Elija wrote:

> Is there a better way than this of achieving the pyramid of spheres?

Well, you'll have to build it yourself anyway and you seem to be doing
quite fine, except I think you arrived at "1.25" by trial and error;
the mathematically correct value would be sqrt(2). Also, you can
apply the texture to the outer union if all spheres are identical.

As matter of style, you only need one line setting "xco = 0"
if you do it directly before "#while (xco ...)", you can
replace sphere {<0,0,0>,1} by sphere {0,1} and the
double translate by "translate <-4,0,2*zco>".

Here's a sphere pyramid macro I wrote recently:

#macro sphere_grid(n)
union
{
   #local i = 0;
   #while (i < n)
     #local j = 0;
     #while (j < n)
       sphere {<i,0,j>,0.5}
       #local j = j + 1;
     #end
     #local i = i + 1;
   #end
}
#end

#macro sphere_pyramid(n)
union
{
   #local level = 0;
   #while (level < n)
     object
     {
       sphere_grid(n-level)
       translate <0.5*level,level/sqrt(2),0.5*level>
     }
     #local level = level + 1;
   #end
   translate -(n-1)/2*<1,0,1>
}
#end

It was for the following image:

http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3C45c7ba1e@news.povray.org%3E/?ttop=240388&toff=50&mtop=239611&moff=10

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