POV-Ray for Unix version 3.7.1

2.5 Appendices

2.5.1 Contacting the Authors

If you have a question regarding commercial use or distribution of POV-Ray, please contact the development team coordinator via the address listed at http://www.povray.org/povlegal.html. Please do not email us directly for technical support - use the below-mentioned forums. We generally do not answer emails requesting support if the sender has not first asked in the forums or read the documentation.

See our web site and particularly our forums for online peer support. The forums have a bug reporting group; please however discuss the issue in the povray.general group and check our issue tracker on GitHub prior to lodging a report as we may already know of the issue (or it might not even be a bug).

2.5.2 POV-Ray License

Note: The following license applies to POV-Ray version 3.7 and later. It does not apply to any earlier version, including the 3.7 beta-test and release candidates.

                        GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
                           Version 3, 19 November 2007
    
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    DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD
    PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS),
    EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
    SUCH DAMAGES.
    
      17. Interpretation of Sections 15 and 16.
    
      If the disclaimer of warranty and limitation of liability provided
    above cannot be given local legal effect according to their terms,
    reviewing courts shall apply local law that most closely approximates
    an absolute waiver of all civil liability in connection with the
    Program, unless a warranty or assumption of liability accompanies a
    copy of the Program in return for a fee.
    
                         END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
    
                How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs
    
      If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest
    possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it
    free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.
    
      To do so, attach the following notices to the program.  It is safest
    to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively
    state the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least
    the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
    
        <one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.>
        Copyright (C) <year>  <name of author>
    
        This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
        it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by
        the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
        (at your option) any later version.
    
        This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
        but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
        MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
        GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
    
        You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
        along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
    
    Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.
    
      If your software can interact with users remotely through a computer
    network, you should also make sure that it provides a way for users to
    get its source.  For example, if your program is a web application, its
    interface could display a "Source" link that leads users to an archive
    of the code.  There are many ways you could offer source, and different
    solutions will be better for different programs; see section 13 for the
    specific requirements.
    
      You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or school,
    if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if necessary.
    For more information on this, and how to apply and follow the GNU AGPL, see
    <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

2.5.3 Contact Information

If you wish to contact us for purposes other than technical support, the following means are available:

Via email:

    team-coord-[three-letter month]-[four-digit year]@povray.org

for example, team-coord-jun-2004@povray.org should be used if at the time you send the email it is the month of June 2004. The changing email addresses are necessary to combat spam and email viruses. Old email addresses may be deleted at our discretion.

Note: Please do not send bug reports or technical support requests to this address. Use our forums or issue tracker for technical support or bug reports.

Via postal mail:

The following postal address is only for official business. Please note that it is preferred that initial queries about licensing be made via email; postal mail should only be used when email is not possible, or when written documents are being exchanged by prior arrangement.

    Persistence of Vision Raytracer Pty. Ltd.
    PO Box 407
    Williamstown,
    Victoria 3016
    Australia

2.5.4 Support Library Licenses

Licenses for Support Libraries used by POV-Ray

2.5.4.1 OpenEXR

Copyright © 2004, Industrial Light & Magic, a division of Lucasfilm Entertainment Company Ltd. Portions contributed and copyright held by others as indicated. All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

  • Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
  • Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
  • Neither the name of Industrial Light & Magic nor the names of any other contributors to this software may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

2.5.5 Citing POV-Ray in Academic Publications

To reference POV-Ray (e.g. in academic papers), you may use one of the below:

Note: The year should be replaced with the year of your publication.

  Persistence of Vision Pty. Ltd. (2013)
    Persistence of Vision Raytracer (Version 3.7)
    [Computer software].
      Retrieved from http://www.povray.org/download/

or

 
  Persistence of Vision Pty. Ltd. (2013).
  Persistence of Vision Raytracer.
  Persistence of Vision Pty. Ltd., Williamstown, Victoria, Australia.
   http://www.povray.org/

2.5.6 Contributors to POV-Ray

Primary POV-Ray 3.7 Core Architects/Developers: (alphabetically)

Chris Cason
Developer 1993-, team leader 1999-, Windows version, SMP implementation, mesh camera, BSP bounding, too many other contributions to list here
Thorsten Fröhlich
Developer 1996-2013, Mac developer, frontend-backend messaging system, SMP implementation, too many other contributions to list here
Christoph Lipka
Developer 2009-, core code improvements notably radiosity, gamma handling, sslt and too many others to list

