A Refractive Sphere on a Checkered Plain. (BTW, Archpawn, I *really* 
wish I'd come up with that pun myself.)

The photons notwithstanding ;-) this is my test bed for a cheap 
radiosity substitute.

Ambient wasn't doing it for me, since it is completely omnidirectional. 
I want surfaces facing upward (the ground) to get more light from the 
sky than vertical surfaces (tree trunks). Without taking this into 
account, the tree trunks tend to look like they glow in the dark (look 
at the tiles that Nicolas posted from his super render, and you can see 
what I'm talking about).

I'm playing with a custom lighting system derived from Tek's light dome. 
Normally, the light dome is significantly slower than radiosity. I tried 
hacking some of the quality optimizations out of his code and 
dramatically decreasing the light count (from 30+ to 5) without making 
much of a dent.

The secret is to make all the lights in the dome shadowless. My original 
IRTC render took ~3 hours; this image, at the same resolution and AA 
settings, took just over thirty minutes to render. Not too shabby. :-)

-- 
William Tracy
afi### [at] gmailcom -- wtr### [at] calpolyedu

    "I don't hink it helps to make analagies between the physical and 
social worlds," Sax said primly.
    "Shut up, Sax. Go back to your virtual reality."
     -- Kim Stanley Robinson, _Red Mars_

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