On Wed, 30 Jun 1999 19:30:48 GMT, Jeff Lee wrote:
>Hi, all.
>
>I've just created a pair of macros which will construct a brick texture
>to wrap around a sphere or cylinder, keeping the bricks the same general
>size (not stretched near the sphere equator nor squished near the
>poles).  They were actually designed for spaceship hull plating, but
>look just fine as bricks.
>
>For sample image, basic information and zipfile download, go to
>
>    http://www.gate.net/~shiprbk/raytrace/plates.html
>
>I would appreciate any bug reports or suggestions for improvement.

Or, if you really want to get there, 
    http://www.gate.net/~shipbrk/raytrace/plates.html

I note that you require unaltered distribution.  Is there a reason for 
this?  That's far more restrictive than even POVLegal, and a fair number
of people already chafe at its constraints.

I haven't succeeded in downloading your file, but you also note that 
there is a limit of 128 rows of bricks due to the internal 256-element 
limit on pigment maps.  Have you considered nesting pigment maps like so:

  pigment {
    gradient y
    pigment_map {
      [0.5 
        gradient y 
        pigment_map {
          [...the 1st map goes here...]
        }
      ]
      [0.5
        gradient y 
        pigment_map {
          [...the 2nd map goes here...]
        }
      ]
    }
  }

If you then put all values less than .5 in the first map, and all
values greater than .5 in the second map, you'll be able to use
up to 512 levels (assuming an even distribution of values, of 
course.)

With more divisions in the outer map, you can increase the limit
to 65,536 or so, at which point you could just add another outer 
map to raise the limit to 16,777,216 and so on.

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