Warp wrote:

>   The blur trick uses normals as well, but it has a couple of advantages
> compared to your suggested method:
> 
>   - Your suggestion requires quite heavy antialiasing to look good.

Yes, I thought this to be non-issue as I want to use quite heavy AA 
normally. But for test renderings it will be an issue. And you are 
correct that the heavy AA makes this otherwise fast method not so fast 
afterall :(

>   - Your suggestion produces a grainy blur. 

It will be _totally_ smooth but only with heavy AA. Now I'm doing a test 
rendering with "+a0.0 +am2 +r5" and yes, it is very smooth :) And 
slooooowww...

>   - It's easy to control how many reflected rays are sent to calculate the
>     blurred reflection with the trick. 

Also true. I think it I like(d) this single bumps method more because of 
the simpler looking syntax. Averaging textures looks uglier in the scene 
file and with "my" method one only has to alter one value to alter the 
smoothness. And if there was a way to apply object related AA settings 
it would be maybe more usable. If I can propose a new feature, this 
would be it: object based AA. That way one could define high AA to very 
small detailed objects without affecting the whole scene.

The single bumps method also works well if one does not want to make 
_very_ reflective surface. I'm now constructing a decent parquet and the 
  simpler method looks good even without very heavy AA. It all depends 
on the case. But most likely the averaging method is/can be allways 
faster with more control. I have to try that one too.

Severi S.

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