It is not _almost_ impossible to create caustics with the standard
raytracing model - it's just impossible.
Both (true) radiosity and photon mapping should be applicable to a
raytracing engine. I am not sure if they can be applied to POV without
fundamental changes; I believe both would require some kind of surface
meshing.
POV's radiosity is not "true" radiosity - it uses a raytracing approach
to simulate radiosity effects and does no energy balancing of the scene.
I would love to have true caustics in POV, even if my scenes would take
days to render. They fundamentally increase the realism of many scenes
(and they look cool).

Margus

Nieminen Mika wrote:
 
>   You should read some documentation about raytracing, what you can do with
> it and what you can't. Raytracing is not a perfect technique to model the
> real world. I don't know if there is any.
>   For example, with raytracing it's extremely difficult, if not impossible
> to model area lights (area lights in povray are not true area lights as you
> can read from the docs), reflective and refractive caustics, etc.
>   You should think about how raytracing works and try to understand why
> it's almost impossible to model caustics with it.
>   There are other techniques to model area lights and caustics, for example
> radiosity and photon mapping, but I don't know if they are very appliable
> to a raytracing engine (ok, radiosity is, but I don't know about the
> photon mapping).
> 
> --
> main(i){char*_="BdsyFBThhHFBThhHFRz]NFTITQF|DJIFHQhhF";while(i=
> *_++)for(;i>1;printf("%s",i-70?i&1?"[]":" ":(i=0,"\n")),i/=2);} /*- Warp. -*/

Post a reply to this message