Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Dave! <orr### [at] no_spam_pleaseexcitecom> wrote:
> > Is there a good online tutorial for isosurfaces?  I didn't have much luck
> > with the POV-Ray help docs.
>
>   A high-school-level math book can be the best isosurface tutorial.
>
>   You can't make eg. the supercone shape unless you know your math.

Yeah, that's a bummer.  I've had to re-learn a lot of Trig that I never
thought I'd use.

>   (It was actually me who developed the Supercone macro for inclusion
> in POV-Ray. Even though an equivalent isosurface would have done the
> job, I felt that I should make it a quartic because then I wouldn't
> need to worry about max_gradients nor accuracies and it would always
> render properly. Anyways, it was quite an interesting mathematical
> exercise to develop the quartic vector.)

I played around with the macro last night, and it's really cool.  Thanks for
making that effort in the first place!

However, I sort of accidentally discovered that I could create the surface I
needed more easily through a matrix transformation of a simple cylinder.
I'll post a basic pic to the binaries group if anyone would care to look.

I'm grateful to everyone who offered insights!  It was only by working
through the suggestions that I finally hit on the answer.

Thanks again,

Dave!

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