Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
> OJCIT wrote:
> > Is there a way to calculate and/or export the internal volumes of the finite
> > CSG objects in a POV-Ray scene?
>
> <http://tag.povray.org/povQandT/languageQandT.html#wireframes>

Thanks for the quick response, but that's not quite what I meant.  I don't
need to export the surfaces, but I was wondering if there were a way to get
the numerical volume of each solid entity in my scene (i.e., if I filled
them with water, how much would they hold?).  For this purpose I'm only
talking about discrete primitives and objects created by union and
difference operations among them.

For example, I might have a model with a cylinder with a box subtracted from
it, and want to know the resulting volume.  Since the SDL allows much more
complexity than what I use it for, and since there is seamless integration
of infinite primitives, I wouldn't think that's a number that gets computed
in the normal course of things.

My limited understanding seems to be that ray tracers are more interested in
surfaces than interior volumes, and that there's not a concept of internal
mass or material, except for the purposes of diffraction, translucence,
etc.  If photons don't need to know it, I'm guessing it doesn't get
computed.

Post a reply to this message