I am interested in what the difference is between rendering media with
scattering with radiosity on/off.  I have looked through the source to see
how the scattering procedures work, but I don't understand the relationship
between them and radiosity.  Does radiosity include multiple scattering?
What is the difference between the physical propagation of rays through the
media?  I know this is vague, but perhaps someone will understand my
confusion.

Also, some of the documentation on scattering doesn't make sense.  It says
that having extinction any value other than 1 is not physical, but
according to the definition given, this simply means that the ratio of
scattered to absorbed rays is 1.  In normal radiative transfer methods,
there is a dimensionful quantity kappa which describes the amount of
scattering per unit mass of media.  Also, the optical depth is
dimensionful.  In POV ray there are no units involved (as is common in
computer science) so it appears that extinction is a parameter that
incorporates unit conversion as well as the traditional extinction
parameter.  Is this correct?

Thanks in advance,
Eric DeGiuli

Post a reply to this message