"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> I would assume that some of the source-code patches
> mentioned/created by the author (or the other fellow named Suzuki) have not been
> ported to official POV-Ray(?)  Being able to model thunderstorms would be quite
> interesting!

I think from my brief inspection of the source code modifications, that the
changes were quite minor, although having them available as a separate special
type of .df3 - "df32" would be a great addition to the current default source
code.

I believe the current isosurface code was written by Mr. Suzuki, so we have very
little to modify in order to make such a thing possible.

I know from trying to "scan-in" rgb data from an image file via eval_pigment(),
that it's very SLOW.  I don't know how trying to process a df3 in the same way
would be.


Definitely, the interesting thing about the code is how the hdf data is imported
as a pattern function, which is then used to generate the isosurface.  That must
have taken a LONG time to process, way back then, with the "slow" processors,
limited memory, and the huge number of data points.  And it was also probably
before the isosurface approximation macros were written.

I'm guessing that perhaps for simple clouds or low-resolution storms, that
perhaps the hdf file might be able to be converted to a df3, but I haven't
looked closely at the data format (though he does suggest that it's possible)

He's obviously been quite busy and successful since then:   http://orf.media/

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