In article <pgp### [at] tritonimagicode>,
 Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde> wrote:

> But materials can't be targets, only objects can.  The only way you can 
> implement this is to make every object somehow 'inherit' the photon 
> settings of its material.  But this would not be obvious to the user so 
> it will just cause confusion in most cases.

Why? It "inherits" the ior and media of its interior, the pigment of its 
texture, etc. There's nothing about photons that ties them specifically 
to the object, it doesn't own the photons. Making them an aspect of the 
material makes perfect sense to me. Glass objects have caustics...it's 
an aspect of glass, not of the objects.


> Most likely not.  For efficiency you will only use photons on those 
> objects where the caustics are visible in the scene.  Glass objects out 
> of direct view that are only visible as reflections in other shapes for 
> example will probably not use photons.

Even if they are out of direct view, their photons may be in view 
directly, or in reflections. And for the case where they really don't 
contribute, provide a mechanism for turning them off.

-- 
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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