In article <3A6C4126.E2F07808@my-dejanews.com>, 
gre### [at] my-dejanewscom wrote:

> This is a really cool feature you've developed, Chris. But perhaps it's
> a limitation of my understanding in that I cannot grasp its use beyond
> type of application proposed by Fabien.  While I'd love to do anims
> where say there are TV monitors showing 2-3 extra views of the same
> action,  I still don't comprehend the concept of "portal object."

Well, I don't know what part you have trouble understanding, so...

It is a pigment, it only affects the color of a surface, but (depending 
on the type) it can vary depending on the angle. The type 0 portal has 
an effect similar to cutting out the area of the image occupied by the 
object and replacing it with a view rendered from a different camera 
position. If you move around, you can see through the portal into the 
other part of the scene, like looking through a window. It behaves like 
rays hit the object and then appear a certain distance away in a certain 
orientation.

BTW, I got the camera portals working...perspective cameras anyway. The 
effect is identical to what you would get if you rendered the image and 
used it as an image_map, but of course isn't limited by resolution. (it 
also doesn't have or need antialiasing, and doesn't do focal blur)
This will mostly be useful for video displays...though it might also be 
of help when modelling objects, to allow multiple camera positions per 
render.

I'm going to have to go through and implement the code for the other 
camera types one by one...this part of the patch will probably be buggy 
at first, since I rarely use anything other than perspective, and don't 
have any experience with most of the camera types.

-- 
Christopher James Huff
Personal: chr### [at] maccom, http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg, http://tag.povray.org/

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