In article <39721EB9.554BD97C@yahoo.com>, ryan constantine 
<rco### [at] yahoocom> wrote:

> looking at the docs, i see that a cylindrical camera makes an image of
> the outside of the cylinder, which presumably has no radius.  what i
> would like to do is specify a radius (in order to envelope objects) and
> then create the image based on the inside of the cylinder.  this (i
> think) would have the effect of "unrolling" the object into two
> dimensions, ready to be used as a template for image maps, bumpmaps, or
> image pattern maps and could be rolled back onto the object using
> cylindical mapping.  this would eliminate the need to divide a model
> into two halves and then use planar image mapping as was done, for
> example, in h.e. day's raptor model.  a spherical cam that could also do
> this would be similarly useful.  would this be difficult to implement? 
> do others think this would be useful?

This sort of "inside-out" camera should be fairly easy to do...though I 
have never really looked at that portion of the code. I think an 
"inverse_spherical" camera would be more useful than the cylinderical 
version, since you could map the top and bottom at the same time as the 
front and sides.
It wouldn't work with all objects, for example, objects with holes 
running through them or parts overlapping each other, but it could be 
useful for many cases.

-- 
Christopher James Huff - Personal e-mail: chr### [at] maccom
TAG(Technical Assistance Group) e-mail: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
Personal Web page: http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
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