Hugo Elias has an interesting method to create spherical planetoids:

  http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/models/m_landsp.htm

I tried to implement his method by recursively splitting an object (started
as a sphere) in random halves, and scaling one half slightly larger than the
other, then doing it over and over again. The method seems to work at low
iterations (<15), but when I went ahead and tried, say, 100 iterations, it
was taking *forever* to parse, and never did start rendering, my computer
locked on me, probably not enough memory. I'm interesting in implementing
this technique in POV-Ray, does anyone have any ideas to use less memory and
speed it up? I have included my source.

Or, does anyone have a better method to create planetoids such as these?

--
Paul Vanukoff
van### [at] primenetcom


// source follows //


#include "colors.inc"

#declare s1=seed(95937);

#declare Planetary=
sphere
{
    < 0, 0, 0> 1
}

#declare K=0;
#while (K<15)        // number of iterations

#declare rotX=360*rand(s1);
#declare rotY=360*rand(s1);
#declare rotZ=360*rand(s1);

#declare HalfOne=
intersection
{
    box
    {
        <-1.2,0,-1.2>,<1.2,1.2,1.2>
        rotate <rotX, rotY, rotZ>
    }

    object
    {
        Planetary
    }
    scale 1.001
}

#declare HalfTwo=
intersection
{
    box
    {
        <-1.2,-1.2,-1.2>,<1.2,0,1.2>
        rotate <rotX, rotY, rotZ>
    }

    object
    {
        Planetary
    }
    scale 0.999
}

#declare Planetary=
merge
{
    object
    {
        HalfOne
    }

    object
    {
        HalfTwo
    }
}

#declare K=K+1;
#end

camera
{
    location < 0, 0, -3>
    look_at < 0, 0, 0>
}

light_source
{
    < 0, 9, -3>
    color White
}

light_source
{
    < 0, -9, 0>
    color White/3
}

object
{
    Planetary

    pigment
    {
        color White
    }
}

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