Christoph Hormann wrote:

> Warp wrote:
> 
>>
>>   That's a good idea, but I wonder if the 'photons' block should
>> be a part of the 'material' block...
 >
> I don't think this would be a good idea, the way it is right now people 
> recognize that photons are shot at objects and not at materials.  In 
> fact photon shooting does not care about the material at all.
> 
> For example you could get the idea that assigning a material like:
> 
> material {
>   texture {
>     boxed
>     texture_map {
>       [0.5 Tex_Diffuse]
>       [0.5 Tex_Reflective]
>     }
>   }
>   photons { target reflection on }
> }
> 
> to the whole scene could be reasonable.  This will lead to serious 
> trouble though when your scene contains large or infinite objects.

Of course, but I don't see the difference. You'll get equally big 
troubles if you assign target keyword straight to an infinite object or 
if you assign photon enabled material to the same object - no 
difference. I don't think making materials capable of being targets 
would make things any worse in that respect - you allways have to take 
care of what you are doing.

The point is just to make it easier to link certain things together with 
more freedom than now. Usually if someone has glass objects in a scene 
it is most likely he wants them all to show photon caustics. Material 
specific definition would be a nice way to do it. And, for example, if 
there was an infinite glass plane, specifying (say) "target off" would 
override the material photon definition.

Severi S.

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