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export - Mathematica and POV-Ray workflow (Q&A)


A couple of years ago, Alexey Popkov asked this question: Which ray tracing software is compatible with Graphics3D? It is my opinion, for various reasons, that out of the many ray tracing programs that exist today, POV-Ray is most compatible with Mathematica-generated 3D graphics. During the past few months I've developed and gradually improved a Mathematica and POV-Ray workflow, and I think it would be interesting and useful to describe it here in some detail.


Should any of the users or moderators object to this "question", which of course isn't really a question at all, then I'd be willing to remove it or to post it as an answer to Alexey Popkov's question instead. My main reasons for not doing the latter are, first, that it is a rather long answer, and, secondly, that the matter at hand is slightly different from the one implied in Mr. Popkov's question.




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