Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> >   At least I would disallow using an external image manipulation program
> > which is unrelated and separate from the renderer.

> What's the difference between doing some operation using an external 
> program that's unrelated to the renderer and using an external program 
> that's packaged along with the renderer? The resulting image and the 
> algorithms used to generate it may be exactly the same.

  The difference is whether the image was produced by the renderer
called XYZ or not. It shows "the renderer XYZ can produce images
like this".
  If you post-process the result of the rendering with an external
program (ie. *you* use the external program, not the renderer) the
result will be something the renderer is not able to produce.

  And besides, if you want to allow any post-processing with any
unrelated image manipulation program, why do you want to restrict
it to only things that can be made "automatically" by the program
and not things the user can draw by hand? Why this kind of artificial
limitation? And where do you draw the line between something made
"automatically" by the program and something made "by hand" by the
user?

> >   That way you could add all kinds of visual effects to the result
> > which are not produced by rendering, such as many types of motion blur,
> > glowing effects, etc etc.

> Right. You could process the image in these ways with POV-Ray, as well. 
> Would the image be disqualified in that case?

  It's something you get directly from the renderer. Why it should be
forbidden? It's not using photoshop or gimp to achieve something the
program cannot produce.

  That's the difference: Can this renderer *directly* produce this
image, or do you need a third-party program for that?

> >   What you are getting is not what the renderer produces. The image made
> > by the renderer might look like crap, but after you apply all kinds of
> > special effects to the image it may look great. However, it's not a
> > rendered image anymore.

> Isn't it?

  Nope. Just part of the image information is what the renderer produced.

  If you render a small logo and then use it in a hand-drawn image,
can you call the image, the whole image, "rendered"? No, only part
of the image has been rendered.

> At what point does it cease to be "rendered"?

  At the point when the result of the rendering is modified.

  How much modifications, in your opinion, can be made to a rendered
image so that it can still be considered "rendered"?
  If you, for example, shuffle the location of all the pixels randomly,
is it still a "rendered" image? The result is just random noise. It may
be pseudo-random because it's based on existing data (the rendered
image), but it's still just noise, not a rendered image.

> What is the 
> difference between a raytracer applying a contrast filter pixel by pixel 
> as the image is traced, and doing the same operation in an external 
> program?

  The difference is whether it's the renderer which is able to produce
the resulting image or not.

> The IRTC is the Internet Ray Tracing Competition, not the Internet Ray 
> Tracer Competition. I'd say it is the skill of the artist at producing 
> images with raytracing which matters. A contrast adjustment on a blank 
> image won't do anything, the artist has to make an image worth viewing 
> first.

  But considerably increasing the visual quality of an image by using
an image manipulation program is, in my opinion, against the spirit
of the competition.
  Even a bad image can be greatly enhanced with all kinds of effects
supported by photoshop. Are we competing on who can use photoshop's
filters best?

-- 
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N(D)#end#end#macro M()<mod(D,13)-6mod(div(D,13)8)-3,10>#end blob{
N(11117333955)N(4254934330)N(3900569407)N(7382340)N(3358)N(970)}//  - Warp -

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