POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : mirrors nope, lenses nope, prisms yes? : mirrors nope, lenses nope, prisms yes? Server Time
29 Apr 2024 10:41:57 EDT (-0400)
  mirrors nope, lenses nope, prisms yes?  
From: peyrol
Date: 24 Jul 2016 18:40:00
Message: <web.5795430a1512cf9f91c886080@news.povray.org>
In the FAQ is the question "Why doesn't my mirror reflect light? Why won't my
lens focus light?" and the answer has to do with backwards ray tracing versus
forwards ray tracing. Here's a quote:

"Because reflecting and refracting light (also called caustics) is not so
important as getting the scene rendered (even wihtout them), backward raytracing
is used. Then you just have to live with the fact that light does not reflect
from the mirror."

My OS is Linux Mint 18, which finally includes POVray in its repositories. Here
is a quote from the blurb I read in my Software Manager:

"POV-Ray is a full-featured ray tracer. Ray tracers simulate objects and light
sources of the real world to calculate photorealistic, computer generated
images. Because of the nature of ray tracing, this process is quite
CPU-intensive, at the benefit of more realistic images compared to real time
rendering techniques. For example, in POV-Ray, you can model a glass prism, and
you will see a spectrum in the resulting image."

Prisms. That would be refraction, yes? Which the FAQ says does not work. Is this
blurb correct in what it says? How can prisms make a spectrum if mirrors don't
reflect light from light sources?


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