Am 28.11.2010 15:46, schrieb Stephen Klebs:
> But as it is now with 3.7, that's all out the window. I tried for example to
> test Steve Gowers' famous "Bucket of Shells", which was originally created in
> 3.0 but still renders the same in 3.6. No matter what I tried, setting #version
> 3.0, #version 3.6, #version 3.7 with any and every possible Display_Gamma or
> File_Gamma or assumed_gamma or gamma whatever, the results in 3.7 came out
> dramatically different. There is in effect no practical backward compatibility
> with the whole tradition of POV. And as for trying to tweak the lighting and
> ambient and diffuse ad infinitum of every light source and color and finish
> etc., etc., one might as well start from scratch. So while a good case has be
> made that POV in the past was technically "wrong", is this more important than
> how it is actually used. Whatever the technical issues, POV worked fine. It
> played well with others. Images came out as expected on the web, in Photoshop,
> on Macs and PCs and Linux. To just say that we were just doing it "wrong" all
> those years for using assumed_gamma for artistic effect misses the point. Who
> cares how we got there as long as we made it and it didn't take a week of
> futzing around. I sometimes think, with all due respect for the enormous and
> wonderful work the developers have freely put into it, that POV has lost sight
> of the end-user who's out there not just to play with the dials and controls but
> just to get something off the ground.

There are two sides of the medal.

For me, who has some background knowledge about physics, and values 
photo-realism in raytracing, and who is comparatively new to 3D 
rendering, a realistic lighting model is a KEY to easy modelling of 
textures.

The world of 3D rendering is full of tools taking the "tweak it until it 
looks good" approach - all that shader based stuff, essentially - so I 
see no need for POV-Ray to join those. To the contrary, I see a need for 
tools that allow you to model textures that look equally convincing in a 
broad range of illumination situations, and you just can't get that by 
tweaking an unrealistic shader model. This is the only way you can 
really build a library of textures you can rely on. At least that's my 
experience.

Personally, I'm convinced that once people get used to the new gamma 
handling, they'll find it much easier to work with than the old approach.

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