CompuServe Messages

Rawl, What can I tell you, it was my birthday, and I'd never forgive me if I didn't buy it (besides if you can't spoil yourself rottin to the core, what's the point of life anyway <G>)! My understanding is that current technology produces the best images using ray tracing. The problem with ray tracing is its slow rendering time. Other techniques such as giraud or phong are far less CPU intensive, but CAN give good images in certain cases. The best technique that has recently been discussed in the jouranls is "wave tracing", which treats light as a wave phenomena, rather than as a ray/particle. Although this gives more realistic images (supposedly), it is much more CPU intensive. The specialist are trying to find an efficient algorithm to produce images using this principle. I realize that 3D rendering is very dependent on the user's expertise, and that Imagine's docs are not great. I plan to get Imagine in a month or so, along with any reasonable third party instruction books that I can find! -RSL-