Anthony D. Baye wrote:
> I'm currently working on a project that will require a number of strategically
> placed trees and other plants. The problem I'm having is that, though there are
> a number of macros and utilities to create organics for import into POV, some
> with very good results; the mesh objects, once imported, tend to interfere in
> ghastly ways with my scene geometry.
> 
> Might it be possible, in some future version of POV to have parametrized
> plant-life objects in the SDL itself?  I would very much like to place a tree
> at a given location and have it grow at that spot without passing through local
> objects.
> 
> I have some idea that this would not be an easy task, but an informed opinion
> would be appreciated.

POV-Ray is a renderer, not a modeler.

The SDL is for getting objects into the scene.  The logic for 
determining what should be in the scene should be coded into the .INC 
file using the SDL.  Adding the capability for the SDL to create models, 
above and beyond declaring primitives, makes the application more 
complicated, and the opinion of the POV-Ray developers (if I understand 
them) is that adding capabilities that can be done with the SDL is only 
worthwhile if the renderer can do them far more efficiently.  With what 
you suggest above, that is not the case.

That being said:

What you want is a system for representing areas which are already 
occupied, and thus which should exclude overlapping objects.  There are 
a number of simple solutions, and there are a number of efficient 
solutions, but no solutions which are both efficient and simple.

Regards,
John

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