Am Sun, 22 Apr 2007 15:36:42 -0400 schrieb Nicolas George:

> 
> That is exactly the point: we need a way to tell PoV what to do.
> 
>  From a theoretical point of view, it is quite trivial: if two objects use
> the same surface, PoV computes only once the intersection, applies the
> user-given rules to determine which one comes first, and keeps a flags for
> any light ray it must then follow from this point.
> 
>  From a practical point of view, devising a syntax for that would require
>  to
> example all possibilities, but it can be done.

I thought about that for a long time, too. The "solution" I came up with
is to make a difference between shapes and materials. Then we could apply
rules for the boundaries and interiors of shapes, like
(shape X & shape Y) & !shape Z => material A;
material A > material B = surface_shader S;
material A.interior = interior_shader I;
or something similiar. That way we could also replace CSG and save
calculations because there are fewer intersections. There could be a some
mechanism to treat the room inside a lathe as a different (sub-)shape to
make modelling filled glasses even easier ;) On the other hand that
doesn't look very intuitive and a bit scary. Nevertheless that would be
one feature I'd like to have in PoV 4.

btw, I have already used Inkscape's PoV-export for modelling my
neighbourhood from a plan. I simpliy scanned it and marked the corners of
the houses. Later, I modified the PoV-code a bit for the housetops. It
worked very well.

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