In article <3e0d9909@news.povray.org>,
 "Gilles Tran" <git### [at] wanadoofr> wrote:

> From what I've understood, there's nothing really new in the way POV-Ray
> handles radiosity itself, it's the map that does all the work and that's the
> real beauty of it. The radiosity itself is traditional but because light
> intensity has a much wider range in the HDR map than in a usual map (like in
> the real world) it makes the results much more natural-looking, even in the
> absence of specular highlights. This becomes clearer if you load HDR maps in
> HDRShop (at Paul Debevec's page http://www.debevec.org) and play with the
> exposure settings. The maps then reveal themselves in their 2 dimensions
> (color and light intensity).

So, instead of taking samples from the actual scene, it takes them from 
a separately calculated image? The precision might be better than 8 or 
16 bpc images, but it will still almost definitely be worse than float 
precision. And if it is applied like an environment map, it has the same 
problems: flat surfaces will have no shading or shadows. UV mapping 
would make more sense, you could take the object geometry into account, 
though you still have to make sure the map is at a high enough 
resolution.

I could understand it having an advantage over using more common image 
formats for light mapping, but what use does it have in POV? Is the 
patch for output of HDRI images? That way, POV could generate them for 
other, more limited programs...

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

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