Editing POV-Ray (section)

{{Short description|Text-based ray-tracing program}}
{{Infobox software
| name = POV-Ray
| logo = Povray logo sphere.png
| logo size = 140px
| screenshot = 
| author = David Kirk Buck, Aaron A. Collins, Alexander Enzmann
| developer = The POV-Team
| released = {{Nowrap|{{Start date and age|1991|7|29}}<ref name="History">{{Cite web |url=http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.1/10/ |title=POV-Ray: Documentation: 1.1.5.3 A Historic 'Version History' |website=povray.org |access-date=2018-12-19}}</ref><ref name="POV-Ray 25">{{Cite web |url=http://www.povray.org/news/index.php#323 |title=POV-Ray: News |website=povray.org |access-date=2018-12-19}}</ref>}}
| latest release version = {{wikidata|property|edit|reference|P348}}
| latest release date = {{wikidata|qualifier|P348|P577}}
| latest_preview_version = <!-- Used by Template:Latest preview software release/POV-Ray -->
| programming language = [[C++]]
| operating_system = [[Cross-platform]]
| genre = [[Ray tracing (graphics)|Ray tracer]]
| license = [[GNU Affero General Public License|AGPL-3.0-or-later]]<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.povray.org/povlegal.html |title=POV-Ray License |publisher=povray.org |access-date=2014-05-05}}</ref>
| website = {{url|https://www.povray.org/|povray.org}}
}}

The '''Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer''', most commonly acronymed as '''POV-Ray''', is a [[Cross-platform software|cross-platform]] [[ray tracing (graphics)|ray-tracing]] program that generates images from a text-based scene description. It was originally based on DKBTrace, written by David Kirk Buck and Aaron A. Collins for [[Amiga]] computers. There are also influences from the earlier Polyray<ref>{{cite web|url=http://paulbourke.net/dataformats/polyray/ |title=Polyray v1.7 |publisher=Alexander R. Enzmann |access-date=2016-07-05}}</ref> raytracer because of contributions from its author, Alexander Enzmann. POV-Ray is [[free and open-source software]], with the [[source code]] available under the [[GNU Affero General Public License|AGPL-3.0-or-later]] license.