Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
>
> The documentation hasn't really been updated.

Okay, well... you can see the downsides of that ;-)

> > 1) Will POV-Ray 3.7 support writing EXR with 32-bit floats, in addition to
> > 16-bit halfs?
>
> We have full EXR support linked in, but I have to admit I haven't actually
> developed that code, nor used it myself. I think currently it cannot be
> controlled what is written to the output file - I think the default is used,
> but I don't know what the defaults are.

I'd guess that 16-bit halfs would be the preferred default, given that the
format was practically developed to support that (it's what ILM uses for
production work). I would really like to see 32-bit float support in there,
however, available from a +FHn modifier.

> > 2) How do you select EXR output in the beta? I thought the bundled
> > documentation would have been updated to mention this; is there somewhere
> > else I should be looking?
>
> The new image format letter codes are E and H respectively.

+FE = RGBE, +FH = EXR, then. Huh, conflict with MegaPOV there, but I like
that EXR gets to use the letter H.

> > 3) Out of curiosity, is there any value in writing out all five of POV-Ray's
> > color channels, using EXR's arbitrary-layer support?
>
> I don't think so ... RGBA should contain all useful information. The
> difference of filter and transmit is primarily useful internally when
> rendering. Of course, it really depends if you want any "special effects".
> Certainly someone could come up with an imaginative way to use such a
> feature, be it useful or not ;-)

That's more or less what I thought. Having the output capture the full pixel
information would be a classy touch, just to keep the door open to
potentially clever uses.

Kind thanks for the information! Like so many others, I eagerly await the
production release of 3.7.

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