"Ron Parker" <ron### [at] povrayorg> wrote in message
news:slr### [at] fwicom...
>
> Ambient is equivalent to "diffuse reflection from unknown light sources"
and
> as such should probably also be included in the sum.  I always include it
in
> the sum, at any rate.
>

Yes, it should be included - I'm just not sure how. After all, for an object
in deep space, ambient would be pretty much 0 for all objects. Which seems
to imply that ambient is a property of the scene rather than the object.
However, an object with reflection 1 always has, by implication, an ambient
of 0, which implies that it is an attribute of the object.

The trouble with ambient is that to make any real sense it should be
influenced by the overall strength of the light-sources available. Perhaps
one should code like this:

#declare light_strength = 0.75;
light_source{<0,0,0> color rgb<1,1,1>*light_strength translate <-300,
300, -300>}
object{foo finish{ambient 0.3*light_strength}}

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