>>> Yeah, what's the point of having povray raytrace any non-abstract math
>>> scenes?...
>> What, you mean other than the ability to draw truly-curved surfaces,
>> resolution-independent textures, and construct complex shapes easily and
>> intuitively using CSG, blobs, isosurfaces, and so forth? ;-)
> 
> Very rare to have complex "real-life" scenes out of this math objects, except
> landscapes due to their fractal nature (but even so, not even trees despite
> their fractal base).  Characters and man-made buildings and objects need more
> care detailing than one is willing to put forward out of pure math primitives
> and functions.
> 
> It's very hard to go that route, both as an undertaking and waiting for some
> insane render times.  Much easier to just approximate with polygons and
> subdivision algorithms.  Have you tried subsurf modifier yet in Blender?

Looking around the room I'm sitting in now, most if not all items in it 
would be far, far easier to create with POV-Ray.

Man-made objects tend to be particularly easy to construct using CSG. My 
telephone, for example. Throw a few cubes and prisms together with a 
little CSG and it's done. Takes about a dozen operations. But all those 
curves and bevelled edges would take years with triangles.

You want a vase or a wine glass? It's a trivial SoR of a spline in 
POV-Ray. Almost impossible to do with flat triangles and straight edges.

Various spikey, wavey or otherwise deformed surfaces are both trivial 
and flexible with isosurfaces (provided that the undeformed shape is 
fairly simple). A brick with a rough surface is almost a 1-liner in 
POV-Ray, but would be ludicrously hard to model with billions of 
triangles. (You'd have to fake it with devious texture mapping.)

I could go on...

About the only thing that's really hard in POV-Ray is complex but 
non-random shapes - things like the sleek body of a sports car. For that 
you really need some kind of 2D spline system.

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