Hymyly <chr### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> In this case my first post was a proposition for how a rudimentary yet still
> powerful _shader_ could be implemented into povray, without disrupting the
> existing lighting model, and being relatively easy for newcomers to learn.

  You suggested a very specific (and thus limited) solution: To have an
"advanced reflection block" where you can define how many rays to shoot
and to which directions.

  This is a very limited solution. A better solution would be to be able
to define texturing shaders using a shader language. This language could
do almost anything (including sending new rays) and affect the texturing
of the surface in almost any possible way.

> If you have other ideas feel free to share those. I am here to make povray
> better, not to have an argument.

  I don't think POV-Ray will become better and competitive by adding even
more and more specific hard-coded features, making it more complicated.

  What POV-Ray needs is to become simpler: Less but more expressive features.
Instead of having 10 lighting models and 6 reflection models, it should
instead have one single solution: A generic shader language which can be
used to create 1000 different lighting models if you want.

  The renderer itself becomes simpler because it's not burdened by so many
individual hard-coded features, yet the scene description language becomes
more expressive, and you can do more with it than before.

  Of course this doesn't stop POV-Ray from having a library of shaders
which imitate what the current hard-coded lighting models and textures do.
(In some cases perhaps some hard-coded versions may be necessary for
speed reasons.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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