Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
> Well, the problem has two sides.  One is that hollow is used to allow 
> atmosphere to "leak" into an object.  The other is that it enabled media 
> contained within an object.  Now, the second "feature" of hollow is fairly 
> pointless.  If you add media to an object,why would you not want to make it 
> hollow - because if you don't the media you specified just won't be visible.

> The use with atmosphere on the other hand does make some sense.  But not the 
> way it currently works because right now if you have an object with media 
> inside, you cannot get rid off the atmosphere inside (well, you can with the 
> object pattern and CSG operations, but lets not go there).

  I think you are right. The current behaviour of 'hollow' is perhaps
a bit awkward and it probably was not thought thoroughly when it was
developed for the first time.

  You are right in that a more proper way of doing it would be that
objects can have their own media regardless of their properties and that
'hollow' (or whatever keyword) only says whether *other* medias and
atmospherical effects get into the object or not.

  In that sense "hollow" is a quite descriptive keyword, after all.
However, as we all know, practice has shown that it causes tons of
confusion to beginners and even not-so-beginners. They will often
think that it has something to do with CSG or how the object is
rendered (not related to any media/fog) even though it naturally
has no effect on those whatsoever.
  "hollow" is at the same time quite descriptive and very confusing
(because in real life hollowness refers to something quite different
than what it means in POV-Ray).

  I still think it should be changed to something else to avoid
confusions.
  How about "allow_atmosphere"?
  Or "blocks_atmosphere on/off"?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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