I've been working on an include file that renders simple lens flares using 
POV's specular highlight system and I've encountered a problem: POV only 
uses area light attributes for the shadows of objects and not the diffuse 
or specular components. I am aware that this is documented in the help file 
but it can make many effects not work properly. I'm posting some images to 
p.b.s-f showing the problem. If there's no other way to address this, I'll 
consider adding a new keyword to my patch.

-- 
light_source#macro G(E)sphere{z+E*y*5e-3.04rotate-z*E*6pigment{rgbt#end{
20*y-10#local n=162;1}#while(n)#local n=n-.3;G(n)x}}G(-n).7}}#end//GregE

Post a reply to this message

Greg Edwards <edw### [at] hotmailcomremovethis> wrote:
> If there's no other way to address this, I'll 
> consider adding a new keyword to my patch.

  There's currently no way of getting highlights of an area light (instead
of a point light) in such way that the rendering times will not increase
dramatically.
  You can get good arealight-highlights by using a grid of point lights,
but this would completely remove the advantage of adaptive supersampling
in the area_light, thus resulting in dramatical increase of render time.

  It probably wouldn't be too difficult to add support for
arealight-highlights to the current mechanism without slowing down the
rendering unacceptably. However, there might be some non-trivial issues
in this.

-- 
plane{-x+y,-1pigment{bozo color_map{[0rgb x][1rgb x+y]}turbulence 1}}
sphere{0,2pigment{rgbt 1}interior{media{emission 1density{spherical
density_map{[0rgb 0][.5rgb<1,.5>][1rgb 1]}turbulence.9}}}scale
<1,1,3>hollow}text{ttf"timrom""Warp".1,0translate<-1,-.1,2>}//  - Warp -

Post a reply to this message

Would rendering times increase dramatically if just the diffuse component
was correctly calculated with an area light?

Post a reply to this message

Anthony D'Agostino <sco### [at] spamecsicom> wrote:
> Would rendering times increase dramatically if just the diffuse component
> was correctly calculated with an area light?

  I don't see why. There really isn't much difference between diffuse
and specular lighting, they simply use a bit different formulas.

-- 
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -

Post a reply to this message