"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message news:46c6d0fd@news.povray.org...
> Christian Froeschlin <chr### [at] chrfrde> wrote:
>> > Every time a ray is reflected or refracted
>
>> or when just passing through a transparent surface as in your case.
>
>  That's, technically speaking, refraction. The refraction just doesn't
> modify the direction of the ray.
>
>  (One cool developement idea for povray would be, I think, that if a
> surface has transparency, no reflection and no ior, iow. rays just pass
> through unmodified (just taking the color of the surface), povray could
> skip incrementing the recursion counter. That way you could have and
> indefinite amount of transparent surfaces even if max_trace_level is
> small.)

although probably a bit more complicated, couldn't this idea be expanded to 
objects that do have reflections and/or an ior?
I might be mistaken, but I believe the only way to get in an infinite loop, is 
if the ray hits the same object more than once.
So: if a ray is reflected or refracted, the recursion counter doesn't increment 
until the same object gets hit again.

there are probably some cases I'm overseeing...

cu!
-- 
#macro G(b,e)b+(e-b)*C/50#end#macro _(b,e,k,l)#local C=0;#while(C<50)
sphere{G(b,e)+3*z.1pigment{rgb G(k,l)}finish{ambient 1}}#local C=C+1;
#end#end _(y-x,y,x,x+y)_(y,-x-y,x+y,y)_(-x-y,-y,y,y+z)_(-y,y,y+z,x+y)
_(0x+y.5+y/2x)_(0x-y.5+y/2x)            // ZK http://www.povplace.com

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