On Sun, 30 Jan 2000 11:05:53 -0500, Chris Huff wrote:
>In article <38945bc8@news.povray.org>, Nieminen Juha 
><war### [at] punarastascstutfi> wrote:
>
>>   I think it's a good idea. This would allow to define custom patterns 
>>   (which
>> are modified from the default patterns) like this:
>> 
>> #declare OvalRings = pattern { wood scale <1,.5,1> }
>
>I agree, this would definitely be a useful feature. The current patch 
>that uses "pattern" might be changed to use something like 
>"pattern_image", which would be more descriptive anyway.(or maybe both 
>patches could use the same keyword, but this would be confusing)

Before anyone goes and does too much on this, I have a suggestion.
I would like to use a _pigment_ as a pattern, rather than just a 
pattern.  That is, I'd like to take the result of a bunch of nested
pigment_maps and warps and other pigment-cruelty and turn it into a 
pattern that can be used to produce a texture_map or a pigment_map
or whatever, so I could take my hexagonal tiles or other pigment tricks
and make something resembling list textures from them.  This, IMHO, 
would be far more useful, while subsuming the functionality you'd get 
from the pattern patch.  

I wouldn't have any problem with renaming the existing patch, but it
should probably be renamed to something using the word "pigment," 
since that's what it actually uses as input.  Just using the word
"pigment" might even be good enough, if slightly confusing.

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