An interesting idea.  Another solution to the problem would be to have
multiple copies of the same patch reference a single copy (which is what
the triangle mesh object does).  Of course, this would necessitate an extra
inverse transformation for each ray intersection, since individual
transformations couldn't be applied directly to the control points, as is
done currently.

Anyone know if the render speed of a bicubic patch (type 1) is faster or
slower than a mesh?

-Nathan

John VanSickle wrote:
> 
> My current IRTC project has several characters made from unions of bezier
> patches.  I used a utility to convert the beziers to meshes, thereby saving
> about 4.5 megs or RAM for each character.  However, since POV-Ray converts
> bicubic patches into smoothed triangles internally, it should be a simple matter
> to include them in a mesh, and gain the memory-saving benefits of the latter.
> 
> The syntax would look something like this:
> 
> #declare HipBone = mesh {
>   bicubic_patch { type 1 u_steps 3 v_steps 3
>     P0,P1,P2,P3,
>     P4,P5,P6,P7,
>     P8,P9,PA,PB,
>     PC,PD,PE,PF
>   }
>   bicubic_patch { type 1 u_steps 3 v_steps 3
>    // more points here
>   }
> 
>   // ten or more bicubic_patch objects here
> 
> }
> 
> And then the object HipBone could be used to build the thousand-man
> skeleton army, without sending the memory usage through the roof,
> as would be the case if HipBone were a union instead of a mesh.
> 
> POV Patch gurus:  Does this sound as easy to you as it does to me?
> 
> Comments?

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