I've cropped the part of the image where the effect
isn't that obvious. When you look at the edge of
the superellipsoid in the upper left corner, you'll
notice the highlight "bleeding" into the background.
Even more obvious is on the green superellipsoid,
where the highlight bleeds into the shadow.
I think it adds a nice touch to the image, even though
the parsing times are... ehm... Quiet high (depending
on amount of objects to be tested and resolution).

Here's a quick overview over the macros:
The first one shoots trace() at the scenery and tries to
hit objects which were given via an array. When an
object is hit, the specularity (given by another array, using
the values you'd normally hand as specular and roughness)
is calculated and saved for that pixel. The results are saved
to disk.
Then, you may choose varying paths:
1. Display the specular-data as triangles in front of camera
(no antialiasing possible then).
2. Use a macro to just display the specularity data as gray-shaded
image (white=highlight, black=no highlight), [modify the resulting
image via a paint programm] and display the image back onto
the screen via another maco (antialiasing possible)
3. Use a macro to blur the specularity data. This blurring keeps the
old data retained and adds the blurred data to a new file. Highlights
won't get blurred away. Display the new data. (no antialiasing)
4. Use macro to blur, but then output blurred data to gray-shaded
image. Use image for display (antialiasing)

I have yet to write a macro which may take image and generate
data off of that (though I see no reason why anyone would want
that, I do want the "system" to be complete: there's data to
image converter, so I need a reverse effect).

One thing I noticed, due to color-clipping and gamma-issues,
results will vary when comparing using data vs image. Still, this
blinding effect adds to the realism of the image (IMHO), because
it occurs in camera's and the human eye. Now on to some
lens flares, and I should be able to modify the image to look
like a photo... :-)

-- 
Tim Nikias v2.0
Homepage: http://www.digitaltwilight.de/no_lights
Email: Tim### [at] gmxde

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