Christopher James Huff wrote:
>In article <Xns### [at] 204213191226>,
> "Rafal 'Raf256' Maj" <raf### [at] raf256com> wrote:
>
>> > Environment mapping is a hack designed to simulate reflection for
>> Pointless discusion if You do not want to comment this 3 arguments for
>> env_map I gave, AFAIR at least 1 person agree it might be
>> usefull/interesting.
>
>There are things a lot more than 2 people are interested in.
>It might be interesting to implement as a curiousity, for the laugh
>factor of implementing environment mapping in a raytracer. I do not see
>how it could be useful.
>
>
>> by
>>   ifstream f("c:/images/test.txt);
>>   float r,g,b,id;
>>   f>>r>>g>>b>>id;
>> ?
>> Put this in x*y loop, and convert into any format, or use in game as sprite
>> with different i.e. hit regions.
>
>That's C++. This is only useful to programmers, the average user won't
>have any use for it and won't be interested, and programmers have access
>to libraries for manipulating formats already supported by POV. Or they
>could write one: a TGA reader/writer is extremely simple to implement,
>and the files could be manipulated in any good graphics program. As I
>said, you shouldn't expect tons of interest in such a special-case
>feature.
>
>Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
>http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
>POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
>http://tag.povray.org/
>
If I might dare offer such an example, I'd say that
env. mapping and a floating point file format (though not one
as simple as the one envisioned by Mr. Maj: point your google to
shared exponent floating point) could help implementing HDRI in POV.
Now, don't tell me HDRI is a hack: the whole ray-tracing stuff is a hack.
Mind you, a clever one, but still a hack.
I don't have to tell you all why HDRI maps are useful, right?
And, beside that, using denormalized mantissas for color components
is very useful for postprocessing (and far better than 16-bit output).
And don't tell me that POV outputs 24 bit, not 16: I mean 16 bit per colour
channel.
Just try to adjust the tone and contrast of a POV rendering for printing
and you'll see what I mean.
Now a little mantra (quite heartfelt, at least in my case): POV-Ray is a
mindbogglingly good program, incredibly free, well-developed
and we all get the sources. Every programmer who likes CG and has
to earn his bread developing other stuff (webapps, database and, gasp,
accounting) would *love* a {e}book on POV-Ray inner workings. Heck, we
would even *buy* it, even if it's in eBook format.
I surely can grok the whole thing by myself, alone, in a week, perhaps,
coming to grasp every little nuance of the source code (yes, I have that
experience in programming), but *I* *don't* *have* *time*. I want to see the
POV-Ray community grow,
I love it, I want to see the bleeding edge of CG research in POV-Ray.
But. But, I don't have time to contribute much: so I would love to buy
a book about POV-Ray programming, to have a CVS of an experimental POV-Ray.
*sigh*. Vox clamavit in deserto.
Alex

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