hi,
to say in short: i don't like the way povray is doing the mosaic-
preview.
i would prefer a preview with color interpolation instead of big
8*8-blocks and the pixels should not be computed line by line but more
randomly all over the image. the result would be a preview which is very
unsharp at the start and is becoming sharper and sharper the longer you
wait...

of course, there are multiple ways of doing this. to serve them all,
here is my request:
can you make povray to be controlled by the GUI-extension in the way,
that povray is first parsing the scene and then renders only the pixels
the gui-ext. is asking for.

it would be enough, if povray is "talking" with the gui-ext. like this:
gui-ext.: >parse the file:"c:\povray3.1\scenes\myscene.pov"<
povray: >parsing...ready.<
gui-ext.: >give me the color of pixel (0.75,0.3)<
povray: >color is rgb<.24,.6,1><
gui-ext.: >give me the color of pixel blabla<
povray: >color is blahblah<
...
...
gui-ext.: >close renderer<
povray: >closed<

MARK!:
-there is no need to specify the image-resolution when pixels are called
in percent:
(0.0,0.0) means upper left
(1.0,1.0) means lower right

-there is no need to draw the image in the povray's window. the programm
of the gui-ext. is doing this.

-a very nice bonus would be, if povray additional to the rgb color
values of the pixel gives out the name of the object, which was first
hit by the ray!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

with these functions you can:
-draw individual previews
-let the gui-ext. do the anti-aliasing-iterations
-recognize which object is in front of the view (helpful for
lensflare-fx)
-many more fun i don't know yet but am shure to exist!

alex wolff

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alex wolff wrote in message <38972B57.3772A0E1@gmx.de>...
>hi,
>to say in short: i don't like the way povray is doing the mosaic-
>preview.
>i would prefer a preview with color interpolation instead of big
>8*8-blocks and the pixels should not be computed line by line but more
>randomly all over the image. the result would be a preview which is very
>unsharp at the start and is becoming sharper and sharper the longer you
>wait...


I'm working on a pseudo-random drawing system for POV-Ray that is internal
to the program.  I hadn't thought about the possibility of doing the mosaic
preview this way.

A question for anyone who knows how the radiosity works: If the pixels are
being rendered at random instead of one line at a time, would it be possible
to skip the mosaic preview for radiosity?  I know that the purpose of the
preview is to set up some initial radiosity samples so that it is not
neccessary to compute very many additional samples for individual pixels
later.  If the pixels are being rendered at random, however, it seems to me
that this would do an adequate job of setting up the radiosity cache during
the final render, without the additional time taken by doing a preview.

Am I correct about this?

Mark

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alex wolff <ale### [at] gmxde> wrote:
: can you make povray to be controlled by the GUI-extension in the way,
: that povray is first parsing the scene and then renders only the pixels
: the gui-ext. is asking for.

  Why the GUI-extension? Why this would not be a handy option also for
the command-line versions (which are capable of showing the image)?

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):5;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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Nieminen Juha wrote:

>   Why the GUI-extension? Why this would not be a handy option also for
>
> the command-line versions (which are capable of showing the image)?

i don't know. this will mean, that you need to specify in the
command-line the positions of the pixels to be rendered. this will
become a very long command-line!

if you want povray to render only one pixel, this is already possible
with setting the column and the row. but you need to parse your scene
every time....

so it would be fun, if the gui-extension can shoot rays to every
position in the image (regardless of the resolution).
for command-line users, the mosaic-preview should be more random-like
with interpolated colors (just like mark wagner described he's working
on).
alex

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