> No, it is a design issue.  POV-Ray cannot know if focal blur will be enabled
> in a later frame as it reparses the scene each time. 

	This is something I can't understand. The purpose of reparsing the
scene for each frame is especially to be able to change objects/variables/
parameter between frames. With some #if(clock) condition, it should be
possible to turn on and off focal blur or anything else from frame to frame.

> However, it cannot
> know if antialiasing was on or off once it has been turned off automatically
> after focal blur has been used.

	This could be avoided if focal blur was not reverting specific internal
variables...

> Practically using focal blur together with
> antialiasing is illegal, so it has to do something.

	Again something I don't understand: why "illegal" ? In my patch I
managed to turn antialiasing on with focal blur. Only method 2 is able to
work properly because antialiasing occurs "through" every pixel. It gives
much better results for the sharp zone (in focus), especially if this zone
has an important depth. It also helps somewhat to reduce the grainy effect
for pure colours. Of course render time might be longer. But not *that* much.

> I agree that the
> "something" is not logical, but turing on and off focal blur in different
> frames is simply a very rare case, so nobody ever noticed this missing
> feature...

	But it would speed up a lot to turn focal blur off when the effect
is neglectible. For now, I suppose people manage it by starting a new render,
even if the animation is following the same "scene" (no change in camera
viewpoint for instance).
	Okay, I don't flame the current behaviour. It was just my opinion
of what could be easily implemented ;-)


*** Nicolas Calimet
*** http://pov4grasp.free.fr

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