In article <web.3d861f0b3a416eb563f6c5880@news.povray.org>,
 "Christian" <las### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:

> What kind of data strucrure is used to store vertex information? Are
> vertexes numbered or indexed or anything like that? Does this structure
> allows to manipulate internally the position of vertexes by external
> values? Or functions?

Vertices are stored in an array, with duplicate vertices eliminated. A 
reference to a vertex is the index of that vertex.
It is not impossible to modify the data, but you would have to 
recalculate bounding for the mesh. Adding to the mesh would be a bit 
more difficult, but it wouldn't be impossible to modify the code for it. 
There has been talk of doing this kind of thing for a long time.

Storing patch control points in a similar structure should work fine, 
but there wouldn't be as big a memory savings. A "patch mesh" isn't a 
bad idea, or some way to make a super patch out of lots of sub-patches, 
keeping the edges lined up right automatically...there may be macros 
already to do it, not as efficiently of course.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

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