Sean Day <s.d### [at] uelacuk> wrote:
> Kenneth wrote:
> > (My conception of this trick would probably require no less than a 'ray tracer
> > within a ray tracer' to pull off successfully; but I think the 'ingregients'
> > for the tool already exist in POV-Ray.)
>
> Not sure if you have seen this before... Is something like this what you
> are talking about.
>
> http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.2/124/
>

Yes--but using a slightly different methodology. I.e., instead of shooting rays
from the *camera* into the scene, you could pick an arbitrary point in 3D space
to shoot from--just like trace(). And you could aim the ray in any direction,
again just like trace. Then the ray returns the *color* found on the object.
(Essentially like regular ray-tracing, but maybe even simpler.) And the
object could be a union of many pre-colored objects, even primitive shapes. That
would be the strength of the method, that it doesn't depend on the makeup of the
object, or how many colors it has. Nor would uv-mapping be involved--although
the model could already be uv-mapped if desired, with its many colors.

I'm making it sound simple, but the coding would probably be rather complex.
Then there's the possible parsing/rendering 'circular interaction' I mentioned,
which might defeat the whole scheme, if such an interaction isn't possible. (One
way around *that* might be to do TWO parsing operations: the first for initial
tracing/color evaluating--the results of which are automatically #written to a
file as color vectors-- and the 2nd to #read the results back into the scene for
rendering. I haven't really thought through the details, though.)

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