Hi all

I have an application for POVRAY that seems a little different from what
most users are doing, and it doesn't seem to be something that's directly
addressed in the documentation, so I wonder if anyone could offer any
suggestions.

I'm trying to assess the imaging properties of a number of reflectors. This
means that I want to create some geometry for a set of mirrors including
scattering,  geometric surface imperfections, etc, then I want to create a
light source in the form of a 'sun shape', then I want to see what the
resulting light intensity at my target plane becomes.

The normal use of POVRAY seems to revolve around the idea of a 'camera'
which is a single point 'observer'; Raytracing in this case means tracing
*backwards* from the eye of the beholder to the different spots in the
scene.

My use seems a bit different: I want to have an imaging plane and I want to
'catch' rays over that plane. The overall result should be data about the
intensity of light striking various points on my imaging (target) plane.

Obviously I can approximate this analysis by creating an imaging plane, and
then creating a camera that looks at that imaging plane. This won't always
be practical however, as sometimes the act of creating a visible barrier at
the imaging plane will cause the optics of the problem to change, eg by
creating repeated reflections when none are desired.

So, can anyone offer any suggestions on how one my start out with using
POVRAY in this case?

Finally, is there any way that POVRAY can generate output that shows the
location of rays in 3-D space? For example if I create a ray-trace any only
wish to trace a couple of hundred rays, is there any way I can view the
paths taken by those rays through my scene?

Cheers
JP
joh### [at] anuremovethisrubbisheduau

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