Rohan Bernett wrote:

> Could it be possible to add a new and easier to use mesh type to povray 4?
> From what I've seen elsewhere, it looks quite cumbersome and confusing to
> write a mesh using smooth triangles.
> 
> How about a syntax like this:


[SNIP, I leave it to the others...]



>   smooth on // uses smooth_vect values for individual triangeles
>             // works like in heightfield for any non-smoothed triangles


Interesting (with irony!): How do you create the smoothness information 
? By magic of the code, I presume ?
You might want to have a look at my tesselation patch which has a 
'smooth' primitive (input a mesh, output a smooth mesh). There is too 
many way to compute a smooth normal at a vertex for a collection of 
triangle. see http://jgrimbert.free.fr/pov/patch/tessel/smooth.html
(beware, it's in french, so babelfish might help you too!)

>   tesselate on // uses tesselation to create curved surfaces, curve would
>                // probably be based on smoothvect, and verticies from nearby
>                // triangles


First that's not 'tesselate', it is 'surface subdivision' in your case.
Tesselation is when you have a finite solid object and end up with a mesh.
Subdivision is when you have a raw mesh and end up with a finer mesh 
(with far more triangle, obviously intelligently placed...).
You should probably have a look at the bicubic patch object in Povray.


>   }
> 
> This looks like it would be more understandable when writing meshes by hand.
> It would probably take longer to parse though.
> 
> What do you think?


There is more than mesh in native Pov.

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