POV-Ray - The Persistence of Vision Raytracer
- Development Status (November 2024)
- License
- Forums
- Bug Reports
- Official Binaries
- Building POV-Ray
- IDE Versions
- 3D Modeller
- Documentation
- Contacting Us
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 new 3.8 beta ready before the end of the year and a final release in Q1 2025.
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.
As of version v3.7, the source for POV-Ray is licensed under the AGPL3. The documentation is under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license, and support files such as SDL includes, macros, sample scenes and so forth are under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (see each file header for the specific one).
Discussion regarding POV-Ray is traditionally done via our forums at https://news.povray.org/. These are also available via NNTP at news://news.povray.org/ for those preferring that.
Please note that the POV-Ray developers do not monitor all forums regularly. The ones we tend to check most frequently are povray.general, povray.windows and povray.unix.
It's generally a good idea to mention a bug in the forums prior to lodging a formal report; this can save you some time if it's a non-bug or a solution is known. You should also first check the known issues to see if it has been reported already.
If you're sure something is a bug then please do lodge a bug report on the GitHub issues tracker.
At this point in time, the only platform for which the project distributes pre-built 'official' (i.e. supported) binaries is Microsoft Windows. These may be obtained via https://www.povray.org/download/..
Official Windows binaries of selected development versions are made available at https://github.com/POV-Ray/povray/releases on a semi-irregular basis.
At this point in time we generally recommend building from the latest version of the
latest-stable branch. Alternatively,
you may want to opt for a recent tagged version
to test-drive features that have been added since the latest stable release.
Please do not build directly from the master branch (or any other non-stable branch for that matter), as versions from that branch may report ambiguous version numbers, making it difficult to obtain version-specific support or report bugs in a useful manner.
POV-Ray should compile on any POSIX-compliant system with the required tools (please see unix/README.md for build instructions), on Microsoft Windows systems that have Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 or later installed (targeting XP or later, both 32 and 64-bit - be sure to see windows/README.md, otherwise your build will not work), and also on Mac systems (console mode only, using an appropriately-modified version of the unix build - not currently provided by us).
If you are using an operating system with a package or ports system such as Ubuntu or FreeBSD, you may like to check whether or not POV-Ray is available via that route.
Currently the only version of POV-Ray with an IDE as such is the Windows build. We do want to change that, though. With the release of POV-Ray v3.7 we have added a clear split between the backend (renderer) and frontend (UI or console), along with a C++ layer which abstracts this into a fairly easily-understood set of classes (VFE, aka 'Virtual Front End').
We will offer support to those wishing to use this interface layer to integrate POV-Ray into an open-source cross-platform IDE. We would also be interested in hearing suggestions as to what we could base such an IDE on, should we go ahead to integrate it ourselves.
Putting it another way: we consider getting a cross-platform IDE a high priority.
POV-Ray does not currently have its own 3d modelling application (at least, not one in a usable state). We do own the rights to the Moray modeller, which was formerly commercial, but it needs a little work to get it working with v3.7 or later. It is also Windows only (due to its use of MFC). Nevertheless we will be adding the source to the repository at a future date.
Authors of open-source modellers with a compatible licence wishing to directly integrate POV-Ray are welcome to contact us for support in doing so.
When built and installed via the means provided in the source tree, all versions of POV-Ray come with documentation. For the Unix build, this is in the form of a manpage giving basic usage, and full HTML-based documentation. For the Windows version, there is a HtmlHelp (.CHM) file provided.
The official location for the online documentation is https://www.povray.org/documentation/. Further information, as well as online documentation for the current development version, can be found at https://wiki.povray.org.
We prefer that you contact us via the forums mentioned at the head of this document. If the matter is one that requires direct email contact (and this generally will NOT include tech support requests, though exceptions are made for package maintainers) you may use the address listed at the bottom of https://www.povray.org/povlegal.html.