In article <38edf6b7@news.povray.org>, "TonyB" 
<ben### [at] panamac-comnet> wrote:

> For those of us who are ignorant about Renderman (except for Pixar), how
> will this patch change our lives?

It lets you tell the renderer exactly how to calculate the color of a 
surface at each point using a kind of interpreted programming language.

Basically, a shader is to textures as an isosurface is to a shape 
primitive. It gives advanced users a great deal of flexibility at the 
cost of ease of use and sometimes speed. It lets you do things that 
would ordinarily only be possible by modifying the source code.
Using isosurface functions as patterns could probably be considered a 
crude form of a shader, but a specialized patch could do *much* 
more(reflection, refraction, media densities, etc.).

-- 
Christopher James Huff - Personal e-mail: chr### [at] yahoocom
TAG(Technical Assistance Group) e-mail: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
Web page: http://chrishuff.dhs.org/

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