471e6858@news.povray.org...
>  I think POV-Ray needs new algorithms which will make it produce prettier
> pictures *faster*, not slower. You said it yourself that the algorithms 
> used
> in that program may produce cool results, but you could take a trip around
> the world in a boat before the image is ready.

That's true, but after having tested the Maxwell demo, I came to believe 
that this technology was what raytracing was 15 years ago: slow, immature, 
but vastly superior (quality-wise) to the competition. It's also extremely 
simple to use. Now I'm not saying that all development effort should be put 
on unbiaised rendering, just that it's an example of the things that should 
be looked at very closely. For instance, one thing I found particularly 
impressive (and remarkably efficient) in Maxwell is that material 
definitions are based on physical parameters rather than on the traditional 
channel paradigm (can't explain more, but the manual is on line IIRC).

In short, there's really a lot of cool stuff out there (and I'm using a 
bunch of them in FinalRender), and that is worthy of discussion. One 
exciting, attractive aspect (for artists and developers alike) of POV-Ray 10 
years ago was that it was innovative. Isosurfaces, photon mapping, radiosity 
were new, fantastic features. A new version of POV-Ray should be innovative 
when it comes to rendering technology.

>  As I said, it's easy to suggest all kinds of features, but there doesn't
> seem to be many volunteers for actually doing the hard work of studying 
> the
> algorithms and presenting some concrete proposals on how to embed them in
> POV-Ray.

There are lots of people working (for free) on other renderers using these 
algorithms, so the workforce is here. Now, how to make them work for POV-Ray 
is a matter of good diplomacy...

G.



G.

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