True raytracing is a dying art. In an age of graphical user interfaces and realtime animation, people willing to sit at a keyboard typing numbers into a machine only to wait hours to see the result are rare. Still, if you need something more accurate than the visual approximations produced by modern renderers, raytracing is the way to go.
The following images were created with a text editor and, with one exception, rendered with the Polyray and POV-Ray raytracers. (The gantry image was rendered in Bryce after using Polyray to generate the triangle data.)
I would happily provide a link to Polyray, but it seems to have vanished from the web. That's a pity, because Polyray is a good, solid raytracer with a glyph object that, unlike POV-Ray's oddly complicated prism, is simple and comprehensible. It also supports background images, which is another Very Good Thing. If anyone has information about Polyray, or a valid URL, please contact me.