"Rune" <run### [at] runevisioncom> wrote in message
news:web.3ee8f43bb3d14fcd32619ff80@news.povray.org...

Thanks to both of you. Huge, the smooth parts of my macro do use the
selective quad splitting which you introduced on this board.

The reason I called this a height-field is that it does work like one. A
function, a bitmap, traced rays, whatever could be used to generate the
data. A bitmap is of course really only a group of squares, so as the
resolution of the mesh got closer and closer to the resolution of the
bitmap, this fact would become more and more apparent, just like any
bitmap.

It would be straight forward, however, to code in corrections for bitmap
jaggedness. The macro can easily keep track of the borders between
distinct objects and could be made to smooth out those borders without
any difficulty. I'm done working on this, however, as I coded it in
order to make a picture, and the macro can already do everything I need
it to do. The picture is actually similar in appearance to the first
example I posted.

That example is actually much more sophisticated than the second. The
reason is that the second example gets only data from the function, the
first example, however, takes into account my human knowledge about the
shape of the elements. This allows the macro to assume things about the
shape of the mesh, even when it does not have information about small
details. In exact terms for this example, that means that the macro
knows to expect corners between areas of changes in height. Even when
the function in not sampled directly on a corner, the macro knows that
the corner should be there and builds that corner.

  -Shay

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