"gregjohn" <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.1/68/
>
> 1) I'm trying to wrap my head around the concept of a UV mesh.  Could
> someone help me by explaining what they mean when they wrote things like,
> "/*as 8*/ /*as 0*/  /*as 2*/" in the doc?

These are just comment blocks for notation here.  ("/*" opens a comment,
"*/" closes the comment, and POV ignores it in parsing).

In this particular case, the documnetation is just showing the layout for
each individual triangle, but since normals can be repeated several times
in the mesh, they only need to be put in once, normal indices are used to
pick the right one (in mesh1 format, you would need to layout each vertex
and vertex normal of each triangle, this i part of the optimization of
mesh2).  The comments are simply indicating "the normal that should be used
here is the same as normal n".  The same is true for vertex vectors and
uv_vectors.


> 2) I've got a macro where I sweep my own mesh2.  I have a strategy question
> about computing power.  Right now the macro does not compute normals, but
> the macro allows one to set any triangle size.  Which of the two options
> would be the best overall approach, as far providing pretty, smooth-looking
> meshes as a function of rendering time with long-term use of a macro?
>
> i) Going to the trouble of calculating the normal for every triangle?
> ii) Just using a sub-pixel triangle size?

For what it's worth, I would use normals.  You'll get a smoother looking
result with less visible artifacts a lot sooner than with subdivided meshes
alone giving a much smaller mesh size.  The only problem is figuring out how
to calculate the normals.

-tgq

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