zzzz... snik! huh? (60 hours weeks... must... retain...
consciousness...long enough to express concept...)


Unroll the object in 2D? An inverted cylindrical camera? Ok, try
this. It needs fiddling, but maybe it can be developed into 
close to what you need. If not, blame it on lack of sleep making
it impossible to be coherant and ignore me...

------------------------------------------------------------------

//kids, don't try this in standard POV (yet)
#version unofficial MegaPov 0.5;

camera { //camera to invert, h-w ratio probably needs
         //adjustment, but you get the idea...
      cylinder 1 up<0,1,0> right<4,0,0>
	location<0,1,0>
	look_at<0,1,1>
	angle 360
}

cylinder { //inversion surface...adjust radius as needed.
    <0,-10,0>,<0,10,0>,20 
    open 
    no_shadow //don't go blocking my light...
    pigment { rgb 0 } 
    finish { reflection 1 } 
}

sphere { //target object...center on origin.
   <0,1,0>,3 
   no_image //reflect in cylinder but otherwise invisible
   no_shadow //shadows in the way? not a good thing...

   texture { //just a happy l'il texture...whatever.
      pigment { rgb<0,0,1> } 
      finish { phong 1 } 
   }
}


light_source { //oh yeah, be nice if we could see, huh?
	<1000,1000,-1000> color rgb<1,1,1> 
}

-----------------------------------------------------------------

<C></C>
-- 
The Silver Tome ::  http://www.silvertome.com 
"Hyperbole is without a doubt the highest form 
      of art mankind has ever developed."


ryan constantine wrote:
> 
> looking at the docs, i see that a cylindrical camera makes an image of
> the outside of the cylinder, which presumably has no radius.  what i
> would like to do is specify a radius (in order to envelope objects) and
> then create the image based on the inside of the cylinder.  this (i
> think) would have the effect of "unrolling" the object into two
> dimensions, ready to be used as a template for image maps, bumpmaps, or
> image pattern maps and could be rolled back onto the object using
> cylindical mapping.  this would eliminate the need to divide a model
> into two halves and then use planar image mapping as was done, for
> example, in h.e. day's raptor model.  a spherical cam that could also do
> this would be similarly useful.  would this be difficult to implement?
> do others think this would be useful?

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