In article <3C6AEBFD.4E0A0743@scifi-fantasy.com>,
 "Timothy R. Cook" <tim### [at] scifi-fantasycom> wrote:

> What's the formula for a sphere with arbitrary xyz scale and rotation?
> It exists, I'm sure...

And now you have to project it, with perspective, onto a plane, which 
can also have any transformations applied. The result: a scene with a 
single untextured sphere would probably take longer to render then the 
most complex scene today, just so you could antialias the edges of the 
sphere without taking samples.


> Not unusable, just impractical and masochistic.

Often impossible. For some things, there just isn't a solution, sampling 
is the only way.
The closest you could get would probably be to use a scanline renderer 
for the first stage. You would be limited to what you can render with 
scanlining, though, which usually means you have to reduce your shapes 
to triangles.

-- 
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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