Addendum to QRT Version 1.3 The following are changes to QRT made since version 1.2 Additions and Enhancements 'Remove' Command Added The 'REMOVE' command was added to allow sections of a planar primitive to be removed. This makes it much easier to create flat objects that are not shaped like QRT's planar primitives. For example, I had a QRT input file which created the image of a grand piano. The top of the piano, because of its complex shape, initially was created from 11 planar primitives. Now, it is only 1 PARALLELOGRAM primitive, and a section of the parallelogram is removed to create the shape of a piano top. Before the REMOVE command can be used, a pattern must be created using any of QRT's pattern primitives (the piano uses a polygon). This pattern need not be given any surface characteristics - it simply defines the region to be removed from the planar primitive. The pattern is attached to the primitive in exactly the same way as a normal pattern, except that the REMOVE command is used instead of the PATTERN command: PARALLELOGRAM ( loc = (0, 0, 0) v1 = (10, 0, 0) v2 = (0, 0, 10) diff = (1, 0, 0) remove = SECTION_TO_REMOVE pattern = ANY_PATTERN ) This example shows that the PATTERN command can be used on the same primitive as the REMOVE command. Several things should be noted about the REMOVE command. First, the pattern defines the sections to remove, not the sections which will remain. In the piano example, the pattern mapped all of the parallelogram except the part that composed the actual piano top. Second, even though QRT Ray Tracer Page 1 Addendum to 1.3 the remove command can be used with the curved surface primitives (SPHERE, QUADRATIC), the results will not be quite right. To use the sphere as an example, the front surface of the sphere would have the correct pattern removed from it, but the back surface of the sphere would be completely gone. This is because the SPHERE intersect routine ignores completely the back surface of the sphere. I will probably fix this in a future version. Nested Comments Comments may now be nested. This makes it easier to comment out blocks of QRT code which themselves contain comments. Planned Extensions for 1.4 I had planned to create an "#INCLUDE" command for version 1.3, but instead I worked on the REMOVE command (it seemed more important). #INCLUDE will probably be coming next time. QRT Ray Tracer Page 2 Addendum to 1.3