In article <3fb54524@news.povray.org>, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> 
wrote:

>   Thirdly, the "hollow" ("allow_media") functionality should perhaps be
> extended so that you could allow the media of the object itself to appear
> inside of the object, but disallow any external media to show up inside
> this object. This way you could have an object with its own media and which
> does not allow any other media inside it (a glass ball with variable
> coloration inside it is a good example: Even though it has a variable
> coloration thorough its entire volume, which is achievable with media,
> it still doesn't show eg. fog inside it because it's solid glass).

I agree completely. This is the system I suggested some time ago:
Specifying media in an object makes that media visible. Specifying 
hollow allows media from outside the object to penetrate it. This is the 
only way that makes sense to me. I can not conceive of any reason to 
have media in an object which has no way of ever being rendered.

I don't think fixing this would break many, if any scenes. All that 
would be required is for non-hollow objects with media to have visible 
media. Hollow objects would work the same, and non-hollow objects with 
media probably weren't working the way they were intended anyway.

Think of a marble in a bowl of milk: the marble has media because it has 
varying coloration throughout it, the milk has media because it is 
translucent. The marble certainly should not be hollow, but it makes 
perfect sense for it to contain media.

-- 
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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