Gilles Tran wrote:
> 
> I once stayed an hour in front of the screen watching the render progress.
> After a while people started poking me in the ribs because they thought I
> was dead.

:-)

> The problem with the current implementation is that it's done by adding
> features and therefore it tends to create a bloated SDL with lots of more or
> less stable and meaningful keywords, as we've seen in Megapov. I really
> liked Vahur Krouverk's Povman and its implementation of Renderman shaders
> because it opens lots of opportunities, even though writing shaders is
> definitely something for programmers. Now, in 3.5, we have uvmapping and the
> possibility of tweaking functions to create patterns, but the manipulation
> of finish and interior properties has limitations that still make difficult
> the rendering of common real-life effects, such as blurred translucency.
> This question would be better solved by a shader approach than by adding
> keywords... particularly since there are many shaders already available.

I agree that shaders are a great addition to POV-Ray's texturing
possibilities, but i don't think they could be a replacement.  With
POV-Ray's current abilities you can achieve a lot of things that would
take even an experienced shader programmer quite some time.  Of course the
possibility to use the intersection information for the resulting color is
a great advantage of shaders.  

I did not look into the 3.5 source yet, but i guess using functions for
finish manipulation should be possible without fundamental changes, making
trace() etc. available in functions would be a great improvement too. 
With these blurred translucency and anisotropic highlights would no more
be beyond the scope of POV-SDL.

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, IsoWood include,                 
TransSkin and more: http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/  
Last updated 15 Jul. 2002 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______

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