"Tek" <tek### [at] evilsuperbraincom> schreef in bericht
news:3af3786c@news.povray.org...
> Wow!
>
> Erm, I'm kind of new to megapov so could you possibly explain how that
> works? 'cause I've read the source and I can't see where the cool pattern
> comes from!
>
Sure!
I won't pretend to understand all the (technical POV) ins and out concerned,
but basically, I used a hollow cube and textured the outside with a
transparant glass (Glass_1), like you would texture any object. But I added
the MegaPOV feature interior_texture, developped by Chris Huff. In this
image, interior_texture is Chrome_Metal_3 as a mirror. I verified that the
glass was perfectly transparant (Filter and/or Transmit values in the
pigment command) and the mirror perfectly reflective (finish/reflection =
1). I also increased the ambient of the mirror.
Inside de cube, I added a small yellow light and a small sphere. This way,
the cube acts as if constructed of one-way mirrors: Everything inside will
be reflected infinitely, but you can look inside through the one-way glass.
Then I added the ribs of the cube.
I then discovered that increasing max_trace_level increased the depth of
rendering of the reflections. When you put its value at 10, for instance,
the reflections are only two or three levels deep. The value 100
approximates infinity (at least visually) although you can see the limit of
the last reflection rendered on several places in the image (I let you
discover yourself!).
I discovered also incidentally, that if you render the cube without the
ribs, render time increases dramatically. This is probably due to the
increasingly small and infinite(?)  reflections near the mirror "joints".
Interestingly, if you turn on the interior ior of the cube (Commented out in
the source file) you will get different refractions of the infinite world
inside. In my opinion, less 'natural' looking than without the ior. You can
also turn off the hollow statement, but that does not seem to change much...

Thomas

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