Chambers <Ben### [at] gmailcom> wrote:

> Doesn't POV consider positions within 0.001 units of each other to be
> equivalent?  This would certainly account for that.
>

If so, that's big news (to me, anyway.)  From what does such a relatively large
value arise? I had always assumed--not having read anything to the contrary in
the docs or elsehere--that positional accuracy, as well as most everything else
in POV-Ray, would be down around the limit of its floating-point accuracy.
..00000000001 or something similar. I'm honestly surprised by this new info; it
may explain some oddities that I've seen in scenes over the years.

But in making meshes (hi-rez heightfields) from functions, using shapes.inc (or
rather, my own modified version, to get even higher rez) I haven't *seen* any
mesh anomalies, even looking close-up at a 1-unit-scaled HF. The function
pattern reproduces with great detail--down 'below' this .001 limitation, as far
as I can tell.

However, I *have* seen a scaling problem when making an ISOSURFACE from a
function pattern; scaled to about .01 units, the isosurface starts losing some
of its detail (and lowering the isosurface accuracy only helps that to a
certain degree.) Though this is probably off-topic from what clipka is talking
about.

But in general, I do agree about the scaling problem. (I generally scale objects
to at least 10 units, to try and eliminate any odd artifacts.)  From experience,
I've always wondered if POV's default '1-unit' is actually at the *correct
place* within the range of its in-built numerical values. I.e., moving it to 10
or 100 instead (but still calling it '1-unit', of course!)

Ken

Post a reply to this message