Remco de Korte <rem### [at] xs4allnl> wrote:
: I'm afraid I'm asking for the impossible, but is there some way you can convert
: a POV-object (CSG, blob) to a mesh? In theory I think it should be possible,
: perhaps the pvengine does something like this

  It's lamentably common that people do not distinguish between how raytracing
and scanline rendering work. Since scanline rendering is much more popular
(thanx to programs like 3DStudio), many people think that _every_ rendering
program work like those, ie. that they just make a triangle mesh with each
object and scanline-render them.
  This can be clearly seen when people ask questions like "will povray
rendering speed increase if I buy a 3D-card?" or with statements like
"actually a sphere is a polygon mesh with very small phong-shaded triangles"
which I once had to correct.
  Since many people have always worked with scanline-renderers and are very
accustomed to them, they think that every renderer work the same way.

  In povray, and I think that in every raytracer, spheres are spheres, not
polygon meshes. They are true mathematical, perfect spheres. And this applies
to almost every primitive (except for primitives like bezier patch or
heightfield).
  CSG's are mathematically calculated, not approximated with polygons.

-- 
                                                           - Warp. -

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