POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.bugreports : Is sphere_sweep known to be troublesome? : Re: Is sphere_sweep known to be troublesome? Server Time
19 Mar 2024 00:07:08 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Is sphere_sweep known to be troublesome?  
From: Kenneth
Date: 17 Mar 2010 00:45:05
Message: <web.4ba05d6e2e5cb7c265f302820@news.povray.org>
Your post and Alain's comments got me to thinking about this long-standing
problem, so I did some experiments (and a few animations). Here's what I've come
up with (in v3.6.1) using your code unchanged:

1)  The cubic_spline type is *by far* the worst offender. It produces those
hyperbolas *outside* the object, plus the vertical 'plane' that Alain mentioned.
It also takes MUCH longer to render than either a b_spline or linear_spline
(about 10X longer!). The ENTIRE scene renders slower--every pixel. Moving the
camera way back--so that the sphere_sweep is barely visible in the
scene--doesn't change this; in fact, the scene renders even *slower*, which is
completely counter-intuitive. Changing the tolerance value doesn't affect it.
Putting all of this together, it *seems* as though there's a 'visible' part of
the object (the one we see) and an infinitely large INVISIBLE part as well, that
POV-Ray is also having to do render calculations on --the outside artifacts
showing up as vestiges of this part. BTW, my animation tests seem to show that
the 'plane' artifact is at the location of the asymptote of the hyperbolas (or
one of them, anyway.) Not sure about that, though. And I still can't tell why
this 'plane' is showing up where it does; it has nothing to do with the
sphere_sweep being made near POV's <0,0,0> origin location. (See 3) below.)

2) The b_spline and linear spline don't produce any artifacts *outside* the
object, except for that 'plane'--and it's actually more pronounced with a
linear_spline than either of the other two spline types.

3) Creating the sphere_sweep somewhere other than near the origin (via its
spline points OR by translating it afterward)--and moving the camera
likewise--doesn't alter the artifacts. Changing the tolerance helps somewhat,
but not with the cubic_spline's hyperbolas.

4) The artifacts don't seem to change their positions relative to the object,
when the camera moves around. (I thought at first it was some kind of
camera/sphere_sweep 'interaction'; but moving the camera via animation doesn't
really alter their behavior or location, it just shows them in 3-D space.)

My own conclusion is that the cubic_spline code (at least when used in a
sphere_sweep) needs to be re-worked. That may not fix ALL of the sphere_sweep
artifacts, but would surely help!

Question (a bit off-topic): Is POV's b_spline the same as a natural_spline?
Looking them up on Wikipeadia doesn't give me a clear answer.

Ken


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