On Thu, 09 Apr 1998 10:14:15 -0600, Tim Riley <tri### [at] itsbldrdocgov>
wrote:

>I was playing around with the brick pattern yesterday and came across
>what I consider an anomaly: the "bricks" are not continuous, that is,
>they do not exist in the center of the solid, but are "decals" that
>exist only on the surface. To see what I mean, render a solid with a
>brick pattern and make the mortar transparent. Instead of seeing the
>individual "bricks", you see two flat rectangles on either side of the
>solid.

All textures, except halos, are like this.  All objects are treated as
hollow "shells", so when a texture is transparent, the ray passes
right through it and doesn't get checked again until it hits another
object, or another side of the same object.  To do otherwise would be
computationally prohibitive.

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