> First of all the mosaic preview is always an addition - the colors
> calculated during it will not be used in the image (why should be fairly
> easy to understand).


I know. (As a side note, it seems like kind of a waste, since the preview
samples can easily be taken at pixel centers and stored to avoid work later.
But that's a topic for another thread.)

> It would not be difficult to run both a radiosity pretrace and a
> mosaic preview but what for?  It would just take additional time.

The point would be to run the mosaic preview without the radiosity pretrace.

> Also
> note turning off the radiosity pretrace while having the mosaic preview
> will not really have the effect of no pretrace - radiosity samples would
> still be taken, just not with the special settings usually used during
> pretrace.

The idea is that "always_sample off" would apply to the mosaic preview as
well as the final render, so that the mosaic preview could be used without
affecting radiosity - for preview purposes.

I understand that mosaic preview and radiosity pretrace share the same code,
and I'm saying, they shouldn't! (Well, it's not so much a matter of "don't
share code" as it is "separate the two procedures"; I recognize the
importance of avoiding duplicating code.) The fact that POV-Ray considers
these two things as one and the same is - although not technically
"incorrect" - annoying at times.

I do see your point that there's no reason having them separate if no one in
their right mind would run both a radiosity pretrace *and* a mosaic preview.
So then my complaint could be restated as "I'd like an option to avoid
taking radiosity samples during the preview/pretrace pass when radiosity is
enabled." (Or, to be more precise, to treat the pretrace pass the same as
the final pass so that always_sample affects it and so that low_error_factor
doesn't.)

 - Slime
 [ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]

Post a reply to this message