In article <3c7931d6@news.povray.org>,
 "Ben Chambers" <bdc### [at] yahoocom> wrote:

> Having superbright objects influence their surroundings more than others
> would mean, I believe, that ultrabright (>100?) objects would influence
> larger and larger areas of the screen, which is not possible with the
> current method.

Not at all. It will only influence a pixel which covers the object.


> Hmm, talking about color, how's this for an idea (warning: this is
> tangential to the thread): store all image data as 64bit integers, with the
> range 0-1 fitting in 24 or 32 bits.  Then, adjust the overall brightness of
> the scene based on the brightest object?

The brightness is already stored as single-precision floats, I don't see 
where this would help. And scaling the colors so the brightest object is 
rgb 1 won't work very well...it is too linear, and you will end up with 
some objects being white and everything else being nearly black. And 
antialiasing will still wipe out small details.
The clipping will eventually need to be done, because monitors have a 
finite dynamic range, but it shouldn't be done before antialiasing in my 
opinion. Really, there should be a way to output more accurate colors to 
the final image file, there are a few formats designed for this.
A smarter antialiasing scheme should be possible, which would soften 
jagged edges but leave points and small details alone.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <chr### [at] maccom>
POV-Ray TAG e-mail: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
TAG web site: http://tag.povray.org/

Post a reply to this message