Hi jonah, one of the interesting parts about the AIR mechanism is that it allows for execution of renderman-style shader script programs.

That allows for writing completely custom shaders that actually execute a kind of script code to control the output. It's pretty much the ultimate in flexibility, but of course you have to write code to control it.

- Michael

jonah
Thats what I used of the MoI screen shot idea--and the top view.

Hey!, it worked ok for me! (Gosh, I use colour image files regularly for displacement also--no probs!)

I am thinking more now of just going down the Carrara potentials I showed--not using any image at all. Seems far easier, totally simple and low file size. Why not?

Brian

>My current thinking is that I may write a very simple and quick renderer that will be built in to do very basic stuff, but rely more on >plug-ins / 3rd party type renderers for more advanced type things.

That makes a lot of sense to me as well Michael. I've always liked that idea for some reason.

For example, there is an easy sketchup to kerkythea plug in, and Cycas has an inbuilt portal to povray. Though the two systems are a little different.

In both systems, it is possible to set up cameras, lights, materials inside the modeling program. In the first system, the scene is opened in KT and the rendering operation is controlled from there.

In the Cycas system you don't have to talk to povray at all. A very workable range of render settings can be selected from within the modeler. Which may be very good for some users who don't have time to get into the deep subleties of rendering.

Just some thoughts.