Section 7.6.4.3.3
Emitting

Emitting halos only emit light. Every particle is a small light source that emits some light. This light is not attenuated by the other particles because they are assumed to be very small.

As the ray travels through the density field of an emitting halo the color of the particles in each volume element and their differential transparency is determined from the color map. These intensities are accumulated to get the total color of the density field. This total intensity is added to the light passing through the halo. The background light is attenuated by the total density of the halo.

Since the emitted light is not attenuated it can be used to model effects like fire, explosions, light beams, etc. By choosing a well suited color map those effects can be rendered with a high degree of realism.

Fire is best modeled using planar mapping. Spherical mapping and high turbulence values can be used to create explosions (it's best to use a periodic color map and frequencies larger than one).

Emitting halos do not cast any light on other objects like light sources do, even though they are made up of small, light-emitting particles. In order to make them actually emit light hundreds or thousands of small light sources would have to be used. This would slow down tracing by a degree that would make it useless.

Section 7.6.4.3.4
Glowing

The glowing halo is similar to the emitting halo. The difference is that the light emitted by the particles is attenuated by the other particles. This can be seen as a combination of the attenuating and the emitting model.

Section 7.6.4.4
Density Mapping

The density mapping is used to map points in space onto a linear, one-dimensional interval between 0.0 and 1.0, thus describing the appearance of the three-dimensional particle distribution. The different mapping types are specified by:

halo { planar_mapping | spherical_mapping | cylindrical_mapping | box_mapping }

The default mapping type is planar mapping.

Since the mapping takes place in relation to the origin of the world coordinate system the following rule must always be kept in mind: Halo container objects ought to be unit sized objects centered at the origin . They can be transformed later to suit the individuals needs.

The different mapping types are explained in more detail in the following sections.

Section 7.6.4.4.1
Box Mapping

The box mapping can be used to create a box-shaped particle distribution. The mapping is calculated by getting the maximum of the absolute values of each coordinate as given by the formula:

r(x, y, z) = max(abs(x), abs(y), abs(z))

Values larger than one are clipped to one.

Section 7.6.4.4.2
Cylindrical Mapping

The distance r(x,y,z) from the y-axis given by

r(x, y, z) = sqrt(x*x + z*z)

is used to get the interval values. Values larger than one are clipped to one.

Section 7.6.4.4.3
Planar Mapping

The distance r(x,y,z) from the x-z-plane given by

r(x, y, z) = abs(y)

is used to get the interval values. Values larger than one are clipped to one.

Section 7.6.4.4.4
Spherical Mapping

The distance r(x,y,z) from the origin given by

r(x, y, z) = sqrt(x*x + y*y + z*z)

is used to get the interval values. Values larger than one are clipped to one.

Section 7.6.4.5
Density Function

The density function determines how the actual density values are calculated from the linear, one-dimensional interval that resulted from the density mapping.

The density function is specified by the following keywords:

halo { [ constant | linear | cubic | poly ] [ max_value MAX_VALUE ] [ exponent EXPONENT ] }

The exponent keyword is only used together with the poly density function.

The individual functions f(r) are described in the following sections. They all map the value r(x,y,z) calculated by the density mapping onto a suitable density range between 0 and MAX_VALUE (specified with the keyword max_value) .

Section 7.6.4.5.1
Constant

The constant function gives the constant value MAX_VALUE regardless of the interval value and the type of density mapping. It is calculated by the trivial formula f(r) = MAX_VALUE.


The constant density function.

The constant density function can be used to create a constant particle distribution that is only constrained by the container object.

Section 7.6.4.5.2
Linear

A linear falloff from MAX_VALUE at r=0 to zero at r=1 is created with the linear density function. It is given by:

f(r) = MAX_VALUE * (1 - r)


The linear density function.

Section 7.6.4.5.3
Cubic

The cubic function gives a smooth blend between the maximum value MAX_VALUE at r=0 and 0 at r=1. It is given by:

f(r) = MAX_VALUE * (2 * r - 3) * r * r + 1


The cubic density function.

This is actually a cubic spline.

Section 7.6.4.5.4
Poly

A polynomial function can be used to get a large variety of density functions. All have the maximum value MAX_VALUE at r=0 and the minimum value 0 at r=1. It is given by:

f(r) = MAX_VALUE * (1 - r) ^ EXPONENT


The polynomial density function for different exponent values.

The exponent is given by the exponent keyword. In case of EXPONENT=0 you'll get a linear falloff.

Section 7.6.4.6
Halo Color Map

The density f(r), which ranges from 0 to MAX_VALUE, is mapped onto the color map to get the color and differential translucency for each volume element as the ray marches through the density field (the final color of attenuating halos is calculated from the total density; see section "Halo Mapping" and section "Attenuating" ). The differential translucency determines for each value of f(r) how much the total opacity has to be increased (or decreased).

The color map is specified by:

halo { [ colour_map COLOUR_MAP ] }

The differential translucency is stored in the transmittance channel of the map's color entries. A simple example is given by

colour_map { [0 rgbt<1, 1, 1, 1>] [1 rgbt<1, 1, 1, 0>] }

In this example areas with a low density (small f(r)) will be translucent (large differential translucency of 1=100%) and areas with a high density (large f(r)) will be opaque (small differential translucency of 0=0%). You should note that negative transmittance values can be used to create very dense fields.

In the case of the dust halo the filter channels of the colors in the color map are used to specify the amount of light that will be filtered by the corresponding color map entry. For all other halo types the filter value is ignored.

There is no default color map.

Section 7.6.4.7
Halo Sampling

The halo effects are calculated by marching through the density field along a ray. At discrete steps samples are taken from the density field and evaluated according to the color map and all other parameters. The effects of all volume elements are accumulated to get the total effect.

The following parameters are used to tune the sampling process:

halo { [ samples SAMPLES ] [ aa_level AA_LEVEL ] [ aa_threshold AA_THRESHOLD ] [ jitter JITTER ] }

The individual sampling parameters are described in the sections below.

Section 7.6.4.7.1
Number of Samples

The number of samples that are taken along the ray inside the halo container object is specified by the samples keyword. The greater the number of samples the more denser the density field is sampled and the more accurate but slower the result will be.

The default number of samples is 10. This is sufficient for simple density fields that don't use turbulence.

High turbulence values and dust halos normally need a large number of samples to avoid aliasing artifacts.

Section 7.6.4.7.2
Super-Sampling

The sampling is prone to alias (like the atmosphere sampling in section "Atmosphere" ). One way to reduce possible aliasing artifacts is to use super-sampling. If two neighboring samples differ too much an additional sampling is taken in-between. This process recurses until the values of the samples are close too each other or the maximum recursion level given by AA_LEVEL is reached. The threshold to kick super-sampling in is given by AA_THRESHOLD .

By default super-sampling is not used. The default values for AA_THRESHOLD and AA_LEVEL are 0.3 and 3 respectively.

Section 7.6.4.7.3
Jitter

Jitter can be used to introduce some noise to the sampling locations. This may help to reduce aliasing artifacts at the cost of an increased noise level in the image. Since the human visual system is much more forgiving to noise than it is to regular patterns this is not much of a problem.

By default jittering is not used. The values should be smaller than 1.0.

Note that jittering is used even if super-sampling is not used.

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