POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : intervals vs. samples : intervals vs. samples Server Time
12 Aug 2024 03:28:26 EDT (-0400)
  intervals vs. samples  
From: Tom Melly
Date: 1 Apr 1999 09:28:28
Message: <3703828c.0@news.povray.org>
hi,

i've been mucking about with 3.1 media trying to understand the difference
in results of increasing intervals vs. increasing samples, and on the whole
i've found increasing intervals to produce a better effect (ie. smoother).

reading the docs, i think i understand why, but "think" is very much the
operative word here.

intervals are the actual number of transformations that may be performed on
a beam passing through a media.

samples is the number of samples taken to ensure that the interval effect is
accurate.

therefore, as an analogy, the question is, if you want to create a
small-scale representation of a crowd at a sports-match, do you randomly
pick 50 of the crowd, but don't worry as to whether they are particularily
representative (fifty intervals, one sample per interval) or pick one member
of the crowd, but ensure that they are the most average member of the crowd
(one interval, but many samples to determine the outcome of that interval).

is this right? if so, it explains why increasing intervals seems better than
increasing intervals. fifty non-average members of a crowd looks more like a
crowd than one member of a crowd, however representative that one member may
be.


Post a reply to this message

Copyright 2003-2023 Persistence of Vision Raytracer Pty. Ltd.