"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message news:3d6243a1@news.povray.org...
> Tom Melly <tom### [at] tomandlucouk> wrote:
> > Just out of curiosity, do completely transparent containers (w/o ior, etc)
use
> > max_trace? If so, why?
>
>   There's no difference between a completely transparent and a semitransparent
> surface from the point of view of the raytracing engine.
>   How could you make it *not* to increase the recursion level if the surface
> is completely transparent? If there was an easy solution, the exact same
> solution could be applied always, regardless of the amount of transparency.

Well, I really don't know enough about the innards of POV and tracers in
general, but from an outside perspective, there is a lot of difference between
an invisible container, and a transparent surface with any kind of
ior/reflection/partial transparency.

Also, re-reading your message, I think you've misunderstood what I was asking.

I don't mean that the max_trace should or could change for invisible
containers - rather that it should be irrelevant - i.e. if the shape was such
that you would normally need to set a high max_trace, this might not be required
for perfectly transparent objects (because only the media inside the container
has an effect on the scene).

As I said, this might already be the case. Might even test it this evening....

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