Warp wrote:
> David Wallace <dar### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> 
>>If I were to create a mesh (or mesh2) object within SDL, can this patch render 
>>it using hardware acceleration and save the CPU for other parts of the scene? 
> 
>   How exactly do you assume that the GPU will be able to render the
> procedural textures applied to the mesh?
>   What happens if this texture and reflection and/or refraction? What
> happens if there's media inside the mesh?
>   What happens if there's a primitive in front of the mesh, partially
> obscuring it? How will the GPU be able to tell which parts to render
> and which don't?
>   How will the GPU handle antialiasing, especially at the borders of the
> mesh, where it should be antaliased against whatever is behind (ie the
> rest of the scenery)?
>   How will the GPU handle special lighting, such as area lights?
> 
> 
>>Or will it have to wait for 3.7's multithreading and pass the threads for mesh 
>>handling to the GPU?
> 
> 
>   There are no "threads for mesh handling" in POV-Ray 3.7. Each thread
> renders one square of the image (when it's done, it starts rendering the
> next free square).
> 

What I'm really after is Hardware-Accelerated Mesh Geometry: the capacity to 
take advantage of the specialized commands in GPUs (shaders) and/or CPUs (3DNow, 
SSEn, etc.) that have been developed to accelerate rendering of such objects, 
especially in games.  Textures are a separate operation.

Can such operations be integrated into raytracing, at least at the object 
geometry level?

--------------
David Wallace
TenArbor Consulting
"Just In Time Cash"
www.tenarbor.com
1-866-572-CASH

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