Mike the Elder wrote:
> Now is probably as good a time as any to share a few thoughts I have
> regarding what seems to be an assumption with respect photo-realism that
> often enters into discussion of ray trace images.

> This being said, I would encourage anyone who does engage in criticism of
> ray trace art (or in the making of it) to refrain from assuming that the

> goal.

I know that I am guilty of that sort of assumption a lot. :-)

However, let me argue that case for a moment. Why would you use 
raytracing if you're not after photorealism?

There's hundreds of different 3D rendering packages out there that don't 
use raytracing. They typically use DirectX/OpenGL shaders, and with the 
right hardware can work in realtime, giving you *instant* feedback as 
you're working. Even without hardware acceleration, they are still much 
faster and simpler to work with than actual raytracing.

The main advantage of raytracing over other forms of 3D rendering *is* 
photorealism. It can create realistic shadows, reflections, and global 
illumination.

Now, if you just happen to work better with Pov SDL than with a modeler, 
that's fine. (I *love* SDL.) There's some other toys out there for 
people who want to create images in code (http://processing.org/ comes 
to mind), but there's not many of them and they're not as finished as 
Povray.

But if you're going to build something in, say, Wings3D and then export 
it into POV, I'm going to assume that's because you want Povray to do 
something that Wings' built-in renderer can't do. My guess is that 
something is photorealism, but otherwise I'm curious what it would be.

-- 
William Tracy
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You know you've been raytracing too long when you know the average 
number of hairs on a human head.
Quietly Watching

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