POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.pov4.discussion.general : Suggest v4.0 sor{} fixes / changes. (yuqk R20 v0.6.14.0) : Re: Suggest v4.0 sor{} fixes / changes. (yuqk R20 v0.6.14.0) Server Time
3 Oct 2025 01:57:14 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Suggest v4.0 sor{} fixes / changes. (yuqk R20 v0.6.14.0)  
From: Bald Eagle
Date: 25 Sep 2025 11:55:00
Message: <web.68d565b0736a03261398638025979125@news.povray.org>
So I was trying to model an elegantly curved shape as a sor {}, and I noticed
that it was turning out pretty clunky.

And so one thing that I would recommend be added to the documentation is the
fact that a big difference between the sor {} and the lathe {} is the type of
splines used.

Catmull-Rom is an interpolation spline, and so probably needs a large number of
very exact control points to accurately mimic a smooth curve.

Whereas the cubic polynomial splines in the lathe are approximation splines,
which give a much smoother, "organic" curve.

The challenge there, is that the spline only passes through the endpoints of a
spline segment, and so accurately modeling any given curve is more challenging,
because one has to guess or do a lot of calculations to determine the proper
positioning of the inner control points.

Also, if one wants to model a glass, vase, bottle, or some other hollow shape
that has a given wall thickness, then that's something that can be done directly
with the lathe, rather than having to use CSG to subtract away the inside of the
"solid" sor.

- BW


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