Using povray to export data

Question

Is there any mechanism in POVRay to export data? I've used some SDL code to create a long list of points needed to render my scene and it strikes me that if I could export those once created it would speed up my rendering. I figure I could use #debug statements to output formatted strings I could use for my array initialization and direct output to a future include file, but I was wondering if I was missing any better way of doing this?

Thanks, BBB

Answer 1

Without going in and fiddling with POVRay source code, I can't imagine how you would do it. There's no option to load data in any form other than SDL and POVRay never outputs SDL - it only reads it.

Answer 2

Yes, povray outputs all kinds of formats. See: http://wiki.povray.org/content/Reference:File_I/O_Directives There may also be example files that ship with povray that do this.