POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.unofficial.patches : 'normal' is not taken into account in radiosity : Re: 'normal' is not taken into account in radiosity Server Time
2 Sep 2024 16:14:41 EDT (-0400)
  Re: 'normal' is not taken into account in radiosity  
From: Ben Birdsey
Date: 15 Nov 1999 20:00:29
Message: <3830ACD6.2B625566@netscape.net>
You're right, it doesn't take the normal into account.

	Right now, radiosity is just a way of calculating the AMBIENT light at
different points.  This is the same reason the slope mapped texture
doesn't show with ambient light either.  ( turn the radiosity off and
crank up the "ambient_light" in "global_settings" and check it out).

	This is a really useful method for rendering "view independent"
lighting.  Calculating just the AMBIENT contribution is just basic "bare
bones" radiosity.

	Now, if you check out Henrik Wann Jensen's web page at
<http://www.gk.dtu.dk/home/hwj/welcome.html>, you'll see that he's the
inspiration for Nathan's photon patch.  And you'll see that that same
photon map is calculating direct lighting, caustics, and radiosity at
the same time, and doing a better job than "plain jane" POV.

	There are two easy fixes as far as I see.
	1) Somehow use both "Raw_Normal" and "LayNormal" in 
	   "Compute_Ambient".  You need to use "Raw_Normal"
	   so the computed rays won't go through the surface,
	   but "ra_reuse" uses the normal to figure out the
	   contributions from the nearby octree nodes.  So,
	   if you used "LayNormal" there, that would influence
	   the surface illumination in the right way.

	2) Talk to Nathan really nicely and see if he would
	   rewrite the radiosity code to use a kD tree and
	   photon map.  Now that would be cool!

	Until that Day,
	Ben


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