"Chris Huff" wrote:
>
> There are two lens flare includes which I know of, and at least one of
> them can do "hiding" of a lens flare behind an object. However, though I
> have installed both of these "plugins", I have never actually used them,
> so I don't really know what I am talking about. :-)
>

These are rather limited. What I would like to see in POV-Ray is build in
lens flare effects that completely automatically disappears behind objects
(without the user having to specify the objects), becomes dimmer behind
partly transparent objects, shows up correctly in reflections and
refractions, and maybe becomes smaller or dimmer when partly behind an
object (that would be for lens flares what area_lights are for
light_sources). And even with all this functionality, I bet it could be made
faster than the current include files.

Such lens effects cannot be made with include files, but would have to be
build in.

Greetings,

Rune
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In article <3965e71b@news.povray.org>, "Rune" <run### [at] inamecom> 
wrote:

> These are rather limited. What I would like to see in POV-Ray is 
> build in lens flare effects that completely automatically disappears 
> behind objects (without the user having to specify the objects), 
> becomes dimmer behind partly transparent objects, shows up correctly 
> in reflections and refractions, and maybe becomes smaller or dimmer 
> when partly behind an object (that would be for lens flares what 
> area_lights are for light_sources). And even with all this 
> functionality, I bet it could be made faster than the current include 
> files.
> 
> Such lens effects cannot be made with include files, but would have to be
> build in.

Perhaps a post_process filter would be useful...it could automatically 
find the bright points and place lens flares, or it could ignore bright 
points and take coordinates for placing flares.

-- 
Christopher James Huff - Personal e-mail: chr### [at] maccom
TAG(Technical Assistance Group) e-mail: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
Personal Web page: http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
TAG Web page: http://tag.povray.org/

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Hi Bruce L, you recently wrote in povray.general:

> So I suppose it would be far from the realm of reality to suggest/ask
> whether it would be possible for Moray to call POV to render the basic
> scene, but call PolyRay for the NURBS and SubDivs? 
Hmmm. I think this might be technically possible for Xander to write
as a plugin, although it won't work 100%. There's the problem of
reflected rays and (as you mention) shadows. Apart from that, the
render plugin could make Polyray render something, remember the
resultant image (with alpha channel so you know where the object is,
then call POV with the same scene minus the object, capturing the
pixel output and then merge the first image with the one that POV-Ray
produced. Sounds like overkill to me, though<g>. Might as well make
the Polyray plugin render the whole scene.

- Lutz
  email : lut### [at] stmuccom
  Web   : http://www.stmuc.com/moray

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Bruce L wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> So I suppose it would be far from the realm of reality to suggest/ask
> whether it would be possible for Moray to call POV to render the basic
> scene, but call PolyRay for the NURBS and SubDivs?

You can always do compositing, sometimes with quite nice results. 
Esthetically, that just doesn't appeal to me.  I'd rather add code to
POV-Ray (migration of code from Polyray to POV-Ray has happened before). 

> 
> So how exactly (or even in-excatly,) would one ask Moray to tell Polyray
> to render a NURBS or SubDiv?

You can't.  In the long term, someone could write a plugin to provide
the appropriate editing capability, or Lutz could add the appropriate
editing to Moray.  At that point you could call the appropriate API
functions in Polyray.  Subdivision surfaces would be pretty easy to do
once Lutz adds polygon mesh editing to Moray.  Just use the mesh as the
control hull of the Subdiv surface.

NURBS editing can be pretty nasty to implement.  Just look at how
popular Rhino is, due in great part to the quality of it's NURBS
editing.  For me, it would be much easier to add NURBS as an object type
to POV-Ray than to do any sort of modelling capability in a front end.

Xander

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