clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:

>
> ...And...when the issue
> first arose, light groups were well-established already, so that the
> developers were reluctant to change the implementation, out of fear of
> breaking existing scenes.

I had the same thought. The light_group feature *has* been around a long time,
and changing it would cause old scenes to 'look' quite different. (Not mine, of
course... ha!)

Putting myself in the position of 'Devil's advocate' for BOTH sides, I can see
that one group of people might want its behavior changed to *MY* way (oops, I
mean, my way and Thomas's way!), and another group might just as strongly be in
favor of keeping its shadow behavior as-is. Either way, *someone* would probably
be unhappy! ;-) I guess it would boil down to which 'version' of light_group
behavior turned out to be easiest to work around (i.e., the desire for shadows
vs. no shadows.) In other words, would it be easier to eliminate unwanted
shadows, or to *add* them if they're not already there? POV-Ray's other features
like no_shadow, no_image, shadowless, etc. would seem to argue for the former
case (which is the current light_group behavior.) But those other tools may be
inadequate for certain kinds of scenes.

It's difficult to imagine *all* the different use cases that might arise, with
either version of a light_group-- especially with *nested* light_groups; they
can be 'logically complex' in either scenario.

But I still vote for 'no shadows'. ;-)

Post a reply to this message