Hi.

I'm trying to simulate variable IOR in POV-Ray by putting several cylinders
inside each other. I wanted to make a bullet-trail macro, wich would draw
the effect of heated air when a bullet crosses it. I've created the macro,
and the result is attached.

The basic idea was making the ior fall to 1.0 along the trail, and along the
axis, so the center of the trail would look more heated than the edges. To
achieve it, I've sudbivided the trail in N sub-trails, each made of M
co-axial cylinders. Each subdivision was made by creating cylinders with
distinct ior, the inner the greatest, falling from MaxIOR in the middle, to
1.0 in the edge.
Thus, all I had to do was create the N sub-trails, along the trail's path,
giving different values to MaxIOR, so the heat would drop with the distance
to the bullet.

That can be seen quite well in the picture.
But there are some problems. The max_trace_level variable must be set too
high, and if I set it over 220 it gives me stack overflow :(
Besides, the refraction between two sub-trails is shown, wich gives an
undesired toroidal aspect.

Anyone come up with a solution / idea / sugestion?

Thanx a lot

link to the picture: http://mega.ist.utl.pt/~lmfe/pictures/bullet_trail.png
link to the scene: http://mega.ist.utl.pt/~lmfe/pictures/bullet_trail.pov

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