Chris Huff wrote:
> 
> In article <38B6E4BC.977FD8A0@merlin.net.au>, PoD <pod### [at] merlinnetau>
> wrote:
> 
> > > This might be a good idea. On the other hand, it would reinforce the bad
> > > habit of using bounded_by as a kind of CSG...(remember that with some
> > > settings POV can override this statement and use it's own bounding)
> >
> > No no no... bounding has nothing to do with CSG and should'nt be
> > confused with it.
> 
> That is what I was trying to get at-if bounding boxes chop off pieces of
> the object instead of behaving as they currently do, people will mistake
> them for a type of CSG more often. This is a bad thing. I don't want it
> to happen.

Oh OK it looks like we agree on this.
> 
> > > If the "use_depth_for_z"(somebody please come up with a better keyword!)
> > > feature is turned on, the angles of the initial emission from the light
> > > source will be used for the x and y axis, and the distance the ray has
> > > travelled for the z axis. This should make things like interference
> > > patterns possible.(I wonder what this would look like combined with
> > > scattering media and photons!)
> >
> > Interesting, but I think it should be done the same as sky_sphere
> > i.e. the colour comes from the intersection of the ray and a unit
> > sphere.
> 
> But that would make it a lot less flexible...you wouldn't be able to
> simulate the wave-like characteristics of light, for example. It would
> be the same as placing a small-scaled sphere around the light source.
> 
> Hmm, you could even do a cheap imitation of laser beams without photons:
> use the object pattern with two cylinders meeting at a mirror as the
> pigment for the light, and use scattering media with isotropic
> scattering(this would be important, because although the light would
> seem to be constrained to the two cylinders, it's direction would still
> be away from the light_source). This would be messed up by shadows, but
> it is an interesting possible use.

I didn't mean not to include the z-depth option, just that using planar
mapping would make a lot of uses difficult.  Maybe reuse the mapping
keyword here, I could see at least spherical, planar and cylindrical
being useful.

Here's something if you had z-depth.  Use a density file as the pattern
and project 'solid' holograms into media with shadowing from intervening
objects :)

PoD.

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