I'm surprised (and disappointed) to see that the classic ray-tracing program povray has been dropped from the repositories on 12.04. What is the best way to install it? It doesn't appear that anyone has prepared a PPA for precise.
From the povray distribution license is not a GPL2+ or 3+ license that normally is the requirement for incorporation into the main ubuntu repositories.
Indeed - debian classify this as non-free - although why this package was not made available into multiverse, I'm not sure.
It's actually very simple to compile this command line application from source:
First install some prerequisites:
sudo apt-get install build-essential
Now download the source-code:
wget http://www.povray.org/redirect/www.povray.org/ftp/pub/povray/Official/Unix/povray-3.6.tar.gz
tar -zxvf povray-3.6.tar.gz
cd povray-3.6.1
Now configure it:
./configure COMPILED_BY="yourname <[email protected]>"
N.B. use your email address.
Next - compile and install:
make
sudo make install
This is an example output
save the contents from here as povpawn.pov
Now run povray
povray +Ipovpawn.pov
This will create a file in your folder called povpawn.png
More information from the povray website:
