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Hello there POV-Ray and Moray users!
It's been a few decades, lol. Glad to see there are still some of you around.
I had some AI tokens at my disposal and decided to put Claude Code to work and
get Moray running on x64 (based on Federicos abandoned branch) and then got it
to support POV-Ray 3.8, including integrated previews with a dedicated VFE-based
server.
So I just pushed that work to the master branch in the BitBucket repo. Not sure
who has access to that, but if there is sufficient interest we can probably make
a packaged release as well. There are no more 3rd party libraries in the code.
Anyway, some of the code in this modeller is now over 30 years old! I started in
the early 90's on it... ahhh, the memories.
I might check in every now and again and implement some things. The POV-Ray 3.8
support is currently strictly limited to VFE calling and making sure the INIs
are compatible. No new features are supported. Also, it might still have some
bugs in it and I will fix the ones I haven't run into during this port, if they
are reported.
Much love to you all!
Cheers,
- Lutz
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"Lutz" <lut### [at] stmuc com> wrote:
> Hello there POV-Ray and Moray users!
..... flabbergasted ..... speechless .....
Cheers!!!!!!! :)
ingo
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G'day Lutz, good to see you again :)
I have access and have been seeing the commits (I get an email for each) and was quite
pleased to see the progress. I also got your email and am about to reply to it.
When we're ready to go with 3.8 beta 3 I'd like to release both POV-Ray and a Moray
built with the same codebase simultaneously. I think that will make people happy :)
-- Chris
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"Lutz" <lut### [at] stmuc com> wrote:
> So I just pushed that work to the master branch in the BitBucket repo. Not sure
> who has access to that, but if there is sufficient interest we can probably make
> a packaged release as well. There are no more 3rd party libraries in the code.
> - Lutz
:O WHOA!
This is indeed a very welcome surprise!
Interested in the BitBucket repo as well as a packaged release.
- BE
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Le 17/07/2026 à 09:00, Lutz a écrit :
> Hello there POV-Ray and Moray users!
>
> It's been a few decades, lol. Glad to see there are still some of you around.
>
> I had some AI tokens at my disposal and decided to put Claude Code to work and
> get Moray running on x64 (based on Federicos abandoned branch) and then got it
> to support POV-Ray 3.8, including integrated previews with a dedicated VFE-based
> server.
>
> So I just pushed that work to the master branch in the BitBucket repo. Not sure
> who has access to that, but if there is sufficient interest we can probably make
> a packaged release as well. There are no more 3rd party libraries in the code.
>
> Anyway, some of the code in this modeller is now over 30 years old! I started in
> the early 90's on it... ahhh, the memories.
>
> I might check in every now and again and implement some things. The POV-Ray 3.8
> support is currently strictly limited to VFE calling and making sure the INIs
> are compatible. No new features are supported. Also, it might still have some
> bugs in it and I will fix the ones I haven't run into during this port, if they
> are reported.
>
> Much love to you all!
>
> Cheers,
>
> - Lutz
>
>
Le 17/07/2026 à 09:00, Lutz a écrit :
> Hello there POV-Ray and Moray users!
>
Hello Lutz,
I'm curious, when you say there is no more 3rd party libraries in the
code, do you mean the gui of this new moray only uses the windows gui
interface or is it cross platform (like unix for example) ? For example,
the well known libraries 'wxWidgets' and 'Qt' are both cross platform
but they are considered as 3rd party libraries... Can you provide more
explanations about the dependencies (OS compatibility, etc...) of the
new Moray ?
Regards,
Antoine.
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> Hello Lutz,
> I'm curious, when you say there is no more 3rd party libraries in the
> code, do you mean the gui of this new moray only uses the windows gui
> interface or is it cross platform (like unix for example) ? For example,
> the well known libraries 'wxWidgets' and 'Qt' are both cross platform
> but they are considered as 3rd party libraries... Can you provide more
> explanations about the dependencies (OS compatibility, etc...) of the
> new Moray ?
> Regards,
> Antoine.
Moray is Windows only. When we donated it to the POV-Team it was using some 3rd
party commercial UI libraries that prevented the POV-Team from releasing it
under their license. Some work was done to replace it, but not released. In the
meantime we needed it to also be x64. That work was started but never completed.
And finally, Moray did not support the new way POV-Ray supports GUI integration
(as a VFE server), nor was it compatible with V3.8. I fixed all those issues. So
the result is a Windows x64 build that is compatible with POV-Ray 3.8 (though it
does not support new features that were added post V3.5 yet), renders previews
inside Moray, uses no 3rd party commercial libraries (there is still zlib,
pnglib) that runs fine on modern Win10 and Win11 systems. It still has strong
dependencies on the Microsoft MFC libraries, so cross platform is not on the
table.
Lutz
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Great news, Lutz!
Congratulations for your tenacity.
Paolo
Il 17/07/2026 09:00, Lutz ha scritto:
> Hello there POV-Ray and Moray users!
>
> It's been a few decades, lol. Glad to see there are still some of you around.
>
> I had some AI tokens at my disposal and decided to put Claude Code to work and
> get Moray running on x64 (based on Federicos abandoned branch) and then got it
> to support POV-Ray 3.8, including integrated previews with a dedicated VFE-based
> server.
>
> So I just pushed that work to the master branch in the BitBucket repo. Not sure
> who has access to that, but if there is sufficient interest we can probably make
> a packaged release as well. There are no more 3rd party libraries in the code.
>
> Anyway, some of the code in this modeller is now over 30 years old! I started in
> the early 90's on it... ahhh, the memories.
>
> I might check in every now and again and implement some things. The POV-Ray 3.8
> support is currently strictly limited to VFE calling and making sure the INIs
> are compatible. No new features are supported. Also, it might still have some
> bugs in it and I will fix the ones I haven't run into during this port, if they
> are reported.
>
> Much love to you all!
>
> Cheers,
>
> - Lutz
>
>
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Le 19/07/2026 à 21:22, Lutz a écrit :
>
>> Hello Lutz,
>> I'm curious, when you say there is no more 3rd party libraries in the
>> code, do you mean the gui of this new moray only uses the windows gui
>> interface or is it cross platform (like unix for example) ? For example,
>> the well known libraries 'wxWidgets' and 'Qt' are both cross platform
>> but they are considered as 3rd party libraries... Can you provide more
>> explanations about the dependencies (OS compatibility, etc...) of the
>> new Moray ?
>> Regards,
>> Antoine.
>
> Moray is Windows only. When we donated it to the POV-Team it was using some 3rd
> party commercial UI libraries that prevented the POV-Team from releasing it
> under their license. Some work was done to replace it, but not released. In the
> meantime we needed it to also be x64. That work was started but never completed.
> And finally, Moray did not support the new way POV-Ray supports GUI integration
> (as a VFE server), nor was it compatible with V3.8. I fixed all those issues. So
> the result is a Windows x64 build that is compatible with POV-Ray 3.8 (though it
> does not support new features that were added post V3.5 yet), renders previews
> inside Moray, uses no 3rd party commercial libraries (there is still zlib,
> pnglib) that runs fine on modern Win10 and Win11 systems. It still has strong
> dependencies on the Microsoft MFC libraries, so cross platform is not on the
> table.
>
> Lutz
>
Ok, thank you for your explanations Lutz ;-) . As a Linux developer most
of the time (C++ and POVRay mainly), I still have hope of running Moray
on Ubuntu with Wine for example.
Regards,
Antoine.
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Le 19/07/2026 à 21:22, Lutz a écrit :
>
>> Hello Lutz,
>> I'm curious, when you say there is no more 3rd party libraries in the
>> code, do you mean the gui of this new moray only uses the windows gui
>> interface or is it cross platform (like unix for example) ? For example,
>> the well known libraries 'wxWidgets' and 'Qt' are both cross platform
>> but they are considered as 3rd party libraries... Can you provide more
>> explanations about the dependencies (OS compatibility, etc...) of the
>> new Moray ?
>> Regards,
>> Antoine.
>
> Moray is Windows only. When we donated it to the POV-Team it was using some 3rd
> party commercial UI libraries that prevented the POV-Team from releasing it
> under their license. Some work was done to replace it, but not released. In the
> meantime we needed it to also be x64. That work was started but never completed.
> And finally, Moray did not support the new way POV-Ray supports GUI integration
> (as a VFE server), nor was it compatible with V3.8. I fixed all those issues. So
> the result is a Windows x64 build that is compatible with POV-Ray 3.8 (though it
> does not support new features that were added post V3.5 yet), renders previews
> inside Moray, uses no 3rd party commercial libraries (there is still zlib,
> pnglib) that runs fine on modern Win10 and Win11 systems. It still has strong
> dependencies on the Microsoft MFC libraries, so cross platform is not on the
> table.
>
> Lutz
>
Anyway keep up the good work !
Regards,
Antoine.
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On 20/07/2026 05:22, Lutz wrote:
> Moray is Windows only. When we donated it to the POV-Team it was using some 3rd
> party commercial UI libraries that prevented the POV-Team from releasing it
> under their license. Some work was done to replace it, but not released. In the
> meantime we needed it to also be x64. That work was started but never completed.
> And finally, Moray did not support the new way POV-Ray supports GUI integration
> (as a VFE server), nor was it compatible with V3.8. I fixed all those issues. So
> the result is a Windows x64 build that is compatible with POV-Ray 3.8 (though it
> does not support new features that were added post V3.5 yet), renders previews
> inside Moray, uses no 3rd party commercial libraries (there is still zlib,
> pnglib) that runs fine on modern Win10 and Win11 systems. It still has strong
> dependencies on the Microsoft MFC libraries, so cross platform is not on the
> table.
I agree with Lutz here. A port is not trivial as there are many dependencies on how
MFC does things. In particular, it has a unique format for defining dialogs, and each
and every dialog in Moray would need to be re-coded into whatever format the target
library needs (e.g. QT). And that's just the start.
Once we release the source anyone who is interested in doing a port is welcome to fork
it and have a stab. We'd be quite happy to see someone make a cross-platform version.
-- Chris
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