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v0.97 Preview Ready (With ART Ray Tracer!)

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Kubajzz:

--- Quote from: blanc on March 20, 2008, 09:28:31 am ---Oops! I spoke too soon!

Actually, glossyreflector + transparent = dielectric ! no ?

--- End quote ---

I don't think so. Dielectric class is quite similar to transparent, but has nothing to do with reflections;

The difference between tranparent and dielectric is how the light interacts with the colorof the material

If you have 'transparent' material with transparency 0, it behaves like clean glass (the material color has no effect); dielectric material with transparency 0 is not transparent - it's almost transparent where the object is very thin and it's less transparent where the object is thick (depending on the UnitDistance attribute...) - that is useful for liquids etc...

CobraSpectre:
Thank you Steve!

Hmm, released the same day I was going to start surfacing and lighting a Transform entry for anim8or.org...

One question, can objects cast colored, refracted 'shadows'?

hihosilver:
You're an amazing person Steve ;)
Wonderful job on this release.  We just finished our unit on refractions with mirrors and transparent surfaces in physics and I loved the course.  This kind of stuff is very interesting.  I'll be playing with this all spring break!
:D

Steve:
blanc - no, you can't combine materials - yet.  I  plan to add more materials and options to both the scanline renderer and to the ray tracer.  One possibility is to add more complex operateor - like a blend option that would aallow you to combine two or more materials.  Another is to allow various components like the specular hilight to be a general material.  There ar some major design issues I have to work out first including how to present this to users.  Attributes are quite flexible but not very easy to use ao I'd like another technique.

CobraSpectre - No colored shadows yet either but they are in the works.  Caustics are much harder to do (and can take a LOT more time) so I don't think I'll get to them anytime soon.

There ther's the current rendering time.  I haven't done much to speed it up yet.  I hope to be able to at least halve the time for a typical render.

Raxx:

--- Quote from: Steve on March 21, 2008, 12:08:10 am ---Another is to allow various components like the specular hilight to be a general material.  There ar some major design issues I have to work out first including how to present this to users.  Attributes are quite flexible but not very easy to use ao I'd like another technique.

--- End quote ---

This is more work for you, but easier for us: How about some sort of "Shader Lab" dialog option from the material editor. This dialog would be a wizard of sorts with a preview window, where you can add and mix attributes from a drop down menu and play with values. Press the preview button and the preview window renders a sample (some primitives on a plane or something :P). I think this will make it much easier and faster for new and old users to make custom materials. If you extend the attributes to include all the bump map values and textures and such, you could even replace the entire material editor with the shader version using a toggle for ART materials versus scanline materials.

Just a thought.

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