Hello,

I think I may perhaps remember various segments of conversation on this  
server over the years relating to the ability to convert a pov object to a  
mesh. I am not sure what happened with that. I remember one version for  
object export, which I care nothing about (save the conversion), and then  
other fragments about just converting regular objects to mesh.

My snow/icicle macro uses blobs; it looks great and parses very quickly.  
However, the blobs render so very, very, VERY slowly with interior of any  
kind, not to mention layered slope based material maps...we are talking  
WEEKS for the torus I posted in p.b.i if I use the high quality  
textures...only minutes for the one I posted. SSS will be used for the  
ultimate 3.7 final release of this...but that is not either here or there  
at this juncture.

What good is wonderful geometry if no one can use high quality textures  
with it?

For the final release I would very much like to follow something close to  
the process below:
1) Parse and create my snow/ice in memory (done)
2) Adaptively convert to mesh object (triangle or quadrangle or whatever  
gives the best results at the best time based on geometry)
3) Only render that mesh object, ignoring completely and garbage  
collecting if possible the original blob object. (even better, GC'ing  
adaptively as each object within an extinction radius is converted to mesh)

I would love to hear any good ideas that have a pov SDL or MathML (I can  
convert that to C#, and then to SDL) starting place. I would be even  
happier with something which already does this that I could just hack to  
suit.

That which follows is a bit of last ditch "brainstorm in the last 2 min"  
conjecture, that I really hope I won't need:
Is it possible to create an array of points and Trace() each to the  
surface of the object, so triangles or what-not are created and a mesh  
object would ultimately result?
Is Trace only viable for objects, and not Types?

Is this something that would require "obtaining" the geometry with an SDL  
raytracer that dumps optimized points to a mesh creation/optimization  
macro? (I really hope not..REALLY hope not..)

Thanks,
Ian

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