In article <3d2b8f5f@news.povray.org>, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> 
wrote:

>   There was a discussion some time ago (I think initiated by me) that the
> distance calculation could be optimized in a per-primitive basis (for many
> primitives getting the accurate distance fast is quite easy), as well as
> developing a proper algorithm for calculating it analytically for a CSG
> object. (Of course there are objects where you *can't* get the accurate
> distance from the surface, eg. the 4D julia object. For some objects it
> might not be unambiguous which distance is the correct one.)

That is an optimization that I've been planning on for nearly as long as 
the proximity pattern has existed...I'm going to do a fairly complete 
rewrite of the patch, making something that is simpler to use and 
generally faster. I'm going to do something similar for the glow patch 
as well...the two patches are going to be pretty closely tied together.

To answer the question: no, the proximity pattern was not added to POV 
3.5...it never got beyond the experimental stage, and wasn't even close 
to being ready for the official version. The object pattern did make it, 
and it can be used to get a somewhat similar effect where the pattern 
value depends on the percentage of nearby space filled by the object. 
This is not proximity, and it is a bit slow, but it might do what you 
need.

And the "pixelize" idea (which would really be "voxelize") has its own 
problems: the voxel field takes up a huge amount of memory, and even 
with interpolation you get grid artifacts if the resolution is too low. 
It doesn't require a patch though...if I recall correctly, there are 
other patches in MegaPOV that would make it possible. The official 
POV-Ray 3.1 has a density file pattern, and a MegaPOV patch made it 
possible to generate the field from within the scene file. (this might 
have made it into 3.5, I don't remember)
A patch adding features for generating and processing voxel information 
would be useful though. There are a lot of things that could be done to 
extend the current capabilities.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <chr### [at] maccom>
POV-Ray TAG e-mail: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
TAG web site: http://tag.povray.org/

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