[Radiance-general] Specular convex reflector and surface normals?

[Lars O. Grobe]

> If you use the "mirror" material type for the ceiling, it will cast 
> appropriate source reflections, but without the surface normal 
> interpolation.  Also, it will incur a lot of calculation overhead, 
> proportional to the number of triangles in your ceiling.  I don't think 
> I'd recommend it for that reason.

No, the geometry is awfully complex, consisting of a number of domes and 
semidomes which are connected by rounded edges (rounded in geometry). 
With todays computers (and my budget) that will not complete in the next 
years ;-)

> This is no doubt the source of your splotches, and the photon map 
> addition may well take care of the problem.  You could try it with the 
> "mirror" type first, just to see how long it takes and what it looks like.

Sounds like a field of a small application study of radiance and exotic 
model setup ;-) I have really little knowledge about the radiance pmap 
stuff, so it sound even more exciting. I was already thinking about 
putting an illum under the dome to achieve some smoothing, which would 
be more or less faked of course.

Thanks for the reply, I will keep you informed of any results...

CU Lars.