Attached Link: Does anybody still uses POV-Ray ??

It was POV-Ray (on an Atari ST) that initially got me interested in 3D art, but I have to admit I haven't even looked at it in about 3 years Paul

Holli, I still use POV-Ray and Moray. I've just gotten Vue and Poser, but I'm staying with POV-ray/Moray for several reasons: Moray has a much more powerful modeller than Vue does, so if you want to create objects like buildings, furniture and so forth using splines, bezier objects etc, you need to model them and then import them into Vue. Vue is far superior to POV-Ray for organic things like vegetation and skies and atmospheres, but for modelling Vue is weak as a standalone program. Its very possible to use Poser to create human figures as Obj files and then inport them into Moray scenes and render them with POV-Ray using the texture maps and all. I'm currently working on a big image of this kind, but my main computer is in the repair shop right now. When I finish it I will post it here. There are some technical issues with importing Poser figures but it can be done, once done the POV renderer is far better than the Poser renderer! To give you an idea what can be done with POV-Ray and Moray take a look at the images in my gallery (links below) My POV-Ray images: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=13908&Start=1&Artist=Rhialto&ByArtist=Yes http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=15109&Start=1&Artist=Rhialto&ByArtist=Yes Bear in mind that I am a real newbie and these images represent my first three ray-tracing projects. For the best POV-ray images go take a look at the winners of the Internet Ray tracing Competition at www.IRTC.org By using Moray you can sidestep for quite some time the need to understand POV's scripting language. All three of my Renderosity gallery images were created without knowing script and no doubt suffer from that lack of control. Bear in mind the following points... these share/freeware programs are supported better than the commercial programs since they have a huge user base of talented programmers who devote their free time to them. Updates are regular and well documanted and there is none of this business of charging for every little add on the way Zygote do for their models. There is a new (free) patch for POV-Ray called MegaPOV which adds incredible features such as Photon mapping, radiosity and so on. Moray also has lots of free plugins that allow easy creation of difficult objects and effects such as smoke, lens flare, water flows..... One thing I've realised is that artists tend to use programs like Vue D'esprit. If you just want to click on the terrain button and have a mountain appear, click on the vegetation button and have a tree appear, select a sunset setting start the render and hey presto! have a picture in 2 minutes then go for Vue. If you want full control and to understand ray tracing then go for POV, with Moray to make modelling easy for you. POV is great for technical wonks. Hope this helps. If you need more info/links just ask. Rhialto