With Assistance From: (alphabetically)

Nicolas Calimet
UNIX development
Jérôme Grimbert
Mapping warps, image meta-data, the ovus and lemon objects, several list patterns, additional render block items, and other core code contributions.
James Holsenback
3.7 documentation, POV-Wiki, various Unix/Linux, and scene file contributions
Christoph Hormann
UNIX development
Nathan Kopp
Photons, u/v mapping, other contributions
Juha Nieminen
area_illumination, cubic pattern and cubic warp, fractal patterns, other contributions
William F. Pokorny
Countless fixes, scene description language consistency improvements, other contributions

Past POV-Team Members and other Note-Worthy Contributors: (alphabetically)

Claire Amundsen
Tutorials for the POV-Ray User Guide
Steve Anger
POV-Ray 2.0/3.0 developer
Randy Antler
MS-Dos display code enhancements
John Baily
RLE targa code
Eric Barish
Ground fog code
Thomas Baier
3.1 team member, tester
Dieter Bayer
Wrote sor, lathe, prism, media and many other features
Anthony Bennett
Scene files, documentation
Kendall Bennett
PMODE library support, paletted display code in Windows version
Steve Bennett
GIF support
Thomas Bily
Implicit and parametric surfaces
Dale C. Brodin
Alpha & Beta tester, forum support
Eric Brown
no_image, no_reflection, orient and circular area_light
Matthew Corey Brown
pigment function, warps, projected_through
David Buck
Original author of DKBTrace, POV-Ray 1.0 developer
Edward Coffey
Fade_color
Aaron Collins
Co-author of DKBTrace 2.12, POV-Ray 1.0 developer
Chris Dailey
POV-Ray 3.0 developer
Steve Demlow
POV-Ray 3.0 developer
Andreas Dilger
Former Unix coordinator, Linux developer, PNG support
Joris van Drunen Littel
Mac beta tester
Alexander Enzmann
POV-Ray 1.0/2.0/3.0 developer
Dan Farmer
POV-Ray 1.0/2.0/3.0 developer, author of many features, sample scenes, and textures
Daniel Fenner
Splines
Hans-Detlev Fink
Slope pattern
Charles Fusner
Blob, lathe and prism tutorial tutorials for the POV-Ray User Guide
Mark Gordon
Unix developer
David Harr
Mac balloon help and palette code
Michael Hazelgrove
Scene files
Jimmy Hoeks
Original Help file for v3.0 Windows user interface
Christoph Hormann
Scene & include files, documentation, insert menu
Chris Huff
Object pattern, Interior texture, inverse transform
Bob Hughes
Scene and include files, insert menu
Ingo Janssen
Scene & include files, documentation
Mike Hough
Spherical camera, Media method 2, uv_mapping for bicubic_patch
Rune S. Johansen
Scene & include files, documentation
Greg M. Johnson
Scene files
Terry Kanakis
Camera fix
Kari Kivisalo
Ground fog code
Alan Kong
Alpha & Beta tester, forum support
Lutz Kretzschmar
Moray author, MS-DOS 24-bit VGA, part of the anti-aliasing code
Tor Olav Kristensen
Scene files
Jochen Lippert
Sphere_sweep
Friedrich Lohmüller
Version 3.7 scene file clean-up and Windows insert menus.
Charles Marslett
MS-Dos display code
Pascal Massimino
Fractal objects
Jim McElhiney
POV-Ray 3.0 developer
Robert A. Mickelsen
Artist, 3.0 docs contributor
Mike Miller
Artist, scene files, stones.inc
Fabien Mosen
Scene & include files
Douglas Muir
Bump maps, height fields
Joel Newkirk
Former Amiga developer
Jim Nitchals
Mac version, scene files (Jim - famous also for his anti-spam crusades - passed away on 5 June 1998 but his contributions to POV-Ray and responsible use of the internet will not be forgotten)
Paul Novak
Texture contributions
Wolfgang Ortmann
Splines
Dave Park
Amiga support, AGA video code
Redaelli Paolo
Former Amiga developer
Ron Parker
Core code, jack-of-all-trades
David Payne
RLE targa code
Ansgar Philippsen
Smooth color triangle
Jaime Vives Piqueres
Mesh camera scene files
Bill Pulver
Time code
Anton Raves
Alpha & Beta tester, Mac contributor
Dan Richardson
3.0 Docs
Tim Rowley
PPM and Windows-specific BMP image format support
Eduard Schwan
Former Mac version coordinator, mosaic preview, docs
Daniel Skarda
Implicit and parametric surfaces
Wlodzimierz Skiba
Windows BMP file support, non-Microsoft compiler build support for POVWIN versions prior to 3.7, bug fixes
Robert Skinner
Noise functions
Yvo & René Smellenbergh
Clock & Image_size keywords
Erkki Sondergaard
Alpha & Beta tester, 3.0 Scene files
Ryoichi Suzuki
Isosurfaces
Zsolt Szalavari
Halo code which was later turned into media
Scott Taylor
Leopard and onion textures
Gilles Tran
Scene files
Massimo Valentini
Optimizations to sphere_sweep and superellipsoid, bug fixes.
John VanSickle
Cells pattern
Mark Wagner
Splines
Timothy Wegner
Fractal objects, PNG support
Drew Wells
POV-Ray 1.0 developer, POV-Ray 1.0 team coordinator
Daren Scot Wilson
Dispersion
Chris Young
Team leader 1992-1999, parser code, other contributions too numerous to list here

