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On Fri, 09 Oct 1998 17:50:18 -0400, Jerry Anning <cle### [at] dhol com>
wrote:
>Greg M. Johnson wrote:
>>
>> Where have I seen a variable or POV-Ray function that gives the height
>> of a height field at a given set of x, z coordinates?
>>
>> If this were a new feature of POV 3.1, it would be the last straw, and
>> I'd have to download it. But I didn't see it in any list of new
>> features, and it's not on my 3.02 documentation. Did I hear about
>> this in one of the specialty versions of POV, or is it my imagination?
>
>That would be the hf_height_at function in Tmpov. Tmpov is a custom
>compile of Pov 3.02 for Win95 that includes many useful things, such as
>sphere sweeps and arrays. It is available at http://twysted.net in the
>PatchStation. Incidentally, I have an include file that uses
>hf_height_at to wrap height fields around cylinders. I am working on
>making it 3.1 compatible and able to wrap other objects, but it isn't
>done yet. Unfortunately, no web page at the moment. Email if you want
>it.
There's a similar function, trace(), in my soon-to-be-released
"superpatch" for POV 3.1. Trace is different from hf_height_at in
that it will trace rays and find the first intersection with _any_
object, not just a height_field. This patch also includes all of
the features of 3.1, plus sphere_sweeps, isosurfaces, textures based
on mathematical functions, ability to use procedural textures wherever
an image works, new cellular textures, splines, rational bezier
patches, UV mapping, variable and blurry reflectance, Dan Connelly's
#system patch, and my object bounds patch.
The first round of testing on the superpatch, which compiled without
errors for the first time tonight, has resulted in a fairly stable
build; I'll be sending copies to my beta testers as soon as I run some
more test scenes past it, probably sometime this weekend. If you have
a scene that uses any of the above patches, or if you have a need for
one of the above patches, and would like to participate in the beta
test, please send me email.
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