James Taylor <jim### [at] blueyondercouk> wrote in message
news:3d64d01d@news.povray.org...

> Whats the easiest way of making a spiral which follows the surface of a
> cylinder.

You could code this in a few minutes by placing mesh vertices with loops. It
would be even easier to make a macro which builds the object pointing
straight up in the y direction and then rotating the spiral into the
orientation you desire. Easier yet would be to code the square spiral as a
union of four different meshes. This is inelegant, but would make adding
textures and normals simpler.

Instead of rotating a square to form your spiral, consider rotating a
spline. This would allow for many different and interesting shapes of
spirals. A four point linear spline would also easily produce the square
spiral you mentioned. The uv mapping would be straight forward, so you could
twist your textures as well.

 -Shay

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