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In article <38f1b7da@news.povray.org>, Warp <war### [at] tag povray org>
wrote:
> What could be done with the shader not possible with pigment functions
> (which are going to be included in pov3.5 most probably)?
One example of something that might be possible is a good starfield that
is resistant to anti-aliasing. Or possibly textures that anti-alias
themselves, or blurred reflection that is only blurred in specific
directions...
You could also test out new highlight models like blinn with a shorter
development cycle, and if they are popular enough, they could be
incorporated into the program later.
Like I said before, shaders are to textures as isofunctions are to
object primitives(and patterns!). They are much more than a pattern
function, they can handle specialized reflection/refraction/media etc.
A pattern function is actually kind of like a partial shader, or a
shader specialized and restricted to patterns. As a matter of fact, one
possibility for implementing a kind of shader would be to use 3
functions, one for red, green, and blue, and adding functions like
trace(), eval_pigment(), etc. This would probably be a bit easier to
use, and would have a syntax more consistant with the rest of POV-Ray,
but would not be able to use existing RenderMan shaders and would
probably be less flexible.
Maybe the two are not mutually exclusive, though...it might be possible
to make a shader patch with an easier to use POV-like syntax(based on
isofunctions) as well as support for RenderMan type shaders.
--
Christopher James Huff - Personal e-mail: chr### [at] yahoo com
TAG(Technical Assistance Group) e-mail: chr### [at] tag povray org
Web page: http://chrishuff.dhs.org/
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