Slime wrote:
> How come radiosity pretrace replaces mosaic preview?
> 
> They work differently, they have different purposes, and the former has side
> effects which may be undesired (especially when using load_file).
> 
> When I use mosaic preview, my intention is to get a fast view of the scene
> so that I can see what it looks like in general without worrying about
> detail. When I use radiosity pretrace, my intention is to add additional,
> high quality radiosity samples to my scene. The former is a convenient
> change in the order that pixels are rendered, the latter is a way of
> changing the scene itself.
> 
> When I am using radiosity, I often generate a radiosity file with save_file.
> Then I can use load_file to view my image as I tweak things. I would like to
> use mosaic preview as I tweak, but doing so sends extra radiosity samples
> (which changes my radiosity data) and takes forever because it's doing so.
> Mosaic preview is essentially useless in this situation.
> 
> Wouldn't it make more sense to first run the radiosity pretrace (based on
> the pretrace_start and pretrace_end values in the radiosity{} block), and
> then run the mosaic preview on top of that (based on the command line or ini
> settings), followed by the final pixel-by-pixel render? Then, by setting
> pretrace_start 1 pretrace_end 1, one can nearly eliminate the pretrace step,
> and then watch their image render from high to low levels of detail - as
> they would do without radiosity in the first place.
> 
> Does this bother anyone else, or am I one of the few who really uses mosaic
> preview a lot?
> 
> (By the way, while I'm talking about separating the two, it would really be
> nice if there were a way to turn the radiosity pretrace step off *entirely*,
> to avoid sending any extra samples at all and only use loaded data.)
> 
>  - Slime
>  [ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]
> 
> 

I agree. It bothers me too that while I'm loading radiosity data from a 
file, the pretrace steps still take place. If POV-Ray thinks it needs 
extra samples despite loading the data, it should make a not of that in 
the message window and leave the user to consider taking action or not.

I don't use mosaic view a lot. But, if radiosity and mosaic interfere 
something should be done about it and your proposal sounds goods to me.
-- 
Maurice

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