Ray Gardener wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> I'm currently investigating development of a
> scanline renderer, because the scenes I need
> to support (landscape scenes) typically contain
> too many objects for efficient raytracing.

While reading your post this paragraph really made me laugh.  Without
doubt raytracing is far more efficient when rendering complex geometry
than a scanline renderer.  The reason scanline renderers are often
considered faster is not their suitability for complexity but the fact
that a lot of things (like shadows, reflections etc.) are calculated in
advance (when they are calculated at all).

Concerning landscapes - i have seen and rendered far more complex
landscapes with POV-Ray than you usually see being made with scanline
renderers.  I really wonder if you could show me a landscape render you
could say 'this would not have been possible in POV-Ray because of the
detailed geometry'.

And AFAIK there has not been a serious effort to implement scanline
rendering in POV-Ray.  Technically this will be next to impossible because
a lot of features of POV-Ray are not compatible to scanline rendering
techiques.  One try that has been made some time ago can be found on:

http://www.kfunigraz.ac.at/imawww/thaller/wolfgang/vop-intro.html

Christoph

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Last updated 28 Feb. 2003 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______

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