Well, knowing only the general principles of POV's radiosity system, I'm not
sure whether this is a good idea but...
Maybe shoot out a small number of sample rays (count/10 or something) at
every pixel and add this to the value calculated by the conventional method.
Perhaps make this an object-level option.
Since features usually represented by bump maps would (in real life) not
have great effect on the shape of the object, the weight of the colors
calculated by this pixel-by-pixel method could be small, so the the
statistical errors resulting from using few sample rays would (in theory) be
negligible.
I can make really long sentences, n'est pas?

Margus.

Nathan Kopp wrote in message <36AA03C8.26C55316@Kopp.com>...
>Margus Ramst wrote:
>>
>> BTW, talking of improvements to POV's radiosity, couldn't bump maps be
taken
>> into consideration when calculating the direction of the sample rays?
Right
>> now, normal perturbation is not visible in radiosity-only areas.
>
>I'm not sure.  The reason it could be difficult is that POV doesn't shoot
>sample rays at every point (for obvious speed reasons).  Then, the amount
of
>light gathered at the various points is interpolated between them.  But
>interpolating the light gathered doesn't factor in the surface normal.  I'm
>trying to figure out a way to do it (so you can get phong & specular
>highlights, too).  Suggestions would be appreciated, but we probably want
to
>discuss it in povray.programming instead of here.
>
>-Nathan

Post a reply to this message