MTV ray tracer bitmap

File Format
Name	MTV ray tracer bitmap
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Graphics MTV ray tracer bitmap
Extension(s)	.pic, .mtv
Released	1988

MTV ray tracer bitmap refers to the output format of the MTV ray tracer program by Mark T. VandeWettering. It is a simple uncompressed truecolor raster image format, similar to binary PPM format. Its name comes from the author's initials, not the Music Television cable channel, so the slogan "I Want My MTV!" doesn't apply to it.

MTV format can also be used by Rayshade (see Rayshade scene description). Rayshade reportedly also uses a multi-image extension of it, consisting of multiple files concatenated together.

MTV uses NFF as its input format.

Identifiers

The MTV software uses a filename extension of .pic. Third-party applications that support this format sometimes use .mtv instead.

Software

• ImageMagick
• Konvertor
• Netpbm: mtvtoppm
• XnView
• MTV source code

Sample files

• dexvert samples — image/mtv

Resources

• MTV File Format Summary, from the Encyclopedia of Graphics File Formats