On Wed, 17 Jul 2002 12:13:21 -0500, Christopher James Huff <chr### [at] maccom> wrote:
> In article <3d35a378$1@news.povray.org>,
>  "TinCanMan" <Tin### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> 
> > I think another reason was that if not enough triangles are used, in
> > profile, the shape has a jagged edge rather than a smooth one.  Even though
> > the shading is smooth, the outline still follows the polygons.
> 
> Still not a reason to avoid triangles altogether...if you use a 
> tesselated surface for the "curved triangles", you could still get the 
> straight edges small enough you can't tell the edge isn't really curved.
> 

Only with an extraordinary number of triangles, and if you are using someone elses
model...

But yeah, if POV could be made aware of when such artifacts where visible and
automatically tessalated those surfaces sufficiently to erase the jagged surfaces,
that would
be nice. The problem is that no program I know of does and not everyone can photoshop
them
away without making things worse. The dark artifacts 'may' be fixed with the right
changes,
but squarish 'curves' will only be solved by either replacing them with something that
can
be CSGed, further tessalation or some alternate solution. In general, the equation is:
Realism = Primatives Used / (Meshes / Complexity) and in that equation even one mesh
no
matter how complex 'will' effect the overall realism, at least until you have the
resources and
time of companies like Dreamworks and can make the complexity so high that the result
of the bottom half becomes 0.xxxx. I doubt most of us have those kinds of resources.
Neadless to say a better solution is definitely needed. ;)

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