The only time I ever use Ambient values are for light generating surfaces. lcd
screens etc...


Cousin Ricky <ric### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> On 2025-08-05 07:47, Mr wrote:

> Conserve_energy is intended for transparent textures; it is not relevant
> for metals (except maybe transparent aluminum).

I should have known! I stand corrected, my mistake probably came from my wish
that using such a keyword in a texture would actually constrain all of the
shading chain to be so ! (maybe Uberpov or any experimental version did it at
one point?) because having a way to add up diffuse ambient specular(s) including
phong and reflection above 1 certainly also break the conservation of energy...
I don't mind having to break out of the default for establishing realism, but, i
guess I expected that one keyword to do it would be the expected toolset's
consistency and efficiency.


> Fresnel, ior, and conserve_energy are for non-metallic textures.  For
> metals, the 'metallic' keyword takes care of all these factors.
Oh! I had the distorted memory that the metallic keyword only took care of
propagating diffuse color to reflection and/or specular. Thanks

> Diffuse+reflection should be below 1; specular albedo should be
> comparable to reflection, if you use use specular at all.
why should we use the same value for specular and reflection when using both?
Say if we think of emulating a layered material with varnished mirror-like
reflectivity but a more say oily or smooth inner structure... Couldn't both
these layers have different shininess?

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"Clarence1898" <dle### [at] comcastnet> wrote:

> It was rendered by version 3.5 probably 20 years ago.  I recovered the images
> from an old hard drive, unfortunately I could not find the original source.  I
> still have a couple of drives to check, hopefully the source is on one of them.
> I would like to render it on a newer version.


Sorry again for the too harsh comment then ! (and also technically wrong as
demonstrated by Cousin Ricky)
It was out of sheer enthusiasm for POV's capacities combined with the
frustration about other communities ignoring those under the false belief that
it's not able to achieve modern looking results.

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"Mr" <m******r******at_hotmail_dot_fr> wrote:

> I don't mind having to break out of the default for establishing realism, but, i
> guess I expected that one keyword to do it would be the expected toolset's
> consistency and efficiency.


> why should we use the same value for specular and reflection when using both?
> Say if we think of emulating a layered material with varnished mirror-like
> reflectivity but a more say oily or smooth inner structure... Couldn't both
> these layers have different shininess?

Hi Maurice,

I think that for a lot of things, we're just going to have to set up systems
that lay out the underlying theoretical framework in SDL, using functions,
macros, and comments for placeholders.

So, in the same way that we can't query camera location, or directly access mesh
or prism vertices, and so need to store those values in variables/identifiers
and arrays - so we will need to store all of the texturing values and manually
process them that way.

In the absence of a dev team / developer / development - we'll just have to
program everything in SDL.  Then, once someone gets around to writing source
code to implement such things, "all they will have to do" is translate from SDL
to cpp/C. (and yes, they will have to smoothly integrate that into the whole
existing source code framework).

At the very least, it helps the rest of learn about what makes textures more
realistic, since we can follow the logic or how the textures are formally
constructed.  Presumably, there will also be equations for lighting models and
other light/shadow/reflection effects that will be used as a basic for the macro
/algorithm logic that will self-document such things and help people learn about
those as well.

- BW

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"Clarence1898" <dle### [at] comcastnet> wrote:
> I was going through some old drives and found this one.  I posted this probably
> 20 years ago as my obligatory first RSOCP.  I came across Povray in the early
> 90s and have used it off and on ever since.  I thought it might be interesting
> to see what programming Pov scenes would be like in the 1970's.  Just for a
> little background, I've been a mainframe programmer since 1969, and now enjoy
> programming PC's.

Getting around to commenting on this scene a little late . . .

This is a pretty cool scene.
I really like the Selectric ball, and the punch cards.

I remember playing with shoeboxes full of punch cards at my grandparents' house
growing up.
They still sell the tractor-feed paper:  apparently lots of businesses still use
it.

The font on the paper and punch cards is nice - and I like the traditional
slipping into the scene of "Persistence of Vision" on the cards.  :)

I put a bunch of such Easter Eggs into my Secret Passage scene.

It's good to see that you're still playing with POV-Ray all these many years
later.

- BW

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"Bald Eagle" <cre### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> "Clarence1898" <dle### [at] comcastnet> wrote:
> > I was going through some old drives and found this one.  I posted this probably
> > 20 years ago as my obligatory first RSOCP.  I came across Povray in the early
> > 90s and have used it off and on ever since.  I thought it might be interesting
> > to see what programming Pov scenes would be like in the 1970's.  Just for a
> > little background, I've been a mainframe programmer since 1969, and now enjoy
> > programming PC's.
>
> Getting around to commenting on this scene a little late . . .
>
> This is a pretty cool scene.
> I really like the Selectric ball, and the punch cards.
>
> I remember playing with shoeboxes full of punch cards at my grandparents' house
> growing up.
> They still sell the tractor-feed paper:  apparently lots of businesses still use
> it.
>
> The font on the paper and punch cards is nice - and I like the traditional
> slipping into the scene of "Persistence of Vision" on the cards.  :)
>
> I put a bunch of such Easter Eggs into my Secret Passage scene.
>
> It's good to see that you're still playing with POV-Ray all these many years
> later.
>
> - BW

Thank You.  As of ten years ago when I retired, most of our printing was done on
a laser printer using plain white fanfold paper.  We still had an impact line
printer for forms that could not be printed on the laser, heavy paper like card
stock and multi-part forms.  It was a lot of fun to write a macro to generate
the proper punches in the card.

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On 2025-08-07 06:24 (-4), Mr wrote:
> The only time I ever use Ambient values are for light generating surfaces. lcd
> screens etc...

This usage is deprecated since POV-Ray 3.7, and if you use radiosity, it
won't work at all.  Use 'emission' in place of 'ambient' for glowing
objects.

> Cousin Ricky <ric### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> 
>> Diffuse+reflection should be below 1; specular albedo should be
>> comparable to reflection, if you use use specular at all.
> why should we use the same value for specular and reflection when using both?
> Say if we think of emulating a layered material with varnished mirror-like
> reflectivity but a more say oily or smooth inner structure... Couldn't both
> these layers have different shininess?

Because they are basically the same thing.  A highlight is literally the
reflection, blurred more or less, of a light source.

The 'albedo' keyword modifies specular (and phong) so that the highlight
represents the amount of light in its argument.  Without 'albedo', there
is no correlation between the hightlight and the objects reflectivity.

For non-metallic shiny surfaces, 'specular albedo' should be low for
older versions of POV-Ray (I use 0.052 or 0.053 for glass), because
highlights did not simulate the Fresnel effect until POV-Ray 3.8.  With
finish-level Fresnel, the 'specular albedo' value should equal the
Fresnel reflection value.  But for metallic finishes, the 'specular
albedo' value should be the same as the reflection value.

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