POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : Constructing isosurface functions : Constructing isosurface functions Server Time
29 Jul 2024 12:19:41 EDT (-0400)
  Constructing isosurface functions  
From: David Given
Date: 14 Jul 2011 19:28:45
Message: <4e1f7bad$1@news.povray.org>
I wish to do some stupidly complicated things with isosurfaces. Does
anyone have a set of rules (or even a library) for manipulating isosurfaces?

The kind of thing I'm looking for is to be able to take a shape f(x, y,
z) and then produce another function that, when rendered, produces many
shapes distributed according to another function.

I have found this very useful page:

http://www.econym.demon.co.uk/isotut/combine.htm

It looks like the standard way to union two shapes in an isosurface is
to use min(), so min(f(x, y, z), f(x', y', z')). However, I need to
union an arbitrary number of functions so can't do it by brute force,
and min() is not very conducive to mathematical analysis...

The exact use case is: I am trying to place a very large number of
objects on a terrain. I can describe one object as an isosurface, but
the number of objects is so high that I can't model them as CSG. So, I
need to be able to create a single isosurface that will model all my
objects in one go.

Is this kind of thing feasible?

-- 
┌─── dg@cowlark.com ─────
http://www.cowlark.com ─────
│
│ "I have a mind like a steel trap. It's rusty and full of dead mice."
│ --- Anonymous, on rasfc


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