> I've been told, again and again, that there is no generic collision detection in
> povray.  While I suppose that's true (you can't really tell if one object is
> intersecting another) there's still the [trace] function, and the [inside] and
> [outside] functions.
>
> Supposing that a tree generation macro took in a location, the age of the tree,
> and an array of elements to test against, how hard would it be to grow a tree in
> a given location, accounting for interference from the listed elements?
>
> If interference is deemed likely, or imminent, the limb in question (treated as
> a vector) could be pruned or deflected. (this would likely be the difficult
> part)
>
> A.D.B.
>
>
>

Pruning or deflecting a branch would be the easy part. The hard part is 
to detect when to do so.
For each new segment, you need to check every other and test wether or 
not the new one would intrude into another.

Anyway, in real life, there are uncommon cases when plants self 
collide/intersect. In that case, the affected branches/roots can merge 
together.


Alain

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