My encounter with POV-Ray was in fall 1998. I bought my computer with the intention to explore 3D graphics and wanted to buy the widest-spread 3D modelling and rendering packages at that time, until I saw its price! Querying a search engine for 'raytracer' resulted in the words 'POV-Ray' or 'povray' in almost every hit. I found it, 3.1 was in its last beta, and stuck with it.

To me, POV-Ray is for exploring ideas, it's a kind of sketchbook, a mini 'atelier'. You can work on composition, on sculpting, on programming, designing patterns and many more. Despite the experimenting, sometimes something actually gets finished though.

Although my background is photography, to me photo-realism is definitely not the Holy-Grail of raytracing.

Currently I maintain the POV-Ray documentation. It is sometimes writing new pieces, but mostly removing bugs, making small updates, maintaining structure and adding new sections written by others (you, perhaps?). Suggestions for improvements, changes and additions are welcome, preferably in the povray.documentation.inbuilt newsgroup on the POV-Ray news server.

Ingo Janssen, ingo@tag.povray.org

In 1993, after almost a decade of tinkering with 3D-graphics, I came upon a book that included POV-Ray 1.0 and was immediately hooked, because it made possible wonderful graphics without requiring expensive hardware or real programming abilities. I spent the next two years learning it by myself.

In 1995, I had an Internet connection and set up a little on-line gallery of images. The reception was wonderful and was a great encouragement. Since then I have made hundreds of finished images and my POV-Ray work has been featured in magazines and art shows. Several of my images have won the IRTC.

Most of my POV-Ray time is spent constructing complex pictures where a lot of attention is given to composition, detail and overall aesthetic appeal. I use many ready-made objects such as Poser models, but I hand-code a lot of things myself and try to share them with the POV-Ray community through my website (www.oyonale.com).

Though my input in the newsgroups (including the French-speaking ones) is more limited than those of some of my fellow TAG members, I try to provide useful and tested solutions to other people whenever I can.

Gilles Tran, gilles.tran@tag.povray.org

I have been actively using POV-Ray since version 2.2 and have a well rounded knowledge of how to use the program. I have also been a major presence in the POV-Ray newsgroups and on c.g.r.r for some time now and you will always find me willing to help other POV-Users with any questions they may have. As the links page maintainer at povray.org I know where the majority of the POV-Ray related resources are located on the web. If you need help locating anything related to POV-Ray or 3D graphics in general I am generally the right person to ask.

If you would like to submit a link to a POV-Ray or 3D related resource you may contact me at this e-mail address - linkmaster@povray.org

If you would like to contact me in my role as a POV-Ray T.A.G. member you may do so using this e-mail address - ken.tyler@tag.povray.org

I look forward to hearing from you.

Ken Tyler

3D computer graphics has been my hobby (and an occasional source of income) for nearly 10 years, well before I found POV-Ray. However, since that momentous discovery about 5 years ago, POV has been my favourite toy - and tool of choice. The POV-Ray newsgroups have proven a priceless resource for me, and I try to return the favour as much as I can. While I do not post very often, I aspire to give a full and comprehensive reply (at the risk of rambling).

I like to tinker. The downside of this is that I rarely consider a scene 'finished'. But on the bright side, I have become familiar with many of the program's idiosyncrasies, limitations, and workarounds to those limitations. I like to know how things work. Thus, even though I am not a programmer, I do in many cases have a pretty good idea about how the program does what it does. I am basically a hand-coder. Even though I do use modellers when necessary, it's not something I am very experienced with. In fact, I find modellers too limiting for most of my projects - things that involve many macros, conditional directives and vector math.

Margus Ramst, margus.ramst@tag.povray.org

I first found POV-Ray (version 2.2) on an old Aztech MacCube CD, but I didn't do anything with it until I found the CompuServe POVRAY forum and downloaded version 3.0.1 (the newest version at the time). I started out on an old Performa 475 with a 25MHz processor and no FPU!

I am now fluent in POV-Script, C and C++. I have written some patches (some of which have been added to the official version), and mostly use MacMegaPOV or my own compiles. I don't do much which I would call "art", I mostly play around with patches, simulations, and math problems.

When the CompuServe forum was shut down, I started reading the news.povray.org newsgroups. I am now active on most of the povray.org newsgroups and the EFNet #povray IRC channel, and occasionally on comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing.

If you want to contact me in my role as a POV-Ray T.A.G. member use my T.A.G. E-mail address: chris.huff@tag.povray.org

Chris J. Huff

The representation of 3D space on paper or the screen has always fascinated me. Thus, it's not a surprise that I fell in love with POV-Ray almost immediately after trying it.

I have been using the program since version 2.2. I'm not very good at making stunning artistic images, as I have specialised more in the mathematical side of POV-Ray, as well as the POV scripting language used as any other programming language. Thus, you will more probably see me making a Mandelbrot landscape made of spheres with 4 lines of POV-Ray code than any 'serious' image.

I have contributed to the POV-Ray community with some programs (like the Triangle Mesh Smoother and the Triangle Mesh Compressor) as well as maintaining the POV-Ray VFAQ page. I also have made a tiny contribution to MegaPov (the fractal patterns).

My specialities are: The POV-Ray scripting language syntax and programming (but not POV-Ray source code programming), as well as the more mathematical side of POV-Ray. I also know something about 3D programming techniques and algorithms, and ANSI-standard C and C++ languages are also quite familiar to me.

Warp, warp @ tag.povray.org

I've been working with computers through the better part of my life and computer graphics have always fascinated me. I came in touch with POV back in 1994, I think. What I immediately liked in POV was the procedural, script-oriented approach to the 3D world. With a couple of exceptions, I am a handcoder. I like to explore the depths of the capabilities of the program, hence most of my POV work is aimed at achieving a certain effect or showing off a cool feature. As a result I can in most cases come up with a good guess how something could be achieved or why a scene isn't 'working'

Since I discovered the POV-Ray newsgroups, my life has changed. And I mean that literally. It's a great feeling to know that there are people out there who are willing to help you at any time and who respect you and trust you to help them. I try to limit my on-topic posts to things I know with certainty. Often the help I give to people is limited to a suggestion, header or a hint, but it is my philosophy that one has to walk one's path in one's own shoes. Knowing the right direction makes the journey easier and shorter, though, and this is where I am trying to be of help.

Peter Popov, peter.popov@tag.povray.org, ICQ #15002700

Like most of my fellow TAG members I first discovered POV-Ray in its second version, and was immediately drawn to the idea of creating complex, beautiful images through the elegant process of tracing simulated rays of light. Again like many others, I've found that hand-coding scenes and animations offers me the most flexibility and provides the most satisfaction.

My involvement in the global POV-Ray community began when I arrived online in 1996 - after downloading the latest version of POV-Ray (3.0 at the time) I entered the IRTC with two images featuring procedurally rendered lens flares. After being swamped by requests for information on the technique I turned to creating include files that acted like plugins for the POV-script language, offering users a flexible way to add features to POV-Ray without requiring patches to the source code. Urged on by POV-Ray users around the world I expanded my collection of include files, and with the release of POV-Ray 3.1, macro files for many tasks.

Over the years I have collected many ideas for further POV-Ray plugins, and hopefully I will be able to realise some of these with the powerful new features available in newer versions of POV-Ray.

Chris Colefax, chris.colefax@tag.povray.org