Moray: Another Commercial 3D App Goes GPL

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Moray logoRecently, a small software company announced that they will be releasing their 3D modeling app as an open source project and turning it over to the community because the company is no longer able to develop it. Am I talking about Blender? Nope, not this time. Moray, a shareware 3D modeler for Windows that supports POV-Ray 3.5 was recently acquired by Persistence of Vision Raytracer Pty. Ltd (the makers of POV-Ray) from SoftTroncs (the makers of Moray). Persistence of Vision has announced their intentions to release the whole project under an OSI-approved open source license.

This could of course mean a lot of great things for the modeler, including ports to *nix platforms and the integration of better modeling and texturing tools by leveraging the development power of the open source community and the funding of tech giants like Google. At this time, no release date for the open source version of Moray has been announced.

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    • jedihe

      Excellent!!! the shader previewer I saw a couple of years ago was really good.

      jedihe

    • Ian

      Great news!

      I used to use POV-Ray and Moray a lot. In fact, it was the increasing reminders to pay for it that lead me to look for and find Blender. Would be great to get back into it.

    • Shadowman99

      A useful tool is a useful tool. If somebody gets this to run on Linux, I’ll add it to my toolbox.

      It will be interesting with both programs GPL to see if any code migrates back and forth between the two programs.

    • Ideasman42

      great, it looks like max, so we can send max users who complain about blender to this website.

    • http://www.davidrevoy.com David Revoy

      Moray… The first software I had on a CD sold with french CG magazine before the globalisation of internet here.
      I learn 3D with it a 2.0 version if I remember well. Happy to see another soft in the area of GPL.
      Great news ! But I keep Blender ^^

    • MadMartin

      Good news that Moray’s going open source. I’ve dabbled with its modeling tools in the past and would definitely take another look at it if it came with the sort of mesh export options Blender has. One quite pertinent area where it may score over Blender with new users at least is that it’s got quite a slick professional looking user interface. It will be interesting to see if a bit of competition is enough to prompt a little development on Blender’s ui. I’m used to the latter as it is and now quite like it but it was sure as hell daunting when I first started using Blender.

    • Nebular

      Reading the headline I thought it has already done ;) It’s preety old but good news. If I only would still play with Pov-ray, heh.
      Also, it will be great oportunity for better integration of Pov-ray and Blender, through Moray, imo.

    • MrMunkily

      But remember: the renderer itself remains license incompatible with the GPL.

    • http://otothecleaner.free.fr oto

      Ah, nostalgia….
      I’ve started making 3D images many years ago (98?) with Moray/Povray in an overclocked P 90
      with a 2 Mb videocard :)
      Povray its amazing!!! And the power of the Moray/Pov booleans it’s just incredible!!
      You can have hundreds/thousands of different boolean objects nested inside??!!
      And the Moray/Pov Material editor is marvelous…
      Here’s an image of that period:
      http://otothecleaner.free.fr/downloads/iwc.png

    • Tynach

      This program looks a lot like KPovModeler.

    • MonkeysTail

      Isn’t the point of gpl to advance software and what you can do with it as a whole?

      Well, if that IS the case:
      Maybe if the guys from K-3D, Kpov, Moray, and Blender get together, we could see some real competitive development against the commercial applications! Don’t you think that would be awesome?

      We should seriously consider *yet another* yearly meeting between gpl/freeware 3Dapp developers!

      And seriously, it doesn’t have to be limited to modeling apps, imo it would be great if we could see the guys from ogre, aqsis, pixie, and hell, maybe even sunflow!

      Well anyways, This is Great! Internal gpl competition can push development too!

    • http://ingo.freio.de quiss42

      Tynach: It’s the other way round: KPovModeler looks a lot like Moray. ;)

      oto: May have been even earlier than 98. I just found my upgrade notification to Moray 2.0, and this one was dated January 11th, 1996.

      And now I have to and check their site for more information, maybe it can be run via wine.

    • Marco

      Great! I used this great piece of software just after discovering pov-ray (it was little after dkbtrace :), and far before the internet, btw). i hope it can help blender get an (optional, skinnable) max & maya taste, for people loving those UIs. And yes, guy, think about what a great conference this year!!

      Ciao!

    • Mppic

      Ah, those were the days… Moray was my first contact with a graphical modeller and I almost bought a license – but I discovered Blender just in time and spent the money on the Blender 2.0 Guide instead :-)
      It’s great to see this become open source!

    • aws357

      We are the Blend… resistance is futile… you will be assimilated…

      * sorry, but someone was going to say that somehow… *

      Do you think they will join Blender? Or do you think Blender gained a pal? Or do you think Blender have his first serious nemesis? :p

    • darkcgi

      Ive used it a while back. Its ok but it ain’t got nuthin on Blender.
      Who does?

    • http://cxc3d.blogspot.com joe

      Blender should “steal” some codes from it. although I’m not sure it have anything that blender don’t. Nevertheless small commercial apps doesn’t seem up to the Blender challenge. I havent heard much from 3D Canvas or AC3D anymore lately. Yet I was interested in those two back then and considering to buy a professional license. But blender drag me deeper and I don’t seem to regret that decision :).

      Blender gallery really goes far beyond those two. I think re-releasing a software like this as opensource a very smart move. Rather than the software slowly dies and get dusts piled on them and becoming forgotten. Let the communities gain some benefits from the codes.

    • epat

      cool – reading their announcement, it looks like they’re intending to release the POV-Ray renderer itself as open source code in the not so distant future as well – not that I use windows anymore – but I’d love to have an excuse to port something cool to linux!! – lets just hope I’m not too busy with college work when they do finally get it out in the open!!

      PS: POV-Ray was the first program I ever used todo with 3D as well lol – since then, I’ve not only switched to blender, but I’m also beginning to get completely fanatical about (F)OSS too – and I think I even switched to linux partly as a result of watching blender’s development! – OSS ALL THE WAY!!!!

      -epat. :)

    • http://www.google.com.my lalalalaaaaa

      haha. wow.. its so cool..!

    • http://www.google.com.my lalalalaaaaaasda

      hehehe

    • http://cxc3d.blogspot.com joe

      @epat

      I read about POVRay sometimes back then. Some of the codes were bumped into copyright problems, since the original author are nowhere to be contact. Some of the codes are already opensourced, but some are not. Well at least that’s what I’ve read in the manual. I think that’s why there’re some variant of POVRay available out there.

    • retsyo

      it seems that moray is not a lucky one in this event. is it dead?