Hello Jan and thanks for your comments!

> #2: naa... white material is a bit unreal, and the
> reflecting environment of the black sphere doesn't fit

I'm surprised a little you think the black sphere looks wrong, since it
merely reflects the enviroment. But the white material is much more "dull"
and might be causing the confusion, and the black sphere doesn't really look
metallic (well some people here thinks it's a pearl).

> #5: dunno ... can't find a detail, where I would be 100%
> sure, that it is a traced one. The shadows are very
> slightly blurred, so it would be a very small arealight,
> and, it must be at a huge distance, as the shadows are
> nearly parallel... This would be very hard in a studio,
> (and I see no other reflections), but who knows...

Who knows, but you're right: The lightsource is at a huge distance.
Interesting for me that you mention the parrellel shadows because I didn't
notice this.

> #6: The Ref-Map of the "thing" doesn't fit, looks somehow
> the same as in #2, and is missing in the floor.
> IMHO, If you have the objects mirroring in the floor,
> you also have the sky there ...

Hmm, seems like a good point. But the enviroment ought to give correct
reflections, as it's made the same way as picture #2... The ground is
reflective too, but maybe not enough..

The only difference between #6 and #2 is that I added a "vignette" effect -
like a camera lens - that makes the image brighter in the middle. That
should give a better impression of a photo, though it's not a real-life
effect.


Regards,
Hugo

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> You mean that they aren't all photos ;) ?

Hehe, thanks Ray, that's a positive comment.

Regards,
Hugo

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Hi Xplo!

Thank you for the kind and useful comments! I'm going to reviel where the
photo is now: It's NUMBER FIVE as
almost everyone suspected, but apparently it was not too obvious.. It shows
that many "small" things contribute to realism and POV-Ray is surely on the
right track.

> 1. Not a photo. Sphere material seems unrealistic.

You're right. The blurred reflection trick in POV3.5 has some limits. I
haven't been able to make a good bumpy looking normal PLUS blur.. So here I
tried to have a small granite pattern, with a large blur, by mixing
functions {}.. Rendertime was a BEAST! About 14 hours on my 1 ghz AMD, but
the major slowdown happened when reflection ping-pong's between the 2
spheres.. I reduced the max_trace_level to 3 which gave a good speed-up, but
still...

> 5. Could be a photo. Extremely convincing.

Ahh, yes.. I shot this photo today from my window.. A piece of paper and two
simple objects on top.. It seems like there is still a way to go in POV-Ray.

Regards,
Hugo

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Hi Steve and thanks for your comment!

> The dark sphere in number two is very close to a
> black pearl ....... needs some lustre and then bingo.

I'll think about the lustre (just looked up the word in my dictionary)..
hmm..

> As for the rest? I'll stick my neck out and say all
> .pov apart from #6.   Just hope I'm right...  ;)

eehhh.. The photo is number 5, but it's interesting that it was not too
obvious.. I conclude that although there is still headway to make, our
favourite raytracer is doing good.. Maybe it would be a good idea to make
some full setups for realistic light with a set of good textures.. Though
there is already a good include file for radiosity settings.

Regards,
Hugo

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Hi Bob,

> Regardless of what someone else said about #4's semi-transparency
> it draws my attention most as being realistic.

You're the only one who gives so much credit for #4 ... thanks! It's also
the only picture that features subsurface scattering and it's still not seen
so often in CG... There is still headway to make, however.. :o)

Your guess for #5 as the photo is correct!

Regards,
Hugo

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compression artifacts of your numeric camera on the white cylinder. Can you


Mathieu (france)

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Attachments:
Download 'nouveau-2.jpg' (21 KB)

Preview of image 'nouveau-2.jpg'

> to look for the differences ? It will be nice...
>
> Mathieu (france)

I had the same idea today.. It's worth to try sometime this week.  ;o)

Regards,
Hugo

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I could write everything I know about lighting and texture on a match book
cover, but to my untrained eye, they all look pretty convincing except for
3. I think that the banding on the shadows in pic 4 gives away more than
does the material. 2 is the most realistic of the renders, but I think that
1 could surpass it with a slight focal blur to hide the regularity of the
patterns.

 -Shay

Hugo <hua### [at] post3teledk> wrote in message news:3caf13cc@news.povray.org...

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Hi Shay, thanks!

> I think that 1 could surpass it with a slight focal blur to
> hide the regularity of the patterns.

Huh, hmm.. Well all these renders actually have very similar focal blur, and
I don't see a regularity in the pattern of picture 1 ?

But it's interesting to note the big difference in render time for these
pictures.. The real beast was number 1 because of the blurred reflection
(ping pong between the spheres).. The rest renders very quickly, except
number 4 with subsurface scattering.. But this tells me I should probably
leave some things to the future, with faster computers, and concentrate on
radiosity now, since that gives great images, well unless you need
transparant or blurred materials up front.

Regards,
Hugo

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Hugo <hua### [at] post3teledk> wrote in message
news:3cb1fd0f$1@news.povray.org...
>
> Huh, hmm.. Well all these renders actually have very similar focal blur,
and
> I don't see a regularity in the pattern of picture 1 ?
>

Maybe it's just me, but the textures in #1 look mathematical. It might just
be the strength of the textures in #1 as compared to the others that gives
this appearance.

 -Shay

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