Persistence of vision raytracer (3D renderer).

The Persistence of Vision Raytracer is a high-quality, totally free tool for creating stunning three-dimensional graphics. It is available in official versions for Windows, Mac OS/Mac OS X and i86 Linux. The source code is available for those wanting to do their own ports. 

POV-Ray has matured substantially since it was created. Recent versions of the software include the following features:

• A Turing-complete scene description language (SDL) that supports macros and loops.^[3]
• Library of ready-made scenes, textures, and objects
• Support for a number of geometric primitives and constructive solid geometry
• Several kinds of light sources
• Atmospheric effects such as fog and media (smoke, clouds)
• Reflections, refractions, and light caustics using photon mapping
• Surface patterns such as wrinkles, bumps, and ripples, for use in procedural textures and bump mapping
• Radiosity
• Image format support for textures and rendered output, including TGA, PNG, JPEG (only input) among others
• Extensive user documentation

One of POV-Ray's main attractions is its large collection of third party support. A large number of tools, textures, models, scenes, and tutorials can be found on the web. It is also a useful reference for those wanting to learn how ray tracing and related geometry and graphics algorithms work.

POV-Ray, in addition to standard geometric shapes like tori, spheres and heightfields, supports mathematically defined primitives such as the isosurface (a finite approximation of an arbitrary function), the polynomial primitive (an infinite object defined by a 15th order or lower polynomial), the julia fractal (a 3-dimensional slice of a 4-dimensional fractal), the superquadratic ellipsoid (intermediate between a sphere and a cube), and the parametric primitive (using equations that represent its surface, rather than its interior).

POV-Ray internally represents objects using their mathematical definitions; all POV-Ray primitive objects can be described by mathematical functions. This is different from many 3D computer modeling packages, which typically use triangle meshes to compose all objects.

This fact provides POV-Ray with several advantages over other rendering / modeling systems. POV-Ray primitives are more accurate than their polygonal counterparts. Objects that can be described in terms of spheres, planar surfaces, cylinders, tori and the like are perfectly smooth and mathematically accurate in POV-Ray renderings, whereas polygonal artifacts may be visible in mesh-based modeling software. POV-Ray primitives are also simpler to define than most of their polygonal counterparts. In POV-Ray, a sphere is described simply by its center and radius; in a mesh-based environment, a sphere must be described by a multitude of small polygons.

On the other hand, primitive-, script-based modeling is not always a practical method to create objects such as realistic characters or complex man-made artifacts like cars. Those objects have to be created in mesh-based modeling applications such as Wings 3D or Blender and then converted to POV-Ray's own mesh format.