[sztanko]

Are there any modern alternatives to POV-Ray?

[dagw]

Depends what you mean? If you want a modern high performance ray tracer with support for all the latest hardware and implementing all the cutting edge ray tracing research, there is Embree and OptiX. They don't however come with their own scene description language, which is what made POV-Ray so popular in the first place.

[sztanko]

I was thinking for some python (or similar language) api for Ray tracer that doesn't have a steep learning curve and is easy to use.

[zokier]

OpenUSD is probably the closest thing in terms of scene description? You have both Python Api and human-readable ascii format

[opentokix]

Yes, you can use renderman https://renderman.pixar.com/install

[_pferreir_]

Doesn't Blender's main rendering engine, Cycles, sort of use ray tracing (path tracing, I believe)?

[jlarocco]

What's wrong with using POV-Ray?

[shric]

Nothing, except it's thousands (literally) of times slower than alternatives because it uses primitives instead of meshes and therefore doesn't lend itself well to GPU parallelization