Warp wrote:
>Neil Conway <nei### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
>> Then,
>> looking at the hourglass picture, I see a mirror !?  I had thought this was
>> exactly what the manual said wasn't possible...
>
>  Which part of the manual, exactly?
>
>  Reflection is one of the most basic and simplest features of raytracing.
>Where did you get the impression that it would be difficult?

D'oh.  I've been looking around, and I believe I got this (mis)impression
from a whole variety of titbits of info, one of which was the FAQ; part of
the FAQ explains why light doesn't reflect from mirrors: "Although this
method is very efficient and it allows you to render simple scenes in
question of seconds, it has some drawbacks. One of them is that you can't
calculate light reflecting from mirrors."

I guess my brain wasn't distinguishing properly between "can't calculate
light reflecting from mirrors" and "can't calculate rays reflecting from
mirrors".  Clearly the latter is possible(!).  (Try as I might, I couldn't
figure out why it wasn't trivial - of course, it is... ;-)

Thanks for continuing to squash my misconceptions!

Neil

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