I added texture maps for polygons and a VISgrPOVRayWindow class to the POVRay destination class for object graphics that I’ve mentioned before. The image to the left uses texture maps on an IDLgrPolgyon. It has a single direct light source to the right, so POVRay has cast a shadow on the right side of the left planet, making it entirely in shadow (I added a weak ambient light so that it could be seen at all).

Shaded Earth

The VISgrPOVRayWindow class acts just like IDLgrWindow except that it uses POV-Ray instead of OpenGL to render the graphics (i.e. it runs POV-Ray and loads the image back into IDL for you).

Download includes API documentation on how to use.