Invisible wrote:
> scott wrote:
> 
>> The lighting model implemented in POV is about the simplest available, 
>> what was first used on 3D cards 10 years ago.  Today there are far 
>> more accurate models used, you must have heard names like 
>> Cook-Torrence, Blinn etc, if you've never looked outside of POV you 
>> wouldn't know they existed.
> 
> That would explain how... I didn't know they existed. :-D

time to hang on forums like that of luxrender and meet yet another facet 
of reality... ;)

> (BTW, POV-Ray offers several kinds of scattering media, but I can never 
> seem to tell the difference between them. Is that normal?)

you probably haven't played with them enough, different light angles etc...

>> They start to model the microfacets on a surface and produce lighting 
>> results based on the geometry and physics of the microfacets (eg 
>> occlusion, self-shadowing etc).
> 
> So how does that affect the end visual result? Are we talking about a 
> big difference or a subtle one?

how about a practical one?

> Does it add more triangles to the areas of greatest curvature and fewer 
> to the flat areas?

you know those Pixar movies?  The renderer used, Renderman, is basically 
a scanline that breaks all geometry down to micropolygons measuring less 
than a pixel on the fly.  You only see smooth curves as the final result...

> I often look at a game like HL and wonder how it's even possible. I 
> mean, you walk through the map for, like, 20 minutes before you get to 
> the other end. The total polygon count must be spine-tinglingly huge. 
> And yet, even on a machine with only a few MB of RAM, it works.

machines evolve.  The amount of polygons going around in PS3 games or 
Crysis certainly wasn't possible just a few years ago.

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