[Bf-funboard] Re: ShadowBuf name

[GSR]

Hi,
matt at mke3.net (2006-12-01 at 1519.28 +1100):
> With legacy being the old style approach that I presume is only there  
> for backwards compatibility, Soft being normal shadow buffers and  
> Sharp being the irregular ones. Perhaps something like 'Versatile' or  
> 'Flexible' would be better than Soft since those can also become  
> sharp to an extent...?

Legacy / classic / minimum can also be used for translucency effects
better than soft / halfway / midpoint, as it follows the first surface
without caring about how far is next surface.

BTW, halfway idea comes from Renderman where it is called with the
more appropiate term "midpoint" (see page 60 of Siggraph 2000 paper
http://www.renderman.org/RMR/Books/infbeyond.pdf.gz).

> In any case, names that actually help artists in understanding what  
> these do, unlike the tech-centered names that are there currently  
> would be a big improvement.

OTOH, those new names hide any option of looking for paper that
explain how and why things happen. It reminds me of those chemical /
car / software companies that hide generic things (cyano glue,
variable injection, sorting algorithm...) behind cryptic trade names
and acronyms (SuperDuperGlue, VITXplus, FooIntelliSystem), to create a
brand, confuse the buyer or negate the information to competitors
(being GPL software, they are failed tactics except for branding,
anyway).

So I propose to just use the names that define how the samples are
done and matching "tooltip" (better with wrapped or autowrapped kind)
accepting there will always be terms and knowledge required for any
activity:

- Minimum "Samples are the minimum distance from the light source,
  requires bias tweaking, traditional method for soft shadows"

- Midpoint "Samples are midpoint, the average of 1st and 2nd distances
  from light, improved method for soft shadows"

- Irregular "Irregular distribution of samples to match scene geometry
  as seen by camera, pixel sharp shadows, invisible for raytracing"

No magic, no guessing, no radical changes if details change (imagine
if irregular type gets some kind of softness tech and you named them
sharp, it would be full rename vs tooltip change).

GSR