Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   Add the keyword 'open' to the cones to remove the endcaps.
Didn't work. I don't see how it could cause the problem, as the endcaps are just
as transparent as the rest of the cones

>   If there joints are still visible it means that there are holes in
> your series-of-connected-cones. You have to either position the cones
> better,...
When the cones aren't transparent, there are no gaps. With media, some gaps are
several pixels thick.

> ...or you have to use some other method. Look at the documentation
> about sphere sweeps.
That would solve that problem, but the media isn't constant. I currently have it
so its intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from
the center. This would be virtually impossible without making the media in
separate pieces and translating it.

"Mike the Elder" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> This is only a *GUESS*, but here's what I would try:
>
> 1.) Make the radius of the small end of the cone
> a little bigger than zero.
They're not cones in the geometric sense. Almost all of them have both ends
significantly bigger than zero.

> 2.) Make the region of overlap between one cone
> and the next a little bigger and "merge" the cones
> into a single object to which the media can be
> applied.
When I made an overlap, it made a black line at the end of each cone, so there
were pairs of black lines. This seems to provide evidence for the endcap
theory, but adding open didn't change anything. Changing it from a union to a
merge significantly decreased the thickness of the lines in this versions,
though it did little when the didn't overlap.

> 3.) Cheat. Sometimes a NEARLY transparent object
> (say a tiny amount of reflection with no ambient
> or diffuse light) can nicely fudge a result that
> "correct" use of media is reluctant to deliver up.
> If you try this, remember to SPECIFY zero values for
> ambient and diffuse,as the default values are not
> zero.
I assume you mean to use specular highlights. Didn't work. The brightness is
determined way to much by the angle of the cone. The ones parallel to a line
drawn between the camera and the light source end up reflecting the light
better and being way brighter than the ones that aren't. If I were to use
diffuse, it would have the same problem, as it's still solely dependent on the
angle of the surface. Ambient isn't, but it would just result in a solid color,
and I'd be better off to just merge the thing together and use a solid media, so
it's at least dependent on the thickness.

Should I just give up on branching lightning and go with a single bolt?

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