Utilities

• MacDEM, by Jerry Farm, is an application for working with USGS DEM files and can convert them into POV-Ray format. MacDEM reads 1:250K and 7.5 minute DEMS in ASCII and SDTS format, and can also merge DEM files together.
• There is a suite of programs that auto-generate ray tracer benchmark scenes, and what's interesting about this is the suite is public domain and it comes with full C source code to do with as you wish. There are also a couple of file readers (DXF, NFF, Wavefront OBJ), which can in turn write to many output file formats, making a nice group of file converters. Check out the Mac SPD suite.
• The ancient POV-Utilities 2.1 utility has been made available here, in case you want to make shells, coils, Connect-The-Dots, Lissajous, Swoop, or convert RAW, DXF, or POV-Ray 1.0 files to POV-Ray 2.0 files. Note that there is a bug in the DXF conversion utility, and it tends to drop some triangle facets.
• Stephen Andrusyszyn had a web page? that contained some unique POV-Ray QTVR movies, and a nice Mac graphical Spline-path editor for POV-Ray's lathe and prism objects.  Anyone know where this went?
• Aero is an amazing physical-based modeler, which lets you set up objects, apply forces, and create animations of their interactions with eachother. It can output POV-Ray files for 3-D rendered movies.
• Rene' Schwietzke has a web page with some interesting libraries of texture include files.
• DEM files (topographic data files) can be converted to POV-Ray with this simple Mac utility, supplied by Russell Towle:
  MacDEM2POV 1.2, converts 7.5 minute U.S.G.S. quadrangles to 24-bit Targa files, for use in the POV-Ray height_field function. It is a quick Mac port of a UNIX/DOS utility and is under active development. He has ambitious schemes to refine this program and welcome help from Mac programmers experienced in the C language. Send comments or suggestions to Russell Towle.
• Christian Vogelgsang has written source code for parsing POV-Ray scene files and converting them to RIB, available on his web page.
• If you are using Mathematica to generate surfaces, and want to export to POV-Ray, you may want to try this Mathematica code.
• There is now a version of Lparser 4.0 for the Mac OS 7.6+ and QD3D 1.5.x(aka QT 3.0)!!!
  L-Systems are fractal objects that can resemble plants and weird creatures.
  The Application reads L-System Scripts as defined by Lapre and builds the Result-Model into a QuickTime / QuickDraw3D Meta Object. The Model is Instantly displayed in a Standard QuickDraw3D Viewer Window. The Object may be moved in RealTime for examination. Also with Real Time Rotation, Growth and Mutations. The created model is a Standard Quickdraw3D Meta Object and may be Copied and Pasted into any MacOS Application that supports 3DMF or PICT and Drag and Drop. Supports all QD3D Hardware Accelerators including Apple QD3D Accel. Card, ATI GA/VR cards. Supports All QD3D Software Plug-In Renderers, Postscript,Q3QTrace, LightWorks etc. Additional tool supports Export of DXF,VRML,POV, and Raw-Polygon Files.
  
• Steve's Object Builder is a free script based tool that can be used to make 3D objects for ray tracing programs such as POV-Ray. The tool uses Perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language) as its script language interpreter. One nice thing about Perl is that it is easy to use and it is freely available on many platforms such as UNIX, Windows, and Macintosh. You do not have to be a expert Perl programmer to use this tool. Features include: RAW output, POV-Ray smooth triangle output, Moray UDO output, DXF output, POV scene file output, Set smoothing angle for POV output, Set edge angle for UDO output, Swap the y and z axis option, Scale the final object to a absolute size, Hermite curves, Bezier curves, Bspline curves, Catmull-rom curves, Translate/Rotate/Scale functions, Skin, Extrude, Extrude along a path, Gravity, Sweep, Polygon triangulation, Group object pieces by name, L-systems, Over 40 example objects.
• Paul D. Bourke has some fun Mac fractal, L-system and 3D utilities on his home page, some of which export to POV-Ray format.
• There is a good general POV-Ray/graphics utility site by Martin Schwarz in Germany.