Actually Chris Colefax's mesh macro supports morphing. The only
requirement is that you have meshes with the same number of triangles,
since morphing is obtained by interpolating between the position of the
mesh vertices. Even if you don't use the mesh macro, some basic morphing
between meshes is more simple that it seems provided you have all the
vertices stored in arrays : if V1 is the array containing the vertices
in mesh 1 and V2 the array of the vertices in mesh 2 then the vertex i
of the morphed form at clock time t is V[i]=V1[i]+ t*(V2[i]-V1[i]) (same
for the normals if you use smooth triangles).
I guess that morphing between meshes with different triangle counts
shouldn't be impossible.

Morphing between CSG objects made of other pov primitives could be much
more difficult, unless you want to morph between two objects defined by
the same set of parameters : you can morph between a sphere and a box
using the superellipsoid primitive for instance. I guess the isosurface
patch could be used to morph between many math objects by interpolating
one function into another (hmm I'll just have to try that, could be
fun). Morphing between blobs should be the same (simpler) as morphing
between meshes.

I did some very simple morphing using Chris Colefax first version of the
mesh macro for my "Z" series
(http://www.mediaport.net/Artichaud/Tran/z/english/gtze.htm).

Gilles Tran

Ken wrote:

> Steven Jones wrote:
> >
> > Does anyone know how to do morphing in POV-Ray?
>
>   Chris Colefax has this on his list of things to do but there is
> nothing available right now, that I am aware of, that can do what
> you ask. You might take a look at the povray.binaries.utilities
> group and look for the extrusion macros posted there about a month
> ago. There were two, one by Gilles Tran, the second (the authors
> name escapes me right now) of the two that offered some form of
> morphing ability. I have not had time to check it out and cannot
> offer any more than that.
>
> --
> Ken Tyler
>
> mailto://tylereng@pacbell.net

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