Hey, sorry I wasn't around. The Easter holiday consumed me.

cobaltdream -

Quote - um, i think you guys should keep in mind that he did say "if you're only doing diffuse calculations." 

Bingo. I've warned you guys before I'm fond of parsimonious verbiage, particularly when I'm writing something to provoke thought and discussion. It worked perfectly.

So it came to light through your discussions that this is probably just an amusement - not particularly a useful simplification except for a clay or dirt shader. And so that's all it is. An interesting curiousity - a simplfication that has only a limited set of circumstances in which it applies.

But the more important thing is to become comfortable manipulating algebra to draw conclusions about how to build shaders. In that regard, this is a very good "etude".

For the last 3 weeks, I've been exploring the ramifications of powers and logarithms. I haven't discovered too much that applies to shaders, but my algebra chops are seriously improved. I ran into this particular case during that process and it occured to me that it applies to the GC workflow for a diffuse-only shader. Thinking it was neat, I wrote about it.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)