POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.binaries.scene-files : Triscan Macro File : Triscan Macro File Server Time
8 May 2024 10:50:55 EDT (-0400)
  Triscan Macro File  
From: Charles Fusner
Date: 11 Mar 2000 23:01:44
Message: <38CB12D0.732F7F15@enter.net>
Triscan.mcr is a macro definition file designed to work with 
MegaPOV's new features, such as trace(), min_extent, max_extent,
and so forth to produce a simulated surface scan of a #declared
POV object, and export it as a triangle mesh in RAW or LSL 
format. RAW files can then be converted with programs such as
3DWin or Crossroads to a number of other formats, and LSL files
can be directly imported into the Leveller height field editor.
Using this macro, I have...

 - Scanned POV objects and imported medium quality wiremeshes of 
   them into Rhinocerous and Poser as imported/prop objects. These 
   can then be used for helping to shape, pose, and scale creations
   you intend to import back into POV-Ray for use with the original 
   models.
 - Scanned POV objects and made them into Moray UDOs ... even in 
   cases where the primitives are not supported by Moray -- such as 
   julia fractals (which greatly expands the range of what you can 
   use in Moray)
 - Scanned simple POV-Ray objects into Leveller reference shape 
   files. This would allow you, for example, to make a house, wall,
   bridge, or whatever in POV-Ray script, then import a reference 
   shape of it into Leveller to use to sculpt a landscape around, 
   and reimport that height field back into POV for use with the 
   original models. 

What this file CAN'T do... 
If you're looking for a high quality tesselation that can be used in
other rendering engines and will produce exact copies of POV-Ray
objects, THIS ISN'T IT. This technique which uses the trace() 
function in MegaPOV tends to lose enough detail and suffers from 
a few inherant problems that I feel could only be solved by internal
access to the primitive's native parameters and tesselation routines
that would probably be too complex for POV script, or anything but 
a binary patch. The meshes this produce can be low quality for a 
quick and dirty reference shape, or even medium to fair quality, 
if you're will to wait a bit longer, but for full quality POV-Ray
primitives, I'm afraid this is just not a substitute. Still, it
may have its uses, so here it is.


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Attachments:
Download 'triscan.zip' (15 KB)

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