Folkert van Heusden schrieb:

> I'm trying to render a scene with a large number of objects (scene 
> generated by a 3D fractal); 3 milion and more objects.
> As you'll understand this will use a lot of memory.
> Now I was wondering: what object is the most memory efficient? Currently 
> Currently I'm using "box { <here> <there> texture { pigment { rgb <0.25, 
> 1.0, 0.25> } } }" but maybe other objects use less resources?
> Also I set for each object the color but it is the same color for all of 
> them. Maybe that can be optimized?

This definitely calls for "blob" or "mesh"/"mesh2".

If you use suitable parameters, the blob object will behave almost as a 
collection of spheres. (Note that there is some upper limit on the total 
number of blob elements, and you may even need a multitude of blob objects.)

With mesh or mesh2 objects (both are just different syntax variants for 
one and the same underlying object), you can assemble whatever you deem 
the most fitting basic shape: Boxes, tetrahedrons, or maybe just plain 
flat triangles. (Maybe there's a limit on the number of triangles there, 
too, but I never met any.)

Both objects support either per-element or per-object texturing. I don't 
think it makes any difference memory-wise as long as you use just a 
small set of #define'd textures.


As an alternative, you might also try using a df3 file (basically a 3D 
bitmap) as the basis for an isosurface. If you intend to have a 
densely-filled space, then this is likely to be the most 
memory-efficient way to go, and may also be easiest to generate.

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