I have implemented a simple version of the solid mesh in my patched
version of POV (soon to be released).  It worked well with the very
few meshes that I have thus-far tested it with.

Ronald L. Parker wrote:
> 
> 
>   \             \   /
>    \             \ /
> - - X - - - - - - Y - - - -
>    /
>   /
> 
> Pretend the horizontal line is a ray.  The intersection on the left
> should be counted, the one on the right not.  Determining which is
> which in 3D is left as an exercise for the reader.
> 

These are good points which I thought of but simply ignored in the current
implementation.  The case on the left can be solved by keeping track of
all of the intersections and removing any duplicates (so that such a case
would not be counted twice).

The case on the right is a much more difficult problem.  Fortunately, it
will not occur very often.  But that's not a good excuse.

My current solution is to allow the user to choose the direction of the
sample ray.  This allows even misbehaved objects to work fine if an
appropriate direction is found.

-Nathan Kopp

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