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Author Topic: Law of Energy Conservation  (Read 7330 times)

Tanzim

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Law of Energy Conservation
« on: May 12, 2008, 05:55:36 am »

I've seen some of the materials used in An8 files have a diffuse+specular value of more than 1
So I'm wondering if the new Raytracer will use true values or can still use current values
I have tried it out (in some environments) and seen that it only looks weird if the values by themselves equal more than 1 even if the specular value is being used to show reflections
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Steve

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Re: Law of Energy Conservation
« Reply #1 on: May 14, 2008, 07:35:25 pm »

Yes, the total reflectged energy of a material can be greater than the incoming energy.  That's true forall three renders: scanline, OpenGL and the ART Ray Tracer.

I have made a subtile change in the way the environment reflection materials work for the latter two so that they aren't additive but this hasn't been reflected in the scanline renderer yet - so 100% environment textures are added to the materials color.  I will be changing it to a lrp soon.  This change is a move in the direction of energy conservation.

Note that without true radiance calculations in the shader it can be difficult to get the look that you want when energy is conserved.  Hilights can easily be tooy dim.
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