"dan B hentschel" <dan### [at] alumritedu> wrote in message 
news:web.41597419aab70630a3fcf12a0@news.povray.org...
> "Tim Nikias" <JUSTTHELOWERCASE:timISNOTnikias(at)gmx.netWARE> wrote:
>> > I'm pretty sure it's the "area_light" part of your light_source 
>> > settings.
>> > Get rid of that, and it should look pretty good.  I guess this isn't a
>> bug,
>> > because it's in the documentation.  I'm not aware of any way around it,
>> > other than getting rid of "area_light".
>> >
>> > You can still use an area_light in your light_source block, but it 
>> > seems
>> to
>> > work better if you leave it out of the photon block.
>>
>> In addition to that, 1.000.000 photons for an area-light is an extremely
>> small amount. I much prefer to use spacing instead of count, and just 
>> reduce
>> the spacing until I get the desired quality.

> So to clarify, should I take out the "area_light" AND increase the number 
> of
> photons?

That should produce pretty good results in many cases.

> Or should I increase the number of photons if I decide to leave
> the "area_light" specification in the photon {} block?

That should produce really good results, in combination with spacing.

IMHO, like many things, it generally depends on the focus (meaning "the main 
attraction") of your image.  If it's to show off nifty glass 
reflection/refraction with photons, then go all out.  But I'm still 
relatively new to photons as well, but I just did a couple experiments with 
lots of photons and area_lights (in the photon block too) with very small 
spacing, and it seemed to get rid of the strange artifacts.  I'm not sure 
what's "normal" in these situations, but I seemed to get pretty good results 
with       spacing 0.0002
      count 10000000
That might be a good starting point, or reduce those numbers by a factor of 
10 or 100, or increase them.  But again, that may be specific to my 
situation.

Your best bet is to take a very small subset of your image and do a few 
experiments to see what looks good.  Yep, it's pretty time consuming, but in 
the end, you'll learn a lot.  :-)  (Yeah, I hate those types of answers 
too... ;-)  )

-- 
Jeremy
www.beantoad.com

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