NURBS stands for Non-Uniform Rational Bezier Splines, right?  How are
these different from the implementation of splines provided with
Skarda's patch?

Forgive me if it's a silly question...I've just been wondering this for
a while.

- Jamis Buck
  buc### [at] csbyuedu
  http://students.cs.byu.edu/~buck

Vahur Krouverk wrote:
> 
> Hello!
> 
> I'd like to create models for PovRay, which could not be easily done
> with PovRay primitives and CSG. I have version of Rhino and it's seems
> to be best tool for such task. Only problem is, that Rhino models could
> be used as meshes in PovRay and they tend to be quite large. So I
> thought that it would be good, if PovRay could render NURBS directly,
> without meshing.  McNeel provides IO toolkit, so there is possibility to
> export NURBS in suitable format.
> Is it possible to add NURBS support and how big effort it would be? I've
> compiled bezier patch from Daniel Skarda and it seems pretty good for
> start - it implements rational trimmed Bezier surfaces. Does anyone
> knows, how to force PovRay to recognize NURBS?  Rhino documentation
> recommends "The Nurbs Book (Monographs in Visual Communications)" by Les
> A. Piegl, Wayne Tiller. Does anybody have this book and does it contains
> enough information about NURBS math to implement their support in
> PovRay?  If it does, then I consider to purchase this book and attempt
> to patch PovRay. Or is there some other sources, suitable for this task
> or is someone already working on this?
> 
> Sorry, if my ideas don't make sense, I am not firm in field of curves
> and surfaces, but if I take this challenge, then things will change
> (hopefully).

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