scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> > One type of AO from Fragmentarium requires 6
> > samples to be taken from the DE. Because the DE is smooth, it makes for a nice,
> > fast (not quite free) solution (also works with POV isosurfaces), but I wouldn't
> > call it AO. It's a proximity pattern :)
>
> Yes it depends how many rays and how far you want to step. You can also
> re-use the last primary ray DE value before intersection (and the
> initial shadow ray values) as an even cruder approximation.

It all depends on what you want, but personally I don't like the idea. Even if
that sample was added to three others (forming a camera-oriented tetrahedron),
there's still a likelihood that those last DE samples will have been taken at
different relative distances to the surface across the render. Does that make
sense?

> When thinking about optimising distance field renderers I always get a
> feeling that you should be able to do something clever with voronoi
> diagrams but I have never worked out what yet...

Hmm. Are you talking about breaking up the DE into separate regions, so that no
particular region will have too many components (shape operations)? If so, what
happens when a shadow or reflection ray needs to travel between regions?

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