You could get away with using some sort of "bounding box" coding (similar to
what is used to calculate collision detection in many video games) to
envelope complex objects (like the julias mentioned earlier) in a shape that
was transparent to the camera that adopted the original object's properties
(gravity, etc.) and much faster to operate with, say a rough mesh or even
simple primatives.

This wouldn't fool the eye under very close inspection but for a camera
perspective that didn't percieve great detail it would probably work.

"Chris Huff" <chr### [at] maccom> wrote in message
news:chrishuff-4F6740.11052728012001@news.povray.org...
> In article <3a7434b5@news.povray.org>, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg>
> wrote:
>
> >   This can be really hard for some mathematical objects.
> >   Imagine two different julia-objects colliding... How do you calculate
> > that?
>
> I'd probably start out by computing a bunch of points on the surface and
> using the Inside test to figure out an approximate center of
> gravity...but I know virtually nothing about this kind of thing, so this
> is just guesswork.
>
> Maybe limit it to mesh objects, that way you could also simulate the way
> the surface is deformed by it's interactions with other objects. I don't
> think the deform patch would be sufficient for this...and handling only
> meshes should make it easier.
>
> --
> Christopher James Huff
> Personal: chr### [at] maccom, http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
> TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg, http://tag.povray.org/
>
> <><

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