Am 03.03.2017 um 11:43 schrieb William F Pokorny:
> The three attached images were created using two new patterns called
> hard_object and soft_object. They can be found in the patch branch off
> master (3.7.2) at:
> 
> https://github.com/wfpokorny/povray/tree/feature/soft_objectAndhard_objectPatterns

Sounds to me like an extension of the mechanism could be used for
proximity patterns.

I find the names `hard_object` and `soft_object` rather nondescriptive.

Also, I wonder whether it would be more user-friendly to syntactically
include these patterns into the `object` pattern, using one additional
parameter to enable "fuzzyness" of the pattern and choose a mode to
achieve that "fuzzyness", plus mode-specific parameters (though ideally
the modes should use the same set of parameters where possible).

How I would like to use such a pattern would be by specifying:

- Whether the pattern slope should be outside the surface, inside the
surface, or across the surface (given a flat surface of course). (Note
however that the latter might be sufficient to create the other two by
"postprocessing".)

- A falloff rule, e.g. linear, power-law or exponential-ish. (Note
however that the waveform pattern parameter might be sufficient for this.)

- A parameter to control the falloff distance.

- One or more parameters to control the quality of the computations.

Maybe it would also be useful to implement a caching mechanism for some
modes.

Also, ideally some parameterization of the whole smash should combine
neatly with blob potential patterns.

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