In article <dblsu5$c3u$1@chho.imagico.de>, chr### [at] gmxde says...
> Antonio Ferrari wrote:
> > I've read a web page: "A Practical Model for Subsurface Light Transport" by
> > Wann Jensen, Marshner, Levoy, Hanrahan. The page can be found at the
> > following place:
> > http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~sarah/a_practical_model_for_subsurface.html
> > 
> > The article seems talking about single scattering and diffuse scattering and
> > there is also some example code.
> > 
> > At the end of the article is written "We have modified the open source ray
> > tracer POV-Ray. The only files that we modified inside it are lighting and
> > render. The rest can be downloaded from POV-Ray's site.".
> 
> That page says they developend a patch for this technique but does not 
> provide that patch.  What's even more strange is that it's on the 
> website of a student (Sarah Tariq) but contains only the names you 
> mentioned (which are the authors of a Siggraph paper with the same name).
> 
Too bad. Would have been interested in seeing such a patch.

> > Maybe it could be a way to implement sub-surface scattering in Povray...
> > Maybe the proposed code could be merged to Povray code... Maybe we are far
> > from BSSRDF...
> > 
> > Do you have any details about this argument? Do you think sub-surface
> > scattering would be a good improvement in Povray? I think so. Someone dont
> > agree with me, but he could have his reasons...
> 
> This has been covered several times already but once again - POV-Ray 
> already has the means to simulate subsurface scattering effects through 
> its scattering media simulation.  This is not limited in accuracy 
> compared to techniques like described on that page, the main possible 
> disadvantage is that it can be quite slow.  Note however that the render 
> times given for the test renders there are quite slow as well.
> 
And once again, the existing method, while more accurate, is impractical, 
complicated and incomprehensible to most people for any reasonable 
application they might want to try it with. Even the people that have 
experimented with it so far have yet to get it to work as easily as it 
would need to be for a newbie to employ it. As someone that doesn't spend 
all my free time trying things in POV-Ray, that includes me. lol And, as 
you point out, its quite likely slower, which also makes it impractical 
for some uses.

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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