Hi Simone,
Thank you for the suggestion and in one instance I did try and increase that
setting.

Artefacts is probably not the best term - limitations might be better. For
example, in the coloured bulbs image I put an individual, randomised, bozo
sphere around each so the colour pattern reflected would be different. I started
with the idea of putting the texture on the inside of a hollow sphere, but could
not get the reflection-amplification effect to work at all that way. Eventually
I got there with a transmit filter on the outside of the sphere using
no_reflection, no_shadow for those spheres - but I could not use no_image
because then I lost the transmit filter.  Long winded way to say that when I try
to build a scene around these type of "bulbs," the edges of this outer sphere
show up and the illusion is broken.

The attached image instead reflects a bozo pattern from a sky sphere (why this
works and inside texture did not, I do not know). I put a bit of a cage around
this one, but all the shapes in the cage cannot cast shadows or again the
illusion breaks down. The lack of shadows itself causes the illusion to break
down.

Aside: The X-ray effect you are after is by the way similar to the way the
texture needs to be patterned on each sphere. An AOI pattern would make this
trick easier in that I would not have to reorient the spheres individually to
the camera position, but it wouldn't remove the limitations I am hitting. It
would, I think, make the effect complete for rays not coming directly from the
camera position if the AOI pattern would be in effect for all rays.

I am thinking now that I might have to create the texture I want and stick it on
the bulbs with ambient 1, but I have yet to try it. There is also media, but I
have struggled in the past to get the look I want with media for these kinds of
effects. And there is Mr Lipka's new "diffuse-backside illumination" feature in
beta 34 that might be useful here, but I am still on 33 with my linux compile.

Anyway, sorry for thinking aloud. Thanks again for the suggestion.

Regards, Bill

"mone" <mon### [at] alienenterprisesde> wrote:
> What kind of artefacts?
> Often artefacts appear with transparent objects when max_trace_level is too low.
>
> Regards,
> Simone

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