In article <406ecc03@news.povray.org>, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> 
wrote:

>   At least I would disallow using an external image manipulation program
> which is unrelated and separate from the renderer.

What's the difference between doing some operation using an external 
program that's unrelated to the renderer and using an external program 
that's packaged along with the renderer? The resulting image and the 
algorithms used to generate it may be exactly the same.


>   That way you could add all kinds of visual effects to the result
> which are not produced by rendering, such as many types of motion blur,
> glowing effects, etc etc.

Right. You could process the image in these ways with POV-Ray, as well. 
Would the image be disqualified in that case?


>   What you are getting is not what the renderer produces. The image made
> by the renderer might look like crap, but after you apply all kinds of
> special effects to the image it may look great. However, it's not a
> rendered image anymore.

Isn't it? At what point does it cease to be "rendered"? What is the 
difference between a raytracer applying a contrast filter pixel by pixel 
as the image is traced, and doing the same operation in an external 
program?

The IRTC is the Internet Ray Tracing Competition, not the Internet Ray 
Tracer Competition. I'd say it is the skill of the artist at producing 
images with raytracing which matters. A contrast adjustment on a blank 
image won't do anything, the artist has to make an image worth viewing 
first.

-- 
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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