{"id":83,"date":"2018-02-04T14:36:28","date_gmt":"2018-02-04T22:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vzome.com\/blog\/?p=83"},"modified":"2018-02-05T09:09:59","modified_gmt":"2018-02-05T17:09:59","slug":"using-pov-ray-for-ray-tracing-on-mac-os-x","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vzome.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/using-pov-ray-for-ray-tracing-on-mac-os-x\/","title":{"rendered":"Using POV-Ray for Ray-Tracing on Mac OS X"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ray-traced vZome models are easy again, for Mac users!<\/p>\n

vZome has had POV-Ray export support for a very long time. However, at least on the Mac, POV-Ray has been getting harder to run. There is no longer a Mac desktop application, and even the command-line Mac builds have disappeared. But at its heart, POV-Ray remains a command-line tool, designed for Unix, and that means it is easy to run in a Docker container.<\/p>\n

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Docker is a kind of virtual machine technology, and it is well supported on the Mac. If you’re willing to install Docker Toolbox<\/a>, you’ll gain the ability to run lots of command-line tools and servers. In particular, you can run POV-Ray!<\/p>\n

Docker Toolbox is not the latest version of Docker for the Mac, but it runs on a wider selection of machines and Mac OS X versions. Docker Toolbox installs a “Docker Quickstart Terminal” application, and I have created a customized version of that app<\/a> that makes it easy to run POV-Ray. Simply drop a vZome-generated .ini file onto the POVRay app, and it will launch Terminal and run the POV-Ray “container” in Docker. (In fact, the .ini file need not be vZome-generated, as long it has enough information to supply necessary arguments to POV-Ray.)<\/p>\n

The first time you drop a file on it, my app will create a VirtualBox virtual Linux machine for running Docker, and it will install the POV-Ray software on it. That won’t happen again unless you lose or destroy the virtual machine.<\/p>\n

Since Docker Toolbox is a bit outdated, it will automatically install an older version of VirtualBox. I found I had problems with that version, so I had to uninstall it, and install the latest VirtualBox<\/a>. I imagine if you do this first, then Docker Toolbox will use the one you have installed.<\/p>\n

My droplet app works by using AppleScript to handle the dropped file, and passes the file path to a Bash script that launches the POV-Ray container. It should be possible to adapt this to the latest Docker for Mac<\/a>, but I don’t have that solution in hand at the moment. I’ll update this post if I manage to get that working.\ufeff<\/p>\n

Update<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have tried my POV-Ray wrapper app on a very recent version of Docker for Mac, and it works perfectly, although VirtualBox was also installed on this Mac. I expect it will fail if VirtualBox is not present. I still intend to provide a version of the app that will not require VirtualBox or docker-machine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ray-traced vZome models are easy again, for Mac users! vZome has had POV-Ray export support for a very long time. However, at least on the Mac, POV-Ray has been getting harder to run. There is no longer a Mac desktop application, and even the command-line Mac builds have disappeared. But at its heart, POV-Ray remains […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vzome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vzome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vzome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vzome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vzome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.vzome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101,"href":"https:\/\/www.vzome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions\/101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vzome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vzome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vzome.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}