Other Support:

Brendan Scott of Open Source Law and the folks at The Software Freedom Law Center
Advice and drafting of documents regarding licensing.
Intel Corp. and AMD Corp.
Optimization advice, performance testing.
DigiCert Inc.
Code signing and SSL certificates.
Netplex LLC (Connecticut's largest independent ISP)
Dedicated hosting of the POV-Ray server for more than ten years.

2.5.7 Thanks

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has helped make POV-Ray what it is over the past two and a half decades. We can't possibly list you all here but be assured that we appreciate your support - without you this project would not be here!

2.5.8 What to do if you don't have POV-Ray

This documentation assumes you already have POV-Ray installed and running however the POV-Team does distribute this file by itself in various formats including online on the internet. If you do not have POV-Ray or are not sure you have the official version or the latest version, then the following sections will tell you what to get and where to get it.

Note: We strongly recommend that you obtain POV-Ray directly from the POV-Ray website (or your company/school intranet, if applicable). Some websites have been known to re-package the POV-Ray software in an installer that bundles adware. If the installation package is not signed by Persistence of Vision Raytracer Pty. Ltd., then it is not from us and may have been tampered with. The official installer supplied by us contains no adware or third-party software of any kind.

2.5.8.1 Which Version of POV-Ray should you use?

POV-Ray can be used under Windows™ XP or newer, x86 Apple™ Macintosh™, and Linux™ & UNIX™ on numerous hardware platforms. See section Where to Find POV-Ray Files for more info.

Older versions of POV-Ray supported many platforms no longer in regular use; we preserve such old versions in our archives if you wish to access them.

If your platform is not supported and you are proficient in compiling source code programs written in C/C++, then you may like to retrieve the source for POV-Ray from our website and attempt to built it yourself.

2.5.8.1.1 Microsoft Windows

As of POV-Ray version 3.7 the Windows versions of POV-Ray require Windows XP and later. We have had reports of v3.7 working on Windows 2000 with all service packs installed, however we cannot guarantee that this will remain the case indefinitely, as we do not test against W2K. If you have an older system you may like to look at POV-Ray version 3.6, which works on Windows 95 and up.

We supply both 32 and 64-bit versions of POVWIN which have been tested to run with AMD™ and Intel™ x86 and x64 processors. As of version 3.7, SMP systems are fully supported; by default POVWIN will use all available processing cores when rendering. For 32-bit systems, we supply both non-SSE2 and SSE2-enabled binaries. The installer will determine which is the most appropriate for your system at install time and install shortcuts to that executable (note however all executables are always placed in the bin folder regardless of the platform). For 64-bit systems there is only a single executable - a separate SSE version is not needed as all x64 CPU's have SSE2 available.

We recommend 100mb free disk space (the installation does not require that much, but room for temporary files during rendering is generally required) and at least 1gb free (i.e. available to POV-Ray at runtime) memory. POV's actual RAM requirement can vary greatly; it's possible to render files with as little as 30mb of free RAM, but typical needs are much greater than this. The actual use depends on what SDL files are provided for rendering and the image output options in use. We strongly recommend that you have sufficient RAM for rendering your scene files without resorting to swap - if a render hits the pagefile regularly it will completely destroy rendering performance.

Note: Accelerated graphics hardware (such as 3D cards) will not improve rendering performance. This technology is not currently aimed at raytracing but is, generally speaking, optimized for single-precision scanline rendering as used in games or other simulations. POV-Ray, like all raytracers, requires double-precision floating-point in order to be able to accurately render scenes.

  • Required POV-Ray files: the setup EXE supplied via our download page. This file will be timestamped and digitally signed by Persistence of Vision Raytracer Pty Ltd. The key in use at the time of writing is issued by DigiCert and remains current until August 2014. All binaries (DLL's and EXE's) supplied by us for version 3.7 are also signed by this key. If you come across an unsigned binary (or one signed by anyone other than the above) that claims to be an official release, it is not from us and should not be used.
  • Optional: The source code is not needed to use POV-Ray. It is provided for the curious and adventurous. See the source-code links on our download page.

Note: System admins/lab techs who wish to do custom installs of POV-Ray for Windows should refer to the windows platform-specific documentation for more details.

2.5.8.1.2 Apple Macintosh

Documentation Pending

2.5.8.1.3 Linux/Unix

Because Linux/Unix run on a wide variety of hardware, the POV-Team cannot provide executable versions for every variation. Instead, we distribute a generic, portable C++ source code package suitable for generating binaries on Unix or Unix-like platforms. It is known to compile and run correctly on recent versions of GNU/Linux for x86/x64, and should be fairly straightforward to get running on any POSIX-compliant Unix-like operating system with a Bourne-compatible shell.

You will need a recent C++ compiler which follows the ISO C++ standard as closely as possible (g++ 4.x is known to work), and (optionally) SVGAlib for GNU/Linux based systems if you wish to enable render preview display.

Required POV-Ray files: povray-3.7.tar.bz2 - the C++ source code of POV-Ray for UNIX. Contains generic parts and UNIX/Linux specific parts. The package includes sample scenes, standard include files and documentation in HTML and plain text ASCII format.

2.5.8.1.4 All Versions

All versions of the program share the same ray-tracing features like shapes, lighting and textures. In other words, a Windows PC can create the same pictures as a supercomputer as long as it has enough memory and you are willing to wait enough time.

2.5.8.2 Where to Find POV-Ray Files

The internet home of POV-Ray is reachable on the World Wide Web at http://www.povray.org/. There is also an active user community in our forums.

2.5.9 Suggested Reading

Beside the POV-Ray material mentioned in Books, Magazines and CD-ROMs, there are several good books or periodicals that you should be able to locate in your local computer book store or your local university library.

  1. "An Introduction to Ray tracing" Andrew S. Glassner (editor)
    ISBN 0-12-286160-4; Academic Press; 1989
  2. "Realistic Image Synthesis Using Photon Mapping" Henrik Wann Jensen
    ISBN: 1568811470; AK Peters; July 2001
  3. "3D Artist" Newsletter, "The Only Newsletter about Affordable PC 3D Tools and Techniques")
    Publisher: Bill Allen; P.O. Box 4787; Santa Fe, NM 87502-4787; (505) 982-3532
  4. "Image Synthesis: Theory and Practice" Nadia Magnenat-Thalman and Daniel Thalmann;
    Springer-Verlag; 1987
  5. "The RenderMan Companion" Steve Upstill;
    Addison Wesley; 1989
  6. "Graphics Gems" Andrew S. Glassner (editor);
    Academic Press; 1990
  7. "Fundamentals of Interactive Computer Graphics" J. D. Foley and A. Van Dam;
    ISBN 0-201-14468-9; Addison-Wesley 1983
  8. "Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice (2nd Ed.)" J. D. Foley, A. van Dam, J. F. Hughes;
    ISBN 0-201-12110-7; Addison-Wesley; 1990
  9. "Computers, Pattern, Chaos, and Beauty" Clifford Pickover;
    St.Martin's Press;
  10. "SIGGRAPH Conference Proceedings";
    Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics
  11. "IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications"; The Computer Society;
    10662, Los Vaqueros Circle; Los Alamitos, CA 90720

The POV-Team no longer recommends books from CRC Press.