I was at the Frida Kahlo "and friends" exhibit here in San Diego on 
Sunday, and one of the paintings got me to thinking about an effect I'd 
like to be able to do in POV: a normal on the camera, where the 
intensity of the normal change is based on the distance from the camera 
to that point in the image. (Even better would be where the intensity of 
the normal change is based on the distance between that point in the 
image and the focal point.)

So that, for example, a 'checker' normal could be applied to the camera, 
and the main focus of the image would receive practically no normal 
variation, but items far away from that object would receive heavy 
normal variation.

Is there a way to do this in current POV or its variations?

Jerry

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That's a neat, if obscure, idea. I have difficulty imagining what the
results might look like, but it would be sure to be interesting.

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I think a more general feature would be a "distance" pattern, which 
would sort of use a z-buffer to get the pattern values. You could then 
use the existing camera normal feature with a normal controlled with the 
distance pattern to get the same effect.

There could be two variations of this pattern: distance from camera, and 
distance from start of ray.

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

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Jerry wrote:
> 
> Is there a way to do this in current POV or its variations?
> 

Not directly, as far as I can see. But perhaps this would work:
1) get Z-buffer (depth) output with MegaPOV's "Depth" post-process
2) in a paint program, use this as a mask for the camera normal pattern
3) apply the resultant image as the camera normal

-- 
Margus Ramst

Personal e-mail: mar### [at] peakeduee
TAG (Team Assistance Group) e-mail: mar### [at] tagpovrayorg

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