Welcome  

The Persistence of Vision Raytracer is a high-quality, Free Software tool for creating stunning three-dimensional graphics. The source code is available for those wanting to do their own ports.


  Download and Navigation  

To navigate about this site please use the navigation links at the top of this page. If you want to download POV-Ray, please visit our download page.


  Contacting Us  

For general resources and support information, please visit our resource and support page. For website-related issues only, please contact our webmaster. To contact us regarding licensing matters, please use the address given at the bottom of our license page.


  POV-Ray-related News  
Development Status (November 2024)

After a long break in releases of 3.8 beta test candidates, development is resuming, though not at the pace of past releases. That said, we hope to have a 3.8 release ready before the end of the year.

One impediment we have yet to overcome is code signing for the Windows platform. Currently we have no means of doing so as our previous key has expired. The difficulty is both cost and the need for flexibility in verifying us as an organization. Despite the fact that we have a company registered in Australia (Persistence of Vision Raytracer Pty. Ltd.) and it is visible on the ASIC website, it is our experience that the verification process gets hung up by the fact the company doesn't sell anything, have a street address, or have a phone number.

While we do not generally sign beta releases, it is our policy that official releases for the Windows platform are expected to be signed.

[November 06, 2024] [Permalink]
DKBTrace (foundation of POV-Ray) creator has kickstarter for educational IDE

David K. Buck - the creator of DKBTrace, the pioneering raytracer that was the genesis of POV-Ray - has created a KickStarter campaign to fund creation of an open-source IDE for PigeonTalk (PigeonTalk is a smalltalk implementation created by David that is aimed at being a programming environment to explore computing).

"I chose Smalltalk as a language because it provides the most immersive experience I've encountered. Smalltalk allows you to create, use, and explore software in a very hands-on way. It's an ideal environment for learning and playing with software. This Kickstarter project is to provide a development environment for this Smalltalk which I'm calling PigeonTalk. The development environment would run in a web browser and would communicate with the Smalltalk engine using WebSockets. Once this is available, PigeonTalk becomes a viable programming environment that others could use."

We wish David the best in this endeavor and are hopeful the Kickstarter will meet its goal as POV-Ray itself would not exist if it were not for David's kind contribution of the DKBTrace source code.

[February 04, 2022] [Permalink]
POV-Ray v3.8.0 beta tests available

POV-Ray 3.8 is now in beta-test. You may obtain beta releases via our GitHub repository. Discussion regarding the betas should be directed to the beta-test group in our forums.

[August 31, 2021] [Permalink]
POV-Ray turns 30

30 years ago today, on July 29 1991, the first beta of what would become POV-Ray became available in the GRAPHDEV forum on CompuServe. See "The Early History of POV-Ray", "The Original Creation Message", "The Name" and "A Historic Version History" in our v3.6 documentation for more details about the early days of this project.

[July 29, 2021] [Permalink]
Wiki back online

The POV-Wiki is now back online ... ... [read more]

[April 12, 2021] [Permalink]
Forums back online

Following more recovery work since the server crash we're happy to say our ... ... [read more]

[March 28, 2021] [Permalink]
Server Recovery

The www.povray.org site is now back in read-write mode ... ... [read more]

[March 21, 2021] [Permalink]
POV-Ray Server Downtime

Our server recently experienced a catastrophic hardware failure ... ... [read more]

[March 15, 2021] [Permalink]
Blender to Persistence of Vision

New Release: Blender to Persistence of Vision ... [read more]

[August 01, 2020] [Permalink]
white_dune VRML/X3D editor adds POV-Ray export

The folks at the open-source white_dune 3d editor project let us know that they've added POV-Ray export capability. Neat! It looks like a useful tool, definitely worth checking out.

You can find their github repo here or if you prefer you can go straight to their project website for downloads.

[July 23, 2020] [Permalink]
Older News

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