On 11/4/2011 8:45 AM, gregjohn wrote:
> ----
> Q: "If you need to take meshes from an external modeler into povray, what
> benefit is there over doing that instead of just rendering the image directly in
> the external modeler?"
> ----
>
> I said I didn't know. and might have mumbled the word radiosity. I said I liked
> what the HOF guys did, and I liked having fun making my own things my way. (Not
> that there's anything wrong with either.)  But what would you say is the best
> technical answer to this question?   I'd love to have a paragraph I could just
> paste into the next pres I ever make. I'm sure the answer is like, "Povray's
> radiosity techniques are demonstrably better than ____ in ____ fashion." Again,
> I'm not attacking povray, just want to make the full case of its power with
> data.  (This is the sort of thing I was hoping for when I asked about "Speaker's
> Notes" in p.g.)
>
Without even going into the radiosity, the obvious answer is, "If its 
something that you don't need a mesh for, or you can produce the same 
result, using math, the image will be more accurate, since it will be 
based on a physical model, rather than an approximation. Mesh can only, 
ever, be an approximation, and how good it looks depends entirely on how 
much detail you are willing to put into it, and *if* the computer can 
then handle it."

Hard to think of specific examples, except that something like a fractal 
would be a pain in the ass to produce "mesh", and trivial to do 
mathematically. However, even a sphere is simpler, and smaller, and more 
"precise", in POV-Ray. You need at least 64 triangles to make a "basic" 
sphere, and more and more, depending on how close the camera is, and how 
sloppy you want to allow the thing to be. In POV, a sphere is a sphere, 
in mesh, rendered on one of those fancy modellers, its a damn bloody 
stupid big mass of data your application, and the GPU, has to mess with. 
And, every triangle you have, the harder everything has to work to get 
anything out of it.

About as technical as I can get myself though. lol

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