Raytracing

Raytracer and Utilities

Official POV-Ray HomePage	One of the greatest raytracing program available - and it's free! The source code is available so that you can compile it on your system. The current version is now 3.01. A number of useful utility program is available here also. The complete copy of the official Pov-Ray CD-ROM is also available here. Visit the Internet Raytracing competition web (IRTC) page. Great place to start if you want to learn 3d-computer graphics and for no cost at all.
Texture Library by Rene' Schwietzke	This site provide large number of texture include files for POV-Ray which have been donated by POV-Ray users. Lots of goodies here. Includes POV-Ray 2.x and 3.0 textures.
Texture Magic! by Scott H. Pultz	Extract for the web page: "The Texture Magic is software designed to aid users in creating photo-realistic and special effects textures for ray tracing (Persistence of Vision), 3D graphics packages (Autodesk 3D-Studio, Asymetrix 3D F/X, etc.), and WEB pages." Personally, I like doing things the hard way - using the humble editor.
Blue Moon Rendering Tools (BMRT) Home Page	Haven't tried this yet but I probably will in the near future. This raytracer is based on the rendering engine called Renderman(R) created by Pixar (the guys you brought you "Toy Story"). What is really pulling me to this software is the Shading Language that everyone seems to boasting about (anything that allows you to programming is considered a "flexible" software). Also supports motion blur, radiosity, CSG, depth of field, displacement mapping and other (mouth-drooling) features.
The "Official" Moray Homepage by SoftTronics (Shareware)	Do you want to create stunning 3D graphics in POV-Ray or Polyray without sitting in front of an editor? Then use a modeller. I've tried this one (version 1.0 and 2.0) and it seems pretty simple to used. But I still find that it's not as flexible as hand-coding the scene with the editor since I can access all the features of POV-Ray.
POVLAB's home page by Denis Oliver (Shareware)	This modeller provides a beautiful interface (windows and buttons are nicely textured and 3D). It does provides an incredible number of features. Personally, I found it less intuitive to used then Moray (but I guess that's because I'm the lazy type and could bother reading the documentation). Also, it was a long time ago since I tried it - it probably has improved since then. ....Mmmm, maybe I'll try the latest version again (if I have time).
PoVSB Home Page	Extract from this page: PoVSB is a Windows based modeler for the Persistence of Vision Raytracer. The goal of PoVSB is to allow users of PoV to quickly and easily design scenes in the Windows environment with true camera preview of the scene so no guess work is involved. PoVSB is continually being enhanced and new features added.
Laurens Lapre's Lparser Link	Fractal systems are everywhere in nature. Hence to model these structures you must use fractal geometry. Lparser is a handy utility for creating natural looking structures such as plants and trees using Lsystem. Other interesting non-natural geometry can be created. The language used to create these are a bit cryptic but if you have the time and motivation, learn them. Can extract to POV-Ray and a number of other rendering engine.
POV-Ray 3.0 isosurface pactch	Bored of the basic primative that POV-Ray provides? Here's a unofficially modified version of POV-Ray that seems to offer a more shapes that can be used in CSG. I'll try it out soon.
Hotrays Pov-Ray PovTools Pov-User-Galleries	Lots of goodies here. Not just POV-Ray stuff. There are utilities, documents, pictures and galleries, modellers, other raytracers and renderer, etc. Updated frequently.
The Official Font3D Home Page	This is the official site for the free software called Font3D. It can convert True-Type Fonts to POV-Ray triangles. Many features. Other supports: POV-Ray 3.0, POV-Ray 2.x, Radiance 2.x, Vivid 2.0, AutoCad DXF, RenderMan RIB and RAW Triangles. MSDOS and UNIX
PovZine	This is an E-zine all about povray. It doesn't come out often but when it does, it is of high quality and provides good reading. Also try this link.
The Ray Tracing Home Page	This page has many links to other raytracing-related pages. This page as been around (since to dawn of time ...only joking) for a very long time. Good place to start for general raytracing stuff.
3D CAFE(tm)	This is a good site to find 3D models of many types of objects. Most are in 3DS or DXF format and would require a converter such as WCVT2POV to convert to POR-Ray.

Interesting People

Miscellaneous Links