Hello Everyone,

It's been a while since I posted anything; my life right now is a little
messed up. Anyway...

Attached is an image showing the effects of a new technique I've been
working on for simulating snow and ice. It will also work for candles,
plastic, translucent glass, etc. I guess you could call it subsurface
scattering, if you really wanted to :) Render times are good. This image
took only 4 minutes, 45 seconds to trace (CPU unknown). That's with five 3x3
area lights. I wouldn't expect it to work with radiosity, but you never
know.

The technique uses two versions of the same object. The visible object has a
brilliance of 0 and no_shadow. The hidden object is inside the visible one.
It is transparent with fade_power, fade_distance, fade_color and absorbing
media (optional) for it's interior. It is translated slightly (downward for
an HF) to make the effect show. Area lights are needed to keep the effect
from looking like crud.

I hope to post some code with another example image to this newsroup soon.
In the meantime, somebody out there might be able to get one working with
the description I gave.

Bye for now~
   ~Samuel Benge

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download 'translucency4_45.jpg' (25 KB)

Preview of image 'translucency4_45.jpg'