Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde> wrote:
> - it is not possible to add a displacement feature to any shape POV-Ray 
> renders analytically.

  Change "possible" to "efficient" and then you may be right. (And it
probably shouldn't hurt putting a "probably" somewhere.)

> ==> the only shape that could profit from a displacement mapping feature 
> is the mesh but apart from render time subdivision with displacement 
> this is already possible to implement in SDL (or external programs).

  "Is possible" and "is efficient" are two completely different things.

  The idea in on-the-fly subdivision and displacement of meshes is that
it does not consume outrageous amounts of memory because the subdivision
and displacement can be done only to the part being currently rendered.
This way you can subdivide a mesh so that each triangle is split into
100 parts without the memory consumption growing noticeably. However,
if you subdivided the entire mesh so that each triangle was divided
into 100 parts and then rendered this entire mesh, the memory consumption
would skyrocket.
  On-the-fly subdivision and displacement can't be done by modelling: It has
to be done by the renderer itself.

-- 
#macro N(D)#if(D>99)cylinder{M()#local D=div(D,104);M().5,2pigment{rgb M()}}
N(D)#end#end#macro M()<mod(D,13)-6mod(div(D,13)8)-3,10>#end blob{
N(11117333955)N(4254934330)N(3900569407)N(7382340)N(3358)N(970)}//  - Warp -

Post a reply to this message