Lodewijk Voge wrote:
> 
> Disnel <Dis### [at] linuxitamcascz> wrote:
> 
> >> I've recently started playing with BMRT and now I wonder, is there any
> >> technical reason (as opposed to things like lack of time or manpower)
> >> why the texturing in povray uses hardcoded procedures instead of
> >> something like the RenderMan shaders?
> 
> > I think, that hardcoded procedures are faster.
> 
> faster than interpreted RenderMan shaders like BMRT uses, yes. not
> significantly faster than shaders (in whatever language would be most
> convenient) compiled to dynamically linkable objects that the povray
> executable would link in on demand.

This is true.  Unfortunately, one of the most important aspects of POV is
its multi-platform capabilities.  For the record, the Isosurface patch
and the SuperPatch (the SuperPatch does have the isosurface patch in it,
right?) do allow user-defined functions for patterns.  This is not quite
as flexible as RenderMan shaders, but it's a start.  And you can use
dynamic libraries in windows and unix.  But the two OS's don't use the same
libraries, and you can't use them on any other platform.  :-(

-Nathan

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