> Hmm...how is this different from an isosurface? Aside from the more
> flexible container.
The difference is: you can design a scene with "basic" objects, render them
fast until you get the right geometry, and then apply a texture to it that
deforms the surface.
Optimizations could be done where a ray is sure to hit the object (only the
normal has to be calculated in that case), and the slow isosurface algorithm
only has to be used at the borders of an object, where you could see the
difference between a faked (normal perturbation) and a real (surface
perturbation) texture.
I just don't have a clue how to do it...

> I think you might be able to warp the height field function in such a
> way to do this...maybe. But other objects are more of a problem: meshes,
> CSG, julia fractals, etc.
Well, I guess the feature I'm thinking of won't work for all kinds of
objects (nothing new: media doesn't work for meshes, for example)

> I just don't think the concept of a hypertexture applies to anything but
> a surface-based rendering engine, using meshes, spline surfaces, etc.
If you told me that media, smooth shadows or radiosity features weren't
possible with a raytracer a few years ago, I' probably have agreed.
I'm just trying to add realism to my images, and a good way to acchieve
realsim for certain scenes is to get rid of that smooth and polished look
raytracing images always used to have. isosurfaces are great, while loops
help a lot and I'd be lost without procedural textures. But I think lots of
things can still be done here.

Post a reply to this message