POV-Lab on GitHub – POV-ray is a 3d rendering app, which stands for ‘Persistence of Vision Raytracer’. I’ve only learned the basics, though a lot can be done with a few basic tools.

Pov-ray lets you do basic programming, like if, for, while, custom functions, objects, etc, with a total focus on 3d object rendering. Most geometry is done not with triangular faces but mathematically perfect solids. Due to this, rendering can take more time, than with faceted triangles, though the result is very smooth.

One of my favorite things about POV-Ray is that solids can be created in arrays which are controlled by mathematical functions, which can produce some fascinating (even animated) results. Many apps let you visualize math functions, such as Wolfram Mathematica, MathGV and Mac OS Grapher, though POV-Ray excels when it comes to outputting math to art.

One of my favorite ways of drawing art is using polar coordinates, so I put together a template and example POV-Ray files which sets things up for different methods of creation. The focus on Pov-lab so far is for making art with math.

Making art with math is an exciting way to stimulate the two hemispheres of the brain to work together.

If you have any experience with Programming languages, I think you will find POV-Ray relatively fun and easy to use. If you don’t have any experience with programming, then this is a great place to start!

Here are some random raw samples from some journeys with polar coordinates in POV-Ray.

 

{{ galleryPost.post_title }}