viewed on such hardware should still use 4/3 ratio on their up and right vectors but the +W and +H settings will not be 4/3.

For example:

This specifies a perfectly square image. On a square pixel display like SVGA you would use +W and +H settings such as +W 480 +H 480 or +W 600 +H 600. However on the non-square pixel Amiga 320x400 mode you would want to use values of +W 240 +H 400 to render a square image.