Ive <ive### [at] lilysoftorg> wrote:

>
> When using images as depth-map, or bump-map, or heightfield, or anything
> else that has nothing to do with a "picture" you'll have to make sure
> that there is at no point in the whole workflow any gamma correction
> applied - starting with the generation of the image itself.
> Simply changing the gamma later is not what you want as this will throw
> away a lot of information and you will loose detail.
>

Yes, I agree with that... to a point. My little gamma trick was just an
experiment-- which happened to work out rather nicely. But I would not recommend
changing gamma willy-nilly (without an understanding of the problems it will
introduce.) In the case of Thomas's "mapping test" image, it certainly *did*
introduce a problem--- the ears of his model disappeared! ;-) But it was
interesting to see how the gamma shift 'improved' the facial features of his
isosurface, without any other code changes.

My own overall philosophy about POV-Ray is that it is a wonderful 'visual tool
box'... with tools that can be used in various ways (even 'non-recommended'
ways, if that happens to work for a certain effect.) I recall that when I first
started using the program, the one thing mentioned over and over again in the
newsgroups was, "Don't be afraid to experiment and see what happens!" I still
think that's a useful philosophy to have.

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