Steve Ziuchkovski wrote:
> 
> I have created a scene that uses a cylindrical light, atmospheric media, and
> some mirrors in order to simulate a laser beam. Looks pretty good, except
> for one problem...
> 
> The beam is visible (due to the scattering particles) just fine before it
> strikes a mirror. But, it does not reflect off the mirror, but just stops
> there as if it was a non reflecting object. I _can_ see the reflection of
> the beam in the mirror, but the beam itself doesn't bounce.
> 
> Make sense? I can post the scene if I didn't describe it well enough. It's
> pretty small.
> 
> Steve

  The official build of Pov does not support true reflective caustics. These
are what is needed to simulate the effect you are looking for. Fortunatly
there is a new patched version of pov that offers this ability called UVPov
which has photon mapping as one of it's features. This patch is available at:

http://nathan.kopp.com/patched.htm

  The only other way to simulate the effect you are looking for is to add
a second set of lights for each reflected beam at the angle you would expect
if it had actually bounced.

-- 
Ken Tyler

mailto://tylereng@pacbell.net

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