2.5.3 The POV-Team

Following is a list in alphabetic order of all people who have ever worked on the POV-Ray Team or who have made a note-worthy contribution.

Current POV-Team Members

Chris Cason: Member 1993-, Team leader 1999-, windows version author, other contributions
Nicolas Calimet: 3.6 UNIX development
Dale C. Brodin: Alpha & Beta tester, forum support
Alexander Enzmann: POV-Ray 1.0/2.0/3.0 developer
Thorsten Fröhlich: Mac developer
Christoph Hormann: 3.6 UNIX development
Alan Kong: Alpha & Beta tester, forum support
Nathan Kopp: Photons, u/v mapping, other contributions.
Lutz Kretzschmar: Moray author, MS-DOS 24-bit VGA, part of the anti-aliasing code
Ron Parker: Core code, jack-of-all-trades
Anton Raves: Alpha & Beta tester, Mac contributor
Erkki Sondergaard: Alpha & Beta tester, 3.0 Scene files

Past POV-Team Members and other Contributors

Claire Amundsen: Tutorials for the POV-Ray User Guide
Steve Anger: POV-Ray 2.0/3.0 developer
Randy Antler: MS-Dos display code enhancements
John Baily: RLE targa code
Eric Barish: Ground fog code
Thomas Baier: 3.1 team member, tester
Dieter Bayer: Wrote sor, lathe, prism, media and many other features
Anthony Bennett: Scene files, documentation
Kendall Bennett: PMODE library support, paletted display code in Windows version
Steve Bennett: GIF support
Thomas Bily: Implicit and parametric surfaces
Eric Brown: no_image, no_reflection, orient and circular area_light
Matthew Corey Brown: pigment function, warps
David Buck: Original author of DKBTrace, POV-Ray 1.0 developer
Edward Coffey: Fade_color
Aaron Collins: Co-author of DKBTrace 2.12, POV-Ray 1.0 developer
Chris Dailey: POV-Ray 3.0 developer
Steve Demlow: POV-Ray 3.0 developer
Andreas Dilger: Former Unix coordinator, Linux developer, PNG support
Joris van Drunen Littel: Mac beta tester
Dan Farmer: POV-Ray 1.0/2.0/3.0 developer, author of many features, sample scenes, and textures
Daniel Fenner: Splines
Hans-Detlev Fink: Slope pattern
Charles Fusner: Blob, lathe and prism tutorial tutorials for the POV-Ray User Guide
Mark Gordon: Unix developer
Jérôme Grimbert: Mapping warps
David Harr: Mac balloon help and palette code
Michael Hazelgrove: Scene files
Jimmy Hoeks: Original Help file for v3.0 Windows user interface
Christoph Hormann: Scene & include files, documentation, insert menu
Chris Huff: Object pattern, Interior texture, inverse transform
Bob Hughes: Scene and include files, insert menu
Ingo Janssen: Scene & include files, documentation
Mike Hough: Spherical camera, Media method 2, uv_mapping for bicubic_patch
Rune S. Johansen: Scene & include files, documentation
Greg M. Johnson: Scene files
Terry Kanakis: Camera fix
Kari Kivisalo: Ground fog code
Tor Olav Kristensen: Scene files
Jochen Lippert: Sphere_sweep
Charles Marslett: MS-Dos display code
Pascal Massimino: Fractal objects
Jim McElhiney: POV-Ray 3.0 developer
Robert A. Mickelsen: Artist, 3.0 docs contributor
Mike Miller: Artist, scene files, stones.inc
Fabien Mosen: Scene & include files
Douglas Muir: Bump maps, height fields
Joel Newkirk: Former Amiga developer
Juha Nieminen: Fractal patterns
Jim Nitchals: Mac version, scene files (Jim - famous also for his anti-spam crusades - passed away on 5 June 1998 but his contributions to POV-Ray and responsible use of the internet will not be forgotten)
Paul Novak: Texture contributions
Wolfgang Ortmann: Splines
Dave Park: Amiga support, AGA video code
Redaelli Paolo: Former Amiga developer
David Payne: RLE targa code
Ansgar Philippsen: Smooth color triangle
Bill Pulver: Time code
Dan Richardson: 3.0 Docs
Tim Rowley: PPM and Windows-specific BMP image format support
Eduard Schwan: Former Mac version coordinator, mosaic preview, docs
Daniel Skarda: Implicit and parametric surfaces
Robert Skinner: Noise functions
Yvo & René Smellenbergh: Clock & Image_size keywords
Ryoichi Suzuki: Isosurfaces
Zsolt Szalavari: Halo code which was later turned into media
Scott Taylor: Leopard and onion textures
Gilles Tran: Scene files
John VanSickle: Cells pattern
Mark Wagner: Splines
Timothy Wegner: Fractal objects, PNG support
Drew Wells: POV-Ray 1.0 developer, POV-Ray 1.0 team coordinator
Daren Scot Wilson: Dispersion
Chris Young: Team leader 1992-1999, parser code, other contributions too numerous to list here

2.5.3.1 Contacting the Authors

The POV-Team is a collection of volunteer programmers, designers, animators and artists meeting via the internet at http://www.povray.org/. The POV-Team's goal is to create freely distributable, high quality rendering and animation software written in C that can be easily ported to many different computers. If you have any questions about POV-Ray, please visit our web site for the latest contact information, or see the online version of POVLEGAL for the current team coordinators address (this changes from time to time whenever too many email spammers harvest the address).

If you have a question regarding commercial use or distribution of POV-Ray, please contact Chris Cason, the development team coordinator, via the above method. Please do not email us directly for technical support; we no longer give support via email as too many people abused the privilege.

See our web site and particularly our news server for online peer support. The news server has a moderated bug reporting newsgroup; please however discuss the issue in the povray.general newsgroup prior to lodging a bug report as we may already know of the issue (or it might not even be a bug). Also, there are several FAQ's on the POV web site, and in general the folks in the newsgroups think rather poorly of users who post complaints without reading the FAQ's first.

Finally, there is also a dedicated Technical Assistance Group consisting of a number of trusted, experienced POV-Ray users.

2.5.3.2 The TAG

Established by the POV-Team in late 1999, the TAG (Technical Assistance Group) is made up of selected members of the POV-Ray user community. The purpose of the TAG is to aid the POV-Team in supporting users of POV-Ray around the world, using the collective knowledge of the group to answer users' POV-Ray questions and to bring POV-Ray related matters to the attention of the POV-Team as required.

With their range of experiences in particular areas of computing and graphics, TAG members will always try to provide an answer to users' POV-Ray questions as best they can. If members of the TAG feel a question or suggestion merits the attention of the POV-Team, they will redirect queries to the appropriate members of the Team for consideration.

TAG members are not members of the POV-Team. But they are, however, an official conduit between us and the outside world. They have direct access to all members of the POV-Team. They have the right to speak on our behalf on the POV-Ray news server and on any official mailing lists that we set up for this purpose. Not everything they say will be official; only when they sign it as such. They can still act as 'themselves' and have their own opinions at all other times.

The TAG has its own website.

Technical Assistance Group Members

Chris Colefax: Email: chris.colefax [at] tag.povray.org
Chris Huff: Email: chris.huff [at] tag.povray.org
Ingo Janssen: Email: ingo [at] tag.povray.org
Juha Nieminen: Email: warp [at] tag.povray.org
Peter Popov: Email: peter.popov [at] tag.povray.org
Margus Ramst: Email: margus.ramst [at] tag.povray.org
Gilles Tran: Email: gilles.tran [at] tag.povray.org
Ken Tyler: Email: ken.tyler [at] tag.povray.org

2.5.3.3 POV-Ray 3.6 Development

Main 3.6 developers:

Chris Cason
Thorsten Fröhlich
Nathan Kopp

Contributors of patches in POV-Ray 3.6

Nicolas Calimet: UNIX development
Christoph Hormann: UNIX development
Wlodzimierz 'ABX' Skiba: Various fixes, uv-mapping for parametric and torus
Massimo Valentini: Various fixes