Thanks for the continued help everyone. I'm slowly making progress.

Here is what I've got so far. The ball, with a Silver_Metal texture, surrounded
by 5 walls. I added a bit of ambient light to it so that you could see the
silver ball a bit better, although I think it looks like real crap.

http://yfrog.com/jvcodeup

Any ideas on how I could light the scene besides this ambient look to make it
look nicer? When I added a light_source right behind the camera it didn't look
too good because of a sort of black shadow that was always visible behind the
ball, as seen in the following:

http://yfrog.com/j5codeghp

Once I get the scene looking a little nicer I play on rotating the ball and
making a movie out of it, but I'm not fully happy with how it looks right now.
Ideas?

Is there a way for me to visualize the light rays that are hitting the wall, as
if there were dust in the air? Would I just fill the observable area with a
white box with almost perfect transparency? Or is there a more professional way
to do this (surely....)?

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Moving the disco ball to the top makes it look a little better just because the
walls aren't all the same anymore.

http://yfrog.com/f7codekp

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"Brad" <bra### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Moving the disco ball to the top makes it look a little better just because the
> walls aren't all the same anymore.
>
> http://yfrog.com/f7codekp

Just learned about scattering media, so I'll try to figure it out. Thanks again!

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On 03/10/2010 9:49 PM, Brad wrote:
> Is there a way for me to visualize the light rays that are hitting the wall, as
> if there were dust in the air? Would I just fill the observable area with a
> white box with almost perfect transparency? Or is there a more professional way
> to do this (surely....)?

You will need to use photons and fill the scene with scattering media.
Read 3.6.2.1  Media Types
And for an example look at optics.pov in \POV-Ray\v3.7\scenes\advanced

To make this work the container for the media needs the "hollow" flag set.
3.4.9.5  Hollow.

Fun, fun, fun ;-)

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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Having trouble seeing any scattering effects from the media I'm putting in. I've
added two lines to my code:

"light_source{<30,0,0> 0.3 media_interaction off}"
to light the room

and

box{<-20,-32,-20>,<10,8,20> pigment {rgbt 1} hollow interior {media{scattering{1
,0.07 extinction 0.01} samples 1000,10000}}}

to scatter the light.

However, I'm not seeing anything. Are my values for the scattering or sampling
not in the right ballpark to see the effect, or is something else going on here?

Thanks!

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I figured out my issues, which were numerous. Here is my current result:

http://yfrog.com/fvcode5int5samplesp

Took 22 minutes to render on my computer. I'm steping up the interval and
sampling rate to make a better image though. This program is mind-blowingly fun
:)

Thanks for all the help. No more questions in this thread :)

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> Moving the disco ball to the top makes it look a little better just because the
> walls aren't all the same anymore.
>
> http://yfrog.com/f7codekp
>
>
The right and left spots are geting several colours. It looks like you 
have several pieces at those locations.

For the shadow behing the ball, you can try placing the light farther 
back or make it shadowless.

To render the beams visible, you need to add some scattering media into 
your room. Read the interior and media sections of the documentation.



Alain

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> I figured out my issues, which were numerous. Here is my current result:
>
> http://yfrog.com/fvcode5int5samplesp
>
> Took 22 minutes to render on my computer. I'm steping up the interval and
> sampling rate to make a better image though. This program is mind-blowingly fun
> :)
>
> Thanks for all the help. No more questions in this thread :)
>
>

Don't increase the intervals value as it will kill your render times. 
Only increase samples.

samples 100 will render faster than intervals 10 samples 5 for twice the 
total samples.

While you can use samples 10, 100, only the "10" will be used ans the 
"100" will be totaly ignored.

The defaults value from the documentation are for smpling method 1. The 
default sampling method is method 3. It's defaults are:
intervals 1 // NEVER change that!
samples 10 // MUST be 3 or larger.


Alain

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> On 03/10/2010 9:49 PM, Brad wrote:
>> Is there a way for me to visualize the light rays that are hitting the
>> wall, as
>> if there were dust in the air? Would I just fill the observable area
>> with a
>> white box with almost perfect transparency? Or is there a more
>> professional way
>> to do this (surely....)?
>
> You will need to use photons and fill the scene with scattering media.
> Read 3.6.2.1 Media Types
> And for an example look at optics.pov in \POV-Ray\v3.7\scenes\advanced
>
> To make this work the container for the media needs the "hollow" flag set.
> 3.4.9.5 Hollow.
>
> Fun, fun, fun ;-)
>

You DON'T need photons in this case. The light only goes straight 
through the transparent parts, thus no refraction, and there are no 
reflection.


Alain

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Thanks for these additional comments Alain. However, before I read them I
already ran a case at 20 samples and 20 iterations, with the output below (and
also rotating the cube a bit so the light isn't shining in the camera's eyes).

http://yfrog.com/2mcode20int20samplesp

It took a little over 4 hours to render on my desktop (ran it overnight). I can
really see how those doing much, much more complicated scenes run into
ridiculous rendering times.

Alain <aze### [at] qwertyorg> wrote:

> > I figured out my issues, which were numerous. Here is my current result:
> >
> > http://yfrog.com/fvcode5int5samplesp
> >
> > Took 22 minutes to render on my computer. I'm steping up the interval and
> > sampling rate to make a better image though. This program is mind-blowingly fun
> > :)
> >
> > Thanks for all the help. No more questions in this thread :)
> >
> >
>
> Don't increase the intervals value as it will kill your render times.
> Only increase samples.
>
> samples 100 will render faster than intervals 10 samples 5 for twice the
> total samples.
>
> While you can use samples 10, 100, only the "10" will be used ans the
> "100" will be totaly ignored.
>
> The defaults value from the documentation are for smpling method 1. The
> default sampling method is method 3. It's defaults are:
> intervals 1 // NEVER change that!
> samples 10 // MUST be 3 or larger.
>
>
> Alain

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