In article <3A3A6040.9A128B84@my-dejanews.com>, 
gre### [at] my-dejanewscom wrote:

> There are situations, mine most acute, where it would be
> wonderful to say "normal{down}". 

How would this be useful at all?
I suspect that you do not understand how the normal feature works. The 
normal to a surface at each point is a vector with a length of 1 that is 
perpendicular to the surface at that point. The "normal" feature 
generally takes a pattern, figures out how it is changing at that point, 
and modifies the calculated normal using this information. The result is 
that it can simulate the shading of bumps without actually moving the 
surface. It does not define "height", and "normal {down}" doesn't make 
much sense, and I certainly don't see any use for it...

It sounds like you are looking for the slope_map feature, which can do 
some of what you seem to want. However, this was suggested before and 
you ignored it, what doesn't it do that you want? If you need the actual 
shape of the surface to change, try using CSG to actually model those 
situations, or maybe use a height_field object to do the job.

-- 
Christopher James Huff
Personal: chr### [at] maccom, http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg, http://tag.povray.org/

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