Hi Felix,

> what I mean by relatively large is this 1 x 10-3 compared
> with something like 4.9406564584124654 x 10−324
> (Double floating-point).

Yeah, but you may have gotten a bit of a wrong idea about floating point numbers though - even though the smallest representable number will be something similar to what you're saying there that doesn't mean that you can do much with that number other than just look at it by itself. Once you start doing arithmetic between different numbers you're looking at accuracy of more like 1e-16 or something more in that range.

The smallest possible number that can be represented is not also the accuracy that arithmetic works with...

Each floating point number has a separate mantissa and exponent part to it, and when you do arithmetic between 2 numbers if their exponents are way different the one that's way smaller will sort of evaporate away.

The "floating" part is kind of like a floating range - you get precision with arithmetic between numbers that are within the same exponent range of each other, so like 3.0e-100 + 4.0e-100 will generate 7.0e-100 ok but if you try to do 1 + 3.0e-100 it will just give a result of 1 because there's a 100 digit difference between those numbers.


> Maybe, just maybe it would be possible to have something
> like an on-demand tolerance control.

I may have this eventually but it tends to open up a pandora's box of various problems when it is set wrongly and I've often seen it set badly in practice before.

See this thread for some previous discussion on it:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4215.4

- Michael

Michael,

I've exagerated a bit to much on purpose just to say that 1/1000 wasn't that small.

May I suggest something like a list of tolerance choices in a limited range that are not known to cause problem except for longer calculation time.

Thanks,
Felix

Here is a test render with the toilet placed in the final architecture.
The bathroom is designed with a 12'x12' footprint and the toilet sits in a corner nook, with two slim frosted-glass windows on the one wall.

The materials are temporary for testing purposes and no details have been added to the bathroom scene besides the toilet and basic trim.
But my current purpose now is to hammer out the lighting and design challenges first.
It's been a good exercise so far.

The following pic was rendered in Kerkythea Boost with 115 passes in the mode called: "Metropolis Light Transport (BiPT)",
which takes a looong time to render, but I feel it has the best results when subtle light bounces, reflections and caustics are concerned.
This constitutes about 20 hours of render time with a four-core i7 cpu. The image was at 2000x2000 pixels, but reduced to 1000x1000.
I like to render the MLT images at twice the pixel dimensions, then reduce it when final because there is a trade-off and most of MLT's inherent noise is reduced.
More poly's and lights add exponentially to the render time of course, and there are a lot in this current incarnation of the toilet model. I'll scale down the poly count when I get more familiar with what I can get away with in this scene.

I ran an earlier "Photon Map + caustic + fine, aa 0.3", but the results were a little cartoon for me.
I'm still at the bottom of the rendering learning curve, though.

As I progress with my scene I'll produce more renders.

It's looking great Mike! The only down thing is that you can't really appreciate all that detail on the handle area when it's a bit far away and in shadow like that...

- Michael

Thanks,

Yes, the handle is kinda diminutive when rendered in a room scene.
The advantage of rendering in a real-world inspired scene space is that you can get a better "eye" on how things like inventions and custom shapes would actually "feel".
(in a manner of speaking).

I created the toilet, and bathroom to size. And by doing that I soon realized when rendering that the toiled look more "grand" when modeled by itself with dramatic lighting.
Here, it kinda just looks like a humble toilet with a cool handle.

Because the room I created is not really a large open space, the resulting renders will have to be done as separate piece shots, focusing on the highlights, like the handle.
When you think about it, most of those nice, modern living-space renders architects like to show off, if brought to reality, would have to lead you to believe that only billionaires commissioned these pieces! Where someone's "bathroom from the future" is actually larger than my whole house!

I say a real challenge is designing for spaces that real humans live in. Where most may have rooms that might not exceed 12' in any direction.

Here is a test render of the sink. I needed to test the metals I wanted and the effects of a mirror.
Too much gold so far. (60) passes of MLT mode.

Dali's bathrooms elements !)

> Dali's bathrooms elements !)

And with Flow and Twist I can now make a melting clock to put over the side of the sink!!!

There's a Salvador Dalí museum just a few hours drive away in St. Pete Florida... It's on my "to-visit" list.

http://thedali.org/