Free ray tracing with POV-Ray

Yesbird · Nov 5 2025

Greetings !

For those, who want to render models with high-quality and free POV-Ray raytracer, I want to introduce my online POV-Ray studio, which can translate formats: obj, fbx, glb, gltf, stl to POV-Ray’ mesh2 and assigns materials to the parts of the model.

It also supports VR mode, so if you have a HMD, you can see your model in 3D stereo.

Usage is very straightforward:

Install POV-Ray: POV-Ray: Download
Download and unzip rendering environment: https://povlab.yesbird.online/studio/data/download/studio.zip.
Upload your model to Studio
Assign materials (note, that vertex colors (Polypaint) are also supported, please look at the lower-left corner for settings).
Download model to directory, where environment located.
Render file studio.pov.

Please note, that this is only a basic scene template, you can adapt it according to your needs, by moving camera and lights, assigning different materials, changing ray tracing parameters, etc.

Short help is available by clicking (?) icon.

More about POV-Ray:
https://www.povray.org
https://wiki.povray.org/content/Main_Page

Happy rendering !

poopipe · Nov 6 2025

I've not been keeping up with pov-ray - well, this century really - how up to date is it?

Yesbird · Nov 6 2025

I guess it's still relevant for those who want to have full control on the rendering process and flexible scene definition with SDL- so very good for experiments. For example, latest version 3.8 beta has a very powerful feature: user-defined cameras for different non-standard projections, like equirectangular:
https://yesbird.online/gallery/?i=sph_2000&p=vr360eqr
or cylindrical:

https://yesbird.online/gallery/?i=odsp1&p=cyl
The other advantage - it's extremely fast without using a GPU.

Noren · Nov 7 2025

Crazy that's still around. I did my very first steps in 3D in POV-Ray. Found it on a multimedia CD from the public library. I had no idea what I was doing or that there were graphical user interfaces for it, I just entered coordinates for blobs along with other parameters like radius etc. and then checked the rendering. I even did a small animation. Needless to say it was a very lengthy process.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/zw/ag6w2nvgkg5q.jpg

(Screenshot from the .avi, so a bit blurry.)

Yesbird · Nov 7 2025

Yes, it's alive and well, but not so many people use it - lack of GUI and complicated (but powerful) SDL are the main reasons. Despite that, serious specialists still using it in their works: https://paulbourke.net/stereoscopy/pov_odsp/

I was a student when discovered POV-Ray in 90x, then came back about four years ago. Although I have a V-Ray, I continue using POV when I need to do something sophisticated that needs programming, because I don't like Python, preferring SDL. Here are few illustrations about what I mean: https://paulbourke.net/miscellaneous/povexamples/

Best source of additional informations is newsgroup: https://news.povray.org/groups/
Btw, this is my online laboratory : https://povlab.yesbird.online/

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/no/2b13aesuw6l9.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/vy/9syxb0wjewav.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/o0/13v8lt3hlj4o.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/me/dg8b2454zks4.png

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/lt/rrrmaa0worok.png

Noren · Nov 8 2025

Thanks for the links! For the lab, do I upload includes in sequence and they will be kept in memory?

Yesbird · Nov 9 2025

Noren said:

Thanks for the links! For the lab, do I upload includes in sequence and they will be kept in memory?

Unfortunately uploads are not allowed to reduce server's loading, as this is not a rendering farm, but only a small demo to try most interesting features.

You can edit scene code and play with params. I hope that after short playing with this lab some will install his own copy, because online rendering eats my own resources ).

Noren · Nov 9 2025

Got it! I just noticed your examples used includes and the render button does look like an upload button (I guess it does upload the code).

Yesbird · Nov 9 2025

Yes, exactly, it uploads the code from the editor's window ).
I will think about more relevant icon.

Free ray tracing with POV-Ray

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