I have a blob with many blob components, and each component has its own
texture with a normal. The blob components are actually particles in a water
simulation.

The normals in the textures of each blob component has to move around
together with the blob components, that's why I assign textures to the
individual components rather than assigning a texture to the entire blob
object. In the areas where the components interact, the textures smoothly
blend together, kind of the same way as in a texture_map.

Now, the problem is that the *textures* are averaged, while what I really
need is to have the *normals* averaged. There's a big difference. Averaged
normals is an average of the simulated bumps on the surfaces. The result is
*one* new normal, and thus reflection, refraction etc. are only done once
for the surface. But when you average *textures* which have different
normals in them, the reflection and refraction etc. is done before the
average, so you get many refractions and reflections for the same surface.
This looks completely wrong for one thing, and it also renders much, much
slower.

There is no workaround to this problem AFAIK. Too bad. :(

The same problem applies to texture_maps by the way. If wish it could be
possible to specify whether the average should be done on a per-texture
basis or if it should rather be done separately for pigment, normal and
finish.

Rune
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> you get many refractions and reflections for the same surface.
> renders much, much slower.
>
> There is no workaround to this problem AFAIK. Too bad. :(
>
> The same problem applies to texture_maps by the way. If wish it could be
> possible to specify whether the average should be done on a per-texture
> basis or if it should rather be done separately for pigment, normal and
> finish.

Well, this seems to be true.. I tried in 2 ways: To first #declare a texture
with pigment and finish, and put it into each blob component but with
individual normals.. The other way I tried, was to specify only normals for
each blob and put a #default texture above the whole object.. Both ways
create layers of normals, rather than averaging them..

Hugo

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