> Couldn't you just "merge" the spheres and cylinders, then no cropping
> should be necessary. A simple while or for loop in POV could create the
> chain of spheres and cylinders, so long as your spheres are spaced close
> enough it will look like a smooth curve. I did this a long time ago to
> model speaker cable (two solid cores inside a semi-transparent case) and
> it worked nicely.

Ultimately I think this is what I should do.  Isosurfaces are a major
performance increase over parametric surfaces, but the problem with using
isosurfaces is the constraint equations become close to degenerate around the
surface I'm trying to describe.  That, and I have to up the "accuracy" and
"max_gradient" features so much that it starts to become slow again.

I didn't know about the "while loop" feature in PoVRay until today.  That really
helps!    I think this is the way to go.

Post a reply to this message