"# polyray19pub"

Polyray — Open Source Revival (MIT License)

Polyray is a classic 1990s raytracer originally created by Alexander Enzmann. It was distributed as shareware and became known for its flexibility, scene description language, and surprisingly advanced rendering features for its era.

This repository is an officially permitted open-source revival of Polyray, released under the MIT License at the request of the original author.

Goals of the Revival

• Preserve and modernize a historically significant raytracer
• Make the code accessible for learning, experimentation, and research
• Provide a clean, buildable version for modern systems
• Encourage community contributions while respecting the original design

Repository Structure

Polyray-1.9/ # Updated source code (with MIT headers)

• docs/ # Manuals, historical notes, technical references
• examples/ # Sample scenes and materials
• tools/ # Utilities, converters, helper scripts (TODO) CREDITS.md # Attribution and acknowledgements LICENSE # MIT License README.md # This file CHANGELOG.md # Version history for the revival

This is an updated version of the classic Polyray raytracer updated to compile under Windows

Building

Git clone this repository, and cd into the directory

Install 64-bit MSYS2 to compile under Windows: https://github.com/msys2/msys2/wiki/MSYS2-installation

Then update your pacman as follows: pacman -Syuu

Following that, install the prerequisites:

pacman -S base-devel

pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain

(choose 1,2,3,4,5,8,9,10)

pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-boost

pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-sdl3

Void Linux

You will need the SDL library for newer beta versions.

xbps-install SDL3

xbps-install SDL3-devel

You also need RE-flex. This needs to be compiled from source as per the instructions and then installed to /usr/local.

You also need the boost development library. This is how to install it (this information isn't that easy to find online)

xbps-install boost

xbps-install boost-build

xbps-install boost-devel

macos

Using g++ from homebrew. Clang is not tested, sorry!

brew install gcc

brew install re-flex

brew install sdl3

Documentation

The docs/ folder contains:

• Original Polyray documentation
• Notes on the revival process (TODO)
• Technical details about the scene language and renderer

A beta GPT tutor is available: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-JVuMbYmDl-polyray-mentor

If you need the old dta to run the demo animations, you can find it here: http://www.povray.org/ftp/pub/povray/utilities/dta/

SAST Tools

PVS-Studio - static analyzer for C, C++, C#, and Java code.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome!
Please keep changes respectful to the original architecture unless the goal is explicit modernisation.

License

Polyray is released under the MIT License with the explicit permission of the original author. See LICENSE for details.

SAST Tools

PVS-Studio - static analyzer for C, C++, C#, and Java